Hill repeats are exactly as they sound – repeatedly tackling a hill at a set intensity in order to improve your climbing ability.

Hill reps are ideal when training for short, sharp climbs such as those found through the UK and the Classics, or when preparing for a hilly/mountainous sportive or road race. Fleeman says his training used to involve a lot of hill reps, not just to improve his climbing but also his all-round fitness.

“Hill reps were something I did a lot of,” he says. “They can be very effective. There are many different ways to do it – long hills, short hills, steep hills and so on – and you can do plenty of tailored sessions on each of them.

“They are an effective way to train because they allow you to up the intensity in your training sessions and, if you can do that and maintain it, it’s not just good for hill climbing but general conditioning, too.”

Quality not quantity

“The quality is much more important than quantity,” adds Fleeman. “There’s no question about that. A lot of people really over-estimate the importance of volume – they just think they need to go out and get the miles up, be it climbing or just distance.

“But in a road race, or a sportive, you’re unlikely to get dropped because you can’t do the distance, you will get dropped because you can’t go fast enough.”

With that in mind, how many hill reps should you squeeze into a typical session, and at what intensity? Read on for more.