​In this episode, we do a follow-up on the topic of respiratory muscle training for mountaineers. And we explore HOW a mountaineer can train to see benefits in this area, plus some commonly discussed training methods that probably won't lead to improvements in this specific area. 

Episode Chapters:

0:10 
Introduction to Respiratory Muscle Training
3:24 
Effective Methods of Strength Training
7:49 
Endurance Training for Breathing Muscles
11:37 
Not So Great Methods to Avoid
15:06 
Weak Methods with Little Evidence
20:41 
Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are doing a little bit of a follow-up around improving respiratory muscle strength.

[0:11] Now, last week's episode, we talked about potential benefits of respiratory muscle training, specifically when we're looking at high-attitude mountaineering. And I talked through a few really cool potential benefits you can get out of this training, plus my recommendations around how you can apply it, like if you're looking at exploring this. But upon reflection and having to think about how I presented that episode, there is one area which I very much want to expand on a little bit, just so I can be 100% crystal clear and make sure you as a mountaineer do not get the wrong idea. And make sure you as a mountaineer who may be looking for an edge with your training, do not get led down the wrong path. Because when it comes down to this, as we sort of said in the last episode, there are definitely some cool potential benefits to this type of training. But what I've seen many times in the past, when this subject is brought up, and it's not a super common thing, it's not a super popular area of training, but I have seen it talked about before.

[1:21] But what will often happen is people will talk about high attitude or they'll talk about mountain or whatever it may be and they'll bring up this topic of respiratory muscle training and they'll say look this has all these potential benefits you can see x and y and z and this is really really useful and this will be something that you can add to your training and which will see great results on the mountain and they'll bring up all of these benefits and then they'll say look we want to improve the strength of our breathing muscles. But then in the next sentence...

[1:54] It kind of goes off track. And what people will say is like, well, if you want to improve your strength, you should go out and do this. You should go out and do this, or you should go out and do this. And the majority of the time I see people talking about this, they're kind of talking about methods which don't really line up with what we need for this type of training. And so they'll start with this really interesting area around evidence and science and quote papers and this and that, but then they'll just say, okay, if you want to get this, go and do this type of training, which is not talked about in these papers, or it doesn't have any evidence behind it, or whatever may be.

[2:31] And yeah, I've seen it a lot. So today, I just want to hone in on this a little bit. I want to be very, very crystal clear about the different types of training, which can potentially see these benefits that I talked about in the previous episode, which do have evidence behind them, which do have logic behind them. And I also want to clearly highlight the methods which you may come across online. Which often do get talked about in this space, but probably don't fall into this category. They probably don't have the evidence or the logic behind them to see these types of results or these types of potential results. So you can come at the end of hopefully last episode and this episode just being crystal clear around, this is what we're chasing. These are the options of how you can go about it. And these are the options which may not quite be right for you.

[3:25] So with that being said what i'm going to do is i'm going to cover two great methods of respiratory muscle training i'm going to cover one not so great method and then a bunch of just not good methods when it comes down to this respiratory muscle training so realistically when it comes down to great methods there's two methods which have a lot of evidence behind them and there are two methods that in that evidence I was talking about last episode, those two methods that kind of came out of these are the methods which can see these types of results.

[4:00] Now, method number one is what we call respiratory muscle strength training. And this is using an inspiratory muscle training device, which I mentioned last episode. Essentially, what this involves is getting a device which can load up our inspiratory breathing muscles and load them up with a significant amount of resistance so we can challenge them, we can force them to adapt, and we can create strength adaptations in those muscles. Now, how do we go about this? Well, the main key to respiratory muscle strength training is our breathing muscles are strong. And like any type of strength training, we need to, to see effective results, we need to load up with enough resistance for us to stimulate those muscles to actually get stronger. Because if we don't give enough resistance...

