TFM9: How Mountaineers Can Stay Strong All Year Round (Part 2)

Hello hello guys my name is Rowan Smith and I want to welcome you to the training the mountaineering podcast. Now this podcast is entirely dedicated to openly train, prepare and conquer your upcoming mountaineering adventure. Once a week I'm going to be shown with you in depth and evidence-backed information around improving your physical performance on the mountain, reducing your likely good for pain and injury, nutrition for mountaineers and even a bit of mental strength development. So you can be empowered in your training to give yourself the very best chance to be safe, enjoyable and successful in mountaineering adventure. So now that you know what you're in for let's get in to today's episode. Hello hello guys so today's episode we have part two on the series of how a mountaineer can stay fit all year round and specifically today we are talking about how mountaineer can stay strong all year round. So to do a quick recap from the last episode if you haven't listened to it for a few weeks now basically the intention behind these episodes is that most training information out there for mountaineers is all about leading up to one or potentially two big objectives in the year and they all follow this very very long and sequential and gradual approach which just gets more and more and more of time leading up to peaking to this big adventure which works pretty well in that situation but there are so many other mountaineers out there who simply just don't have one single objective in the year and maybe they just want to stay fit and strong for the mountains for an entire season of climbing or for the entire year or they might not even have a major adventure coming up in the next 12 months and the idea of planning out a 24 months training program is enough to drive them absolutely mental so we were talking about previously an approach where you can maintain your fitness which is a little bit more flexible a little bit more variable a little bit more enjoyable just so you can maintain your fitness at around about an 85% level throughout the entire year so you can be fit to jump into any adventures you want so you can sort of have that enjoyment from the training and then if it did come to the situation where you booked in a massive trip or a big climb then you could use that as a foundation to move into that sequential approach just to get those final percentages of fitness so we previously talked about how you can maintain your fitness and we talked about how you how I recommend breaking up your training into four week blocks in which you train hard for three weeks have one week of a little bit of a deal load a little bit of recovery we talked about how you can fit in your capacity training and your higher intensity training where I recommended for most people if you aim for one longer and one shorter aerobic capacity session per week and then one higher intensity aerobics higher intensity cardio session per week that should get most people enough in that situation so that's really can have three sessions a week but obviously we have a little bit more to build out into a perfect training week so today we're going to be talking about how you can fit muscle strength and muscular endurance training into that particular week now obviously both of these aspects of fitness are super super important which we've already talked about in podcasts previously maximal strength are maximal muscle strength is so essential for injury prevention the movement economy and for just general health and well-being and muscular endurance training is just so specific to mountaineering objectives and it's something that every single person needs to be doing now in that traditional sequential approach which most mountaineers are relatively familiar with it sort of goes starting on your general strength such as doing general strength exercises nothing too crazy but just developing a little bit of strength in the body getting yourself ready then goes through a long period of maximal strength where you're sort of going heavy weights low repetitions trying to develop that max strength and then towards closer to the trip you convert all that maximal strength to that very very specific climbing specific muscular endurance and this approach is something that's known as block periodization and as we said before obviously this isn't super appropriate in this particular session we're talking about it definitely works but for most for many mountaineers who don't have that big objective it's not incredibly appropriate it can be a little bit boring and it can be a little confusing just trying to understand when to switch things up and should you just be doing 12 months of max strength training and so forth so instead of this approach in this situation I like something that's called undulating periodization which is basically just a fancy way of saying working on multiple aspects of fitness or multiple aspects of strength at the same time so for most sports out there this would probably mean working on strength endurance and power more or less at the same time so instead of breaking it up into blocks where just working on one and then moving on to the other just doing all those three at the same time the most mountaineers you probably don't need power training as we discuss previously some people might do it but it's probably not a hundred percent necessary and so this probably means just working on strength and endurance at the same time now this model of periodization can be broken up into either what's known as weekly undulating periodization or daily undulating periodization so daily would be something like if you were doing two sessions a week of strength training you do on a Monday you do maximal strength training on a Thursday you do muscular endurance training and you literally just do that week after week after week one session of each a weekly undulating periodization is first week you just do max strength sessions the second week you just do muscular endurance and the third week you go back to max strength and you just keep on alternating between now obviously just listening to this already you can probably get an insight into it is relatively flexible in the sense that senior working both of these things at the same time if you go away on holidays if you have a big climb if you get sick or anything like that you know you're not really going to miss out on too much because you're not going to miss on those hard deadlines where you need to be switching up your training it can be pretty enjoyable because you are again you're not just stuck in one kind of mode of training you can mix things up a little bit more and it can be much easier to maintain over the long term for many many people who might be doing this for 12 months straight and you can you know enjoy this and maintain this and this is really really great approach in this situation and it's something that I am a strong advocate advocate for in this situation I would say probably I generally lean towards the daily undulating and not so much the weekly not because