[4:57] They're not going to have any reason to get stronger. Pretty simple. Essentially, from the evidence that I've seen, the general consensus around respiratory muscle strength training is we need to find a load of resistance, which is about 50 to 60% of your one repetition maximum. And when we're training this, we want to sustain this to the limit of tolerance. So what I mean by this is if you had a device, and you had a device with variable resistance, what you would do, or what you can do, is essentially your one repetition maximum would be the absolute heaviest amount of resistance you can use on that device while you can still get an effective breath in. This is a powerful, this is a strong breath, but it's an effective breath in. Your one repetition maximum would be if you can only do one breath, then you can't really do any more. And then 50% to 60% of that would be, well, half of that resistance. And essentially what this ends up being is about 50% of your 1RM ends up being you do 30 breaths. And after 30 breaths, that's your kind of limited tolerance. That is where you fatigue. And you're like, I can't really do any more effective. That's kind of been the training load. It's quite heavy. And if you've ever done this type of training, that is quite a bit of resistance. It feels difficult. It feels challenging. And by the end of the 30 breaths, you're like, yeah, that was a decent workout.

[6:23] Now, the interesting thing when it comes down to this, or one really, really interesting point when we're looking at respiratory muscle strength training, is there have been studies that have looked at this. And what they've done is they've looked at this heavy 50 to 60% 1RM, this heavy resistance, which you can do 30 breaths and fatigue up. They've looked at that compared to a placebo. And the placebo wasn't just doing nothing, but they got people to do the same type of workout. But what they used was 15, 1-5% of their 1RM. So they went 50 versus 15. Now, 15% still feels like resistance. It still has load on the breathing muscles. It still feels difficult. But what they found in this study when they compared the two was the 15% did not see significant changes. Now, this is really, really, really important to be aware of because if we are chasing this respiratory muscle strength training, that means we need to load it up heavy. And even if we're loading up in a way which feels difficult, if it's not enough resistance, it won't give us the results we want. So essentially, when we're doing this, we need a device which can load us up. We can also load this up in an effective way, which we can progress over time. So as we get stronger, we add more and more and more load, like any other type of strength training. So that's number one, inspiratory muscle training with a device.

[7:50] Now, a very effective method number two, and this is one I didn't mention in the last episode, but this is another effective method, and it is a bit of a mouthful, so bear with me. It is called ventilatory isocapneic hyponeia. Complete mouthful there. Essentially what this is, is this is doing respiratory muscle endurance training. So the previous method, we were talking about respiratory muscle strength training. This particular method is doing respiratory muscle endurance training. Essentially what this involves, it's in the name, we're kind of doing sustained efforts of endurance. And what we're doing here is we're doing about 15 to 30 minutes, depending on the training protocol, of sustained high ventilation, where we're breathing in and out quite strong, high ventilation for about 15 to 30 minutes. Now, the key to this is if you try to do this and just hyperventilate or just do really high and powerful breaths for 15 minutes, you will get really, really dizzy because hyperventilation leads to that. So this particular training method requires a specific device which will prevent your carbon dioxide dropping from that hyperventilation. So it kind of catches the carbon dioxide and we like rebreathe it and this and that. And essentially what you would do is you do a session where you've got 15 to 30 minutes, depending, of that sustained high ventilation doing that endurance training. So by the end, those breathing muscles have been fatigued.

[9:19] This is another perfectly legitimate way of respiratory muscle training. Both of these particular methods have a lot of evidence behind them. Both of these particular methods were associated with all that stuff I was talking about with high attitude before.

[9:35] My personal preference and what I always advocate for between these two is the first one. I always advocate for those inspiratory muscle strength training using one of those devices where we're looking heavier resistance, 30 breaths. Why? Well, for me, from my research and my knowledge, what I've read is this approach has been shown to have the widest range of benefits. Now, what that means is this is respiratory muscle strength training. This will improve your respiratory muscle strength, but will also have a carryover for improving your respiratory muscle endurance.

[10:16] Similar to normal strength training, if we just increase our maximal strength, this does have carryover for our endurance. On top of this, if this is done at the right tempo, the right speed, and the right force, because there's a very particular technique to do this type of stuff, it can also help improve the speed of contraction and the power output of our inspiratory breathing muscles, which are other qualities of respiratory muscle training. So it can have a really nice spread of benefits, not just strength, but a nice spread of things. On top of this, I really do believe this type of training protocol just seems a bit more time efficient and manageable in the sense of when we're looking at the strength side of things, 30 breaths at a time essentially involves three minutes. You do three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the evening for this type of training prescription, as opposed to doing 15 to 30 minutes of sustained breathing. It's still relatively time efficient, but if you're looking at six minutes a day versus 15 minutes a day, that kind of adds up. And practically just doing 30 breaths, much easier to do on days you're feeling a bit uninspired, much easier to do on days you're feeling a bit low energy, as opposed to that sustained. That's my personal preference of what I advocate for because I just think it's more practical and from what I've read it has that nice range of benefits. So those are two great methods of respiratory muscle training.

[11:37] Next up is a method which often gets promoted. There is a little bit of evidence behind it, but I still do not consider it a particularly great method. I would sort of say it's a not so great method. And that's using an elevation mask. Now, elevation masks, if you haven't come across them before, they're kind of those big masks which you put on your face which restrict your breathing. They used to be marketed as like an altitude mask, but then that got completely disproven as being an altitude training device. and people would call them elevation masks now. Now, people will often talk about these, using these to improve your respiratory muscle strength or using this for respiratory muscle training. And essentially where this is coming from is when there was studies looking into the whole idea of attitude. And they sort of like a lot of people market this as an attitude training device. Studies looked into this and sort of said, hey, you know what? All of these studies you looked at, didn't really see a massive change here, didn't really see a massive change here. But one change we did see from some studies was there's some improvements to respiratory muscle parameters. I can't remember the exact ones, but there were some changes. And essentially, this study or this review of studies said, look, it could be treated as a respiratory training device.

[12:50] When you wear one of these, if you've ever used them before, you will notice pretty quickly there is significant or does feel like significant load on your breathing muscles. When you're doing intervals or whatever, it feels really, really, really, really tough. Now, there is some evidence to show this may be a respiratory training device, but I definitely do not consider this a great method of respiratory muscle training. Because when we kind of look at this, number one, there is a ton more evidence on those other areas that I mentioned before, as opposed to these masks, first and foremost. Number two, when we look at things logically, if we're looking at respiratory muscle strength training, on the strength side of things, we saw in the studies before that we do need that significant load. And even if we're using a load which feels difficult, but it isn't enough, it's not going to be amazing for strength. So these masks, I would say on the strength side of things, probably falls into that. And then on the endurance side of things, when we're looking at specifically improving endurance, it may, you know, some people say, okay, we're doing high sustained breathing in here will kind of catch our carbon dioxide in here, and then that'll help us do more hyperventilation, yada, yada. And that's probably true, but that compared to a specific device designed to help you do that hyperventilation, that sustained heavy breathing, and actually specifically catch the carbon dioxide, it's not really the same thing.

[14:16] So I would sort of say, logically, you know, there may be some benefits, but I don't know. I feel like there's other things that probably are going to do a better job. And probably the biggest drawback to this, in my personal opinion, is to use these, you have to wear it during training. And this can significantly impact your other training. Because if you're using this on your long, steady, easy runs or whatever it may be, well, your breathing is going to be harder, but you're going to be limited in other areas. If you're doing this in your interval training, yeah, your breathing is going to be harder, but you're probably not going to have as much output in other areas. So it ends up being a little bit limiting. So yeah, I would sort of say there is some evidence for it. You may see some benefits, but when we look at things that have a lot more evidence and a lot more logic and probably see stronger results, I'd probably lean towards them.

[15:06] Next up, I want to talk about not great methods. That was not so great. These ones are stuff that I've seen commonly recommended and see people talk about it, but in all honesty, I don't think there's any evidence or there's just such weak evidence around it.

[15:23] First one I want to talk about is breath holds. I did a whole episode on this the other day, so I'm not going to go into too much detail, but we often see people talk about respiratory muscle strength, and then they say, look, breath hold training has been proven to do this. Realistically, I've only ever seen one study that has seen a change or a significant change to respiratory muscle strength from breath holds. So there isn't a huge amount of evidence. Number two, when you look at that study, the training protocol is just not practical for most people. They had people doing high intensity efforts on a treadmill two or three times a week for 40 minutes doing breath holds. And on top of that, they had specific measuring to make sure people were hitting specific targets of building up different changes in the blood. No one's going to have that. That's not practical. It's not realistic. And layering on, I think, three 40-minute high-intensity sessions just to improve your breathing strength or other benefits, I'm sure people will say, but it's not really practical for most mountaineers. And again, there's only one study I've ever seen that looks at that. So I wouldn't really see that's very effective. Next one, diaphragmatic breathing or abdominal breathing or belly breathing, however you want to phrase it. Now, I love this. I strongly recommend people practice and train diaphragmatic breathing. It is a very, very, very useful technique to use for training and also relaxation recovery.