it's any better or anything but it's just easier for me to program out it's easier to get my head around and so I'm going to be talking around the daily stuff further on now if you are doing this approach which I do recommend in this situation and what specifically do you as a mountaineer need to be doing well for all mountaineers when it comes to the strength training regardless of whether you're doing the traditional approach or not I generally recommend to 45 minute strength sessions per week in all honesty if you program out your sessions right you don't really need to be doing more than that and people that end up spending you know a huge amount of time in the gym is probably a bit unnecessary and you can get away with less but you probably unless you're really really working hard and you really know what you're doing you might be missing out there so generally I say 245 minute sessions is great for most mountaineers now when we're talking about your strength sessions or specifically your max strength sessions a few characteristics that you want to be looking at is number one repetitions are generally pretty low so there'll be anywhere from two to eight repetitions as a max as you go on a little bit higher than eight you might be getting towards muscle hypertrophy which is something that we don't really want as a mountaineer where you're putting on muscle extra muscle most of the time that's probably not incredibly appropriate and so somewhere from two to eight is a general recommendation in this you really want to be making sure your rest is high so you want to make sure in between sets of the same muscle group you want to be having two minutes or more rest so that means if you're doing sets of squats you want to be having two minutes or more rest in between each set of squats that you do now that doesn't mean you have to sit around playing your phone just waste time in that situation and you can fill out rest period out with other exercises maybe upper body training core training mobility training breathing training all these other bits and pieces which I will do a podcast on moving forward and but generally between sets on the same muscle group you want to be having two minutes or more rest movements in these exercises in these sessions basically want to be a mixture between general strength so these are like squats dead lifts and then also very sports specific things so things like step-ups and lunges so you want to have the mixture of both again I'll do another podcast around why you need to be doing this type of thing but they both play into each other and it's very very important and then one simple rule to putting together these workouts is just to make sure there is a balance between pushing and pulling exercises so what I mean by that is that mountaineers have a very tendency to concentrate on these pushing leg exercises which involve you know squats lunges step-ups anything that's working those quads and mountaineers absolutely love that because that seems very very specific for the mountain but as a general rule you generally want to be balancing out every single work exercise you do on the front of the body you want to bounce out with one on the back of the body so your hamstrings and your glutes which are very very important so these are exercises specifically in this situation where it might be dead lifts remaining dead lifts single leg deadlifts, hip thrusts, reverse hyper extensions, things like that. So for every single exercise you're doing a pushing motion, you want to balance it out with a pulling motion. And that's a really, really simple rule of thumb, which most people get your head around it. Now basically how you will do this, once you create your own workout, you'd repeat the same workout for four, four times in a row. So if you were doing the daily undulating, this would be four weeks and you repeat the same workout each time increasing the weights. If you were doing the weekly undulating, you'd be doing it four, four times you'd repeat that workout. So again, it'll be four weeks, but it'll be broken up a little bit different. And then basically you would progress it in after that four weeks, you'd progress it in some other way. So whether you take one of the, a few of the exercises, just take them at the step above. So turn a front squat into a back squat or turn a forward lunge into a bulgurine split squat or something like that. And you just progress it in some way and change up the workout a little bit and then you continue on that four weeks working on the same workout, progressing the weights and then change it up a little bit and then keep on going. If you like consistency, you might change it up every eight weeks as opposed to four weeks. And you probably don't want to change it up more soon, I think the four weeks because it's sort of defeats the purpose a little bit. So that's your strength training. That's pretty simple. You can sort of put together your workouts, you can make that happen and that's very, very straightforward. Now for your endurance training, you do have a little bit more flexibility and a few more options here because you can either do this type of training in the gym and all you can do it outdoors with a bit more mountainous specific stuff. So for example, in the gym, the workouts generally are higher repetitions. So maybe 15, 20 plus repetitions per exercise. It's a lot lower rests. So you're not so much resting and waiting for those muscle recover. You're really chasing fatigue. And again, you want to be balancing out that push and pull exercises for the outdoor sessions you might be doing things like loaded heel intervals, loaded stair intervals. You might be doing incline lunges and a whole bunch of different variations there, which mountain is relatively familiar with a lot of muscular endurance training. And then basically you would do the same approach. So you would do the same workout for four weeks, progressing either the weight if you're doing any pack work, making that heavier or progressing the weight in the gym. And then after the four weeks, you'd switch up that workout. You could either do just a different workout in the gym if you're doing gym workout or you could change to a completely different, a different thing. You might do four weeks of gym work, four weeks of heel intervals, next four weeks of gym work again, next four weeks of stair intervals. And you can repeat around that. Now, if you did want a bit of a list of these workouts and get your head around all the different options around muscular endurance training, if you haven't seen already a little while ago, I put together what's known as the muscular mountain is muscular endurance handbook, in which it includes seven very, very specific muscular endurance workouts for mountain ears, which you can basically use in this situation. You can choose whichever one you want to use and it gives you a rundown of how to put them together for yourself. If you did want to get your hands on that, you can download it at summitstrength.com.au/mountainear-handbook. And I'll drop a link for that in the notes below. But if you