[16:47] But to be clear, it is not going to be an effective thing to improve your respiratory muscle strength. People often say, okay, you want to improve your strength, and then let's just do some diaphragmatic breathing. And it just doesn't make any sense. There are some studies to show that diaphragmatic breathing can improve strength, but it's only on some people who have legitimate medical conditions which affects their breathing. People with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or people who have been on ventilators, as a generally healthy and hopefully trained mountaineer, no way is this going to be enough resistance to see a change in strength. Now, the next step is people often say, okay, well, what about weighted diaphragmatic breathing? Some people are like, okay, well, let's do this and just put a weights plate on our belly, or let's wear a belt around us and do some slightly resistant. And again, there's probably some really good benefits from that type of thing. But when we're talking specifically about respiratory muscle strength, and which can therefore lead to some specific benefits of attitude? No, there's just no evidence behind it. And it doesn't make logical sense when you look at the real training prescriptions that we've seen. So diaphragm-made breathing, great. Advocate for it, love it. Is it going to change your respiratory muscle strength or respiratory muscle endurance even? Probably not. Next up, nose breathing. I've seen some people say breathing through your nose is enough of resistance to load up those breathing muscles to see changes in your strength. There's zero evidence behind that. Logically, it doesn't make any sense.

[18:17] Straw breathing. I've seen people say, okay, if we want to load up the breathing muscles, let's just breathe in through a straw. Again, yes, that will add some resistance. Is it enough resistance? Very doubtful. And on top of that, even if it is, you're using a straw and at first it is enough resistance for you. Like any type of strength training, for us to see improvements, we need progressive overload. We need to continually add resistance as we get stronger to stimulate the muscles to get stronger. Straws, not going to do that. I've seen people talk about purse-slip breathing. Another great technique for high attitude. Look into it if you haven't before. Is it enough resistance? Probably not. Does it have any type of progressive overload? Definitely not. One-nostril breathing. Again, I've seen people sort of say, hey, if you just do strong inhales with one nostril closed and breathe through the other nostril through your nose, that will be enough. Again, is it enough resistance? No. Is there any progression? No. And fist breathing. I have seen some people use that. And fist breathing is an interesting one where you have a closed fist and you breathe in and you feel that. And this is a really interesting one because a lot of people use this to demonstrate the kind of feeling it comes from this inspiratory muscle training and feeling that type of resistance. And people use that and say, when they're talking about this subject, they're like, hey, give this a go and people can practice this right away. As a teaching tool, yeah, great. As an example, yeah, great. As a training tool, probably not because we don't know how much we're loading it up. We don't have any progressions.

[19:46] Yeah not great and then finally swimming like swimming really really really really good great for breathing in a bunch of different ways is just swimming in general going to be enough for this probably not realistically when it comes down to respiratory muscle training there is a lot of evidence and a lot of studies out there that have looked at this looked at different methods of developing this and different methods of acquiring these adaptations and there is a small amount of evidence to show that there are some cool potential benefits up at high attitude. But if you're trying to go down this route and you're trying to get these specific benefits and get this edge, please make sure you are doing the right things. Use the methods that have evidence behind them. Use the methods that make logical sense and don't get led down the trap of just thinking you're doing something, which may be good for one reason or another, but it's not really giving you exactly what you need here.

[20:41] Do the right training for the right results. So with that being said, I think I'm going to wrap up here. I spent two episodes talking about this subject. I'm going to give it a bit of a rest now. I hope this makes sense. If anyone does have any particular questions of this, please reach out. If it's something I can cover and I can help, I will help out. If not, I can pass you on to someone else who's a bit more of a specialist in this area and you can have a chat with them. But with that being said, thank you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed the last couple of episodes. I hope it's been insightful. I hope it's been useful and we'll talk to you soon. Have a lovely day. We'll talk next week. Bye.

In this episode, we explore the idea that 'incorrect' or 'inefficient' strength training can have a detrimental impact on your hiking. 

Episode Chapters:
​
0:10 
Introduction to Strength Training and Hiking
1:47 
Misconceptions About Strength Training
4:09 
When Strength Training Becomes Detrimental
6:16 
Debunking Myths of Muscle and Hiking
6:48 
The Importance of Proper Messaging
7:51 
Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode,

[0:04] we are answering the question, can strength training make you worse at hiking? Now, this episode was inspired by a bit of a strange post I saw the other day online. And this was coming from another hiking coach, which I just ran across into on the space. And in their particular post, they were kind of talking about strength training And essentially what they were saying is strength training can be really good for hikers for a bunch of different reasons. But if you don't do it in a particular way, it will make you worse at hiking. If you don't do it in a particular way, it will be detrimental to your hiking. And unless you're doing it in this way that's specific in quotation marks for hikers, it's not only going to be a waste of your time, it's actively going to take away from your performance and your comfort and ultimately your chance of success and enjoyment on the trail. Which I thought was very much a bit weird because I am all for making training a little bit more specific to the demands of hikers. I am all for taking strength training and getting people away from the typical approach of bodybuilding or HIIT or boot camp or whatever it may be and getting things a little bit more dialed in to the needs of hikers.

[1:27] However, this type of hyperbole, when people are phrasing this and saying stuff like this, I think it's just wrong. I think it's bad. I think it's going backwards. And I understand why people do it because they are trying to convince people to make a change.

[1:43] They're trying to convince people to ultimately go down their route and work with their service. But us in the hiking industry, in the hiking training industry, we kind of do need to do better, in all honesty. Because realistically.

[1:55] In 99% of situations, strength training, no matter how you do it, is not going to be detrimental to your hiking. Yes, there are better and worse ways of doing strength training. There are definitely ways where you can get more results for your hiking with less time and less effort, but it's never a case or it's very rarely a case of doing a certain type of strength training being detrimental. There's realistically only two ways your strength training will be detrimental to your hiking. Number one is if you only have a set amount of training time per week and a certain amount of hours and you do not have a huge amount of time and you're doing strength training in a way and doing it so much that it actually gets in the way of other things, meaning you don't have enough time to go out and do cardio work. You don't have enough time to go out and hike. And literally all your time or the majority of your time is spent strength training, then yeah, in that way, it will probably be detrimental. Not for the fact that the strength is bad that you're developing, but just because you're not focusing on other areas that are probably going to be more beneficial or at least just as beneficial in different ways.

[3:12] You could argue in the situation if you're doing strength training in a way which is so tough and so difficult that your legs are so sore you can barely walk the next day. That might be detrimental. And I guess that falls under the banner of it just getting in the way of other things. So that's number one. If you're doing strength training in a way that the time or intensity is getting in the way of your other training, that's number one. And number two the only other way strength training is going to be detrimental to your hiking is if you are doing it in a way which causes you pain in the sense of so many hikers struggle with pain and so many people for one reason or another do strength training and it causes them pain they do exercises and it hurts their knees they do this and it hurts their ankles and they end up just hobbling around afterwards and again it limits us in other areas in that situation,

[4:09] yeah, it's detrimental. You probably want to take a slightly different approach. But realistically, beyond those two things, even if you are doing the absolute ugliest strength training program in the world, or even if you are just literally following a bodybuilding program, or maybe you're literally doing one exercise per week.

[4:31] It's not going to be detrimental. Are there better ways of doing things? Yes, absolutely. There are absolutely 100% better ways of doing your strength training and worse ways of doing your strength training when we're looking at the hiking context. But even those things that I would consider absolutely at the worst end of the scale, as long as it's not putting in your pain, as long as it's not pulling you away from things, it's still going to be beneficial. And I know, I know, Some people might be thinking right now, okay, but what if I train in a way that I put on so much muscle that it just weighed me down on the trail and I was super slow out on the trail? And in all honesty, no one is going to do that. Even if you were the most intense, hardcore bodybuilder and you literally look like Arnie on the trail, you have so much muscle, that's not going to be detrimental. What's going to be detrimental in that situation is if you spent so much time building that muscle that you didn't have time to develop your aerobic capacity. You didn't have time to develop your muscular endurance. You didn't have time to do your basics of hiking. And the muscle that you're carrying inherently isn't bad. It will probably be beneficial as long as you have.