did need a bit of inspiration around your muscular endurance training, download that and check it out. Now again, with this type of training, so with both your strength and your endurance training, as we were talking about in the previous podcast, you probably want to be looking at a D-load every four weeks or so. Now this doesn't have to be quite as dramatic as the D-load when it comes to your aerobic capacity training, where you're significantly dropping that volume. How I generally like to do this is unless you're feeling absolutely majorly fatigued. You can basically line up, line this D-load week up with the new phase of training when you're sort of swapping out exercises for the new exercises for the next four weeks, or you're swapping to end on an entire workout. And if you line that up with the first phase of your new training, just because you're learning the new exercises and you're learning the new workout, generally the intensity gets dropped a little bit. And this can sort of line up with your D-load most of the time. Now if you were in the situation where you're overly fatigued, you're getting really tied, you're getting really sore. That might be a case for hey, I'm going to drop the volume or drop the intensity of my sessions. But for most of the time, you can probably get away with this if you are dropping your aerobic capacity work, and that's going to be enough recovery as it is. So if that works out quite well, and that's something quite like, a few rules around your actual climbing with all of this. So as we said before, if you are doing multiple objectives or you do have a few climbs coming up or you're in a new tie season of climbing, you do need to adapt this as you go through. Basically any week that you have a climb or a trip, you probably want to just drop the volume of your training. So if you're doing say five sets of an exercise in your strength sessions, you drop it down to three sets. If you're doing a muscular endurance healing of all session and you're doing say 30 minutes of climbing or 60 minutes of climbing, you might just half that. You still do a little bit just to keep the body ticking over, but you probably want to be rolling into your climb or your adventure relatively fresh. If you are doing a strenuous adventure, so something that's going to really test your limits, you probably want to have a delode in the week before and the week after your trip. So in that situation, you'd be dropping the volume quite a bit and also the intensity. If you do need that proper recovery and then in those four weeks, you'd have two weeks of solid training. So you'd have two weeks of chill, two weeks of training and you can figure that out with all your other stuff. If you're doing a lesser strenuous adventure, so something that's not really going to test you too much, but you still need a little bit of recovery, you might not have the delode before and after the trip, but you might just take a couple of days either side. So depending on how your weekly training works out, whether or not that affects your strength training or your aerobic capacity work or whatever it is. And then in these weeks, you might not so much progress your weights, but you just maintain what you're doing here. But that really is up to your best judgment just to see how you're feeling and see your body knows what it needs in that situation. So you can judge that. And if there is a period where you're just climbing, climbing, climbing and you just got so many objectives, you're absolutely hammering it, and you might just do a single strength session a week with very low volume. So this might be simply going in and doing two exercises for three sets or two sets, but just pushing the intensity a little bit and the intention there is that's not going to make you stronger, but that's pretty usually enough to help maintain your strength during this period. And there have been instances with my mountaineers where they've been away for long periods of time in places where they don't have access to gyms or anything like that. But we have a big objective coming up in the next 10 months and we've literally just got them doing 20 minute sessions of body weight or with a pack, just trying to load the muscles up a little bit to maintain the strength. And that can be relatively effective. So a lot of information to digest there, particularly over the two long episodes, but basically to add everything up and what we talked about over these two episodes, a really simple training week, which I feel like will work for 90% of mountaineers out there who just want to stay fit all year round or four big season, equals out to be one longer cardio session a week. So something that's going to go for a long period of low intensity, one shorter cardio session per week, one higher intensity arm cardio session, one maximal strength session and one endurance session. That works out to be five sessions a week, which is pretty manageable for most mountaineers. Obviously there'll be situations where you want to add a little bit more there as I said in last episode. If you are a lifelong endurance athlete, you'll love to do a low aerobic capacity work. You might add another session or two of aerobic capacity work, and you might just add some bit more there. Or if anyone wanted to add more sessions into that, it would probably be all aerobic capacity work. Or if you need to reduce things, this does happen. If you can't fit in that much training into your week, as much as it's not ideal and a lot of mountaineers might think that's sacrilege, it does happen. And this might be a case of where you're dropping out, you know, alternating between an endurance and high intensity session or something like that. You might need to be a bit more flexible there, but it does happen. But hopefully this should give you a little bit of an insight into how to maintain your strength and your mountaineer fitness all year round. Obviously this is not 100% perfect. It is going to be a flexible approach and it is going to be something you have to adapt to your own circumstances. But in all honesty, I feel like this approach can work for 90% of mountaineers who are just trying to maintain things throughout the year. And then when you lead into a big objective, you might lead into that sequential approach. See how it goes, have a think about it and you know, you might be surprised at just how effective it is. So as I said before, if you were looking for a few ideas around your muscular endurance training and you were looking for a few specific workouts to help you in this situation, you can download that handbook, the mountaineers muscular endurance handbook, which I mentioned before at summitstrength.com.au/mountaineer-handbook. And I'll leave that link in the notes. So thank you so much for listening today, guys. I do hope you've enjoyed this. I hope you've gone a little bit of insight and a little bit of value out of this episode. If anything hasn't made sense, please do reach out to me. I'm always happy to discuss this. But I hope you've enjoyed it and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.