[5:50] Your other areas of training carried. You could argue in different situations if you were doing actual climbing and you were like you're literally climbing your body and doing alpinism or something like that. Yeah, body weight is a bit more of a factor, but as a hiker, even if you're carrying five, ten extra kilos of muscle, it's not going to be detrimental, even in that absolute extreme case, as long as you are nailing your other areas of training.

[6:17] So please, if you see some of this stuff online, just ignore it. If someone's saying strength will be detrimental, unless you do it in a way, a certain way, it doesn't matter. Oh no, I don't want to say it doesn't matter, but it's not true. Again, yes, you can tweak things and adjust things to get more for your hiking. And that is what this podcast is all about. I've shared so many tips over the years to help with that, but it's never a case of saying, if you don't follow the tips that I recommend, you're going to be worse off. It's going to send you backwards.

[6:49] So with that being said, I'm going to wrap things up here. I just felt like this is an important subject to talk about because I know the way social media works. If I have seen a post or a video that's saying this, typically the way things work is people just copy content out there. So if one coach is phrasing things in a way like this, more than likely we will see more and more and more people popping up saying pretty much the same things. So you may be at a risk of seeing this messaging again and again and again, and I don't want you to get the wrong idea. Again better and worse absolutely but detrimental very very rarely so if you're doing any type of strength training that is 100 better 100 better than nothing keep on doing it and if you want to get a little bit more from your hiking well then you can go down the specific route so with that being said last thing i will sort of say you know what i'm not even going to say it today i was about to talk about my online personal training for hiking and that's kind of going in the same thing I said at the start. Do it my way or else. So I'm not even going to say any more on that.

[7:50] I'm going to wrap things up here. So with that being said, thank you for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I hope it helps a few people. I hope it was a nice just awareness booster for a few people. And we'll talk to you soon. Bye.

In this episode, we explore respiratory muscle training (strength training for your breathing muscles), which is a very interesting area of training for high-altitude mountaineers.​

Inside, we explore:
​

• What is respiratory muscle training?
• The potential benefits of respiratory muscle training for high-altitude mountaineers
• How to develop and train respiratory muscle strength (and a few methods which are often talked about, but are probably not very effective) 

Episode Chapters:

0:17 
Introduction to High-Altitude Training
2:14 
Exploring Respiratory Muscle Training
5:43 
What is Respiratory Muscle Training?
6:45 
Potential Benefits for Mountaineers
16:14 
Delving Deeper into Benefits
17:00 
Addressing Skepticism in the Community
18:57 
Training Prescription Simplified
19:30 
The Cost of Training Devices
23:11 
Brands and Recommendations
26:28 
Conclusion and Final Thoughts​

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are exploring a very interesting area of training for high attitude mountaineers,

[0:10] which has a few very, very particular, but very, very cool potential benefits for the mountain. And we're going to be exploring a little bit about this topic, what it's all about, and how you may be able to apply this in your training. Now, when it comes down to high attitude mountaineering, you know, there are so many unknowns. And so many question marks around how you're going to feel and how you're going to perform at high altitude. We all know that. And that is one of the biggest things that people run into when they're looking at a big high altitude expedition. And because of these unknowns, you know, there are a lot of mountaineers out there who were really looking, to get an edge with their training. They're really looking for anything they can do to help them perform a little bit better in the attitude, feel more comfortable, and give themselves a little bit more chance of having a successful adventure.

[1:04] And beyond the fundamentals of your training, your cardio, your strength training, your specific hiking or mountaineering, all of that stuff that we talk about in this podcast all the time, mountaineers often get into this point where they're thinking, what else can they be doing? What else can they be layering on top of this to help? You know, some mountaineers will go down the route of nutrition, which is a huge subject and so many potential benefits. And I definitely strongly encourage every single mountaineer to go down this and put a bit of effort into it and put a bit of attention because it's definitely worthwhile. Now, other mountaineers will go down the route of looking at simulated attitude training, which depending on how you actually go about this and the application of this type of training you know it can sometimes be useful for a few particular situations or particular benefits you know some other mountaineers will sort of go down the route of looking at you know training masks or nasal dilators or breath hold training or cold plungers or or Wim Hof breathing or or whatever may be or a dozen other things to give them advantage and I've heard so many little things that mountaineers have tried over the years because they're

[2:13] just trying to do everything they can. They're throwing the kitchen sink at these adventures and they want to be giving themselves the best chance possible.

[2:20] However, when you are getting away from the fundamentals and you're getting away from those basics of good training, good nutrition, and the stuff that is a part of a lot of people's preparation, when we get away from those basics, it can often be hard to really know what is worth looking at. Because there's a lot of stuff out there. There's a lot of good marketing. There's a lot of people talking about things, which they're saying these really cool things, but you know what? You don't really know if you can trust them. And it can really be difficult to know what is worth your time and what really may end up being a waste of time, a waste of effort and a waste of money. And this can end up being a bit of a gray area. And this is why, for the most part, what I just talk about, the fundamentals, because we know that works. We know that will bring benefits and we know it's going to be worth your time.

[3:09] If you are admittedly a mountaineer who's already nailing that, who was already nailing the fundamentals, and if you are looking for something a little bit extra to give you an edge, I think respiratory muscle training, the topic we're exploring today, is definitely worth a look. I think it's a topic which doesn't really get much attention in the world of mountaineering, but I think it's definitely worthwhile considering if you're in this situation. So we're going to be exploring this a little bit today. what we are going to be covering today is we're going to cover what is respiratory muscle training and just talking through exactly what's going on there. We're going to talk through a few potential benefits of respiratory muscle training for high attitude mountaineers and how specifically it may be able to help you. I'm going to talk you through one big reason why I kind of lean towards this approach to breathing training if you're going down that route as opposed to many other approaches to breathing training which often get talked about in the mountaineering community. And I'll also talk you through probably the major drawback of this type of training, just so you're well aware that, okay, this may be a little bit tricky.

[4:16] And then at the end, I'll explore if you are interested in learning more about this subject, or you want to get started with this subject, how to actually go about it. So first of all, let's get into it. First up, what exactly is this? When I'm talking about respiratory muscle training, what is this? Well, essentially, it's very, very simple. It's strength training for your breathing muscles. Now, when we're talking about normal strength training, what we do is we have our muscles. In order for them to get stronger, we apply resistance so the muscles will be stressed, and then they'll adapt, and they will grow stronger. And then we apply more and more resistance over time for them to keep on getting stronger and stronger. And it's literally the same thing for our breathing muscles. We apply resistance to our breathing muscles to force them to adapt and force them to get stronger.

[5:04] For respiratory muscle training, when we're talking about this specifically for mountaineers, what we are particularly talking about is building up the strength in the muscles responsible for our inspiration, for breathing in, for them to adapt and get stronger. There are a lot of different methods of respiratory muscle training. A lot of people talk about different subjects and a lot of different facets, and you can train the muscles responsible for breathing out, your expiratory muscles. But in this context, we're talking about inspiratory muscle training, the muscles responsible for breathing in. So with that being said, why would you do this? Why would you even bother thinking

[5:42] about this type of thing? Don't your lungs, don't your muscles work, breathing muscles work well enough as it is.

[5:49] Well, when it comes down to it, there are a few really cool potential benefits for high-attitude mountaineers. And there are a few really cool potential benefits which made me look at this and be like, yeah, that's definitely worthwhile considering. Now, when I say potential benefits, that is what it is, potential. There is some very interesting research. I'm not making this stuff up or just whatever it may be. There are studies and evidence that look at this, which definitely makes it look very promising. But with any type of breathing training and with any type of high-attitude stuff, it's definitely not 100%. It's definitely not set in stone. It's not going to guarantee these things are going to happen for you, but it's very promising. So when it comes down to the benefits of respiratory muscle training, there are six big ones, which I think are very, very, very interesting for high-attitude mountaineers. Now, bear with me here because I am going to get a little bit science-y with some of these things. What I'm about to talk you through is directly pulled from the research articles that I've read.

[6:46] So they may sound a little bit geeky, and I know in the podcast format when we're talking about science, sometimes it can be just like going in one ear, out the other. So bear with me here. I'll talk you through these benefits. Hopefully it makes sense. You may have to rewind if it's just sort of a zone out or whatever it may be, but hopefully we'll see you next time.

[7:03] Not. And hopefully we go. So benefit number one, respiratory muscle training. What it can do is it can delay the onset of premature fatigue in the breathing muscles. Now, in a high-attitude environment, obviously we are breathing much more. We will naturally go into hyperventilation as part of the acclimatization process. Obviously, we just breathe more in that environment. What has been seen is when we are in a high-attitude environment, exercise-induced diaphragm fatigue has been shown to be enhanced. Now, our diaphragm is our main breathing muscle, and exercise-induced fatigue is essentially just from exercising and breathing harder. Now, in this environment, the high-attitude, our ventilation levels, as I said before, are highly increased through our hyperventilation, which can provoke inspiratory muscle fatigue because those muscles are just working very, very fast. And because they are working very fast, they're not working in their most efficient way. They're not managing to go to their most efficient length where we get those nice, big, deep breaths in, which is kind of what those muscles want. And also at the speed that they want. So, you know, we're breathing quicker than we're kind of used to. So this can lead to the potential for respiratory muscle fatigue, specifically in those inspiratory muscles, at altitude has been a bit of a limiting factor for performance. It makes sense. If these breathing muscles fatigue, it's going to make things harder. Pretty straightforward.

[8:32] Now, by strengthening the inspiratory muscles, we can reduce the relative work of our breathing muscles, meaning every breath is easier to do and delay the associated fatigue. So that's exactly the same thing when we're talking about strength training in the sense if we go to a gym, you know, when we're mountaineering, we never really get to the point where our muscles completely give out on us.

[8:53] And we may do that in the gym, but the reason why we apply heavy resistance to our muscles in the gym or whatever it is, is to increase our relative strength. So every single step we take on the mountain feels easier. That's pretty much the same thing we're looking at here. So that's benefit number one. Respiratory muscle training can potentially delay the onset of premature fatigue.

[9:14] Benefit number two, and this is a mouthful, so bear with me, is respiratory muscle training can delay respiratory muscle metaboreflex onset and more favorable blood redistribution to the locomotor muscles. A mouthful, I know, but let me explain it. Now, when we are up at altitude, the oxygen cost of breathing can be quite a bit. And when we're doing maximal exercise at altitude, and admittedly not all mountaineers or not many mountaineers will be doing maximal exercise, But let's just use this as an example. During maximal exercise at altitude, the oxygen cost of breathing can approach up to 30% of total oxygen consumption. So how much your oxygen, your breathing muscles need to operate. Now, admittedly, as I said before, mountaineers probably aren't doing maximal exercise, but it will be to a degree. Now, because of this, what can happen here is if the breathing muscles need so much oxygen, it needs to get blood to that area to deliver the oxygen. So therefore, blood can move away from the working muscles, the legs or whatever it may be, to redistribute that oxygen and can limit their work output to a degree. It's not all or nothing. It's not like, oh my gosh, my legs don't have any blood in them, but it can be a bit of a change.

[10:34] This is known as the respiratory muscle metabreflex. So essentially when blood gets pulled away from the working muscles to go to the breathing muscles. On top of this, hyperventilation, which we said before happens at altitude, can cause a buildup in waste products. So basically just responsible for those muscles contracting, contracting, contracting. There's other things that build up as part of that process, which are known as waste products, which can simulate the same thing, the respiratory muscle metaboreflex. Bit of a mouthful, but hopefully that makes sense.

[11:07] Now, onto the benefit is respiratory muscle training has been shown to effectively reduce the effect of these reflex at both maximal and submaximal exercise at altitude, meaning that blood or less blood will get pulled away from the working muscles, meaning we'll be able to work harder and delay fatigue in the mountain. And this essentially allows more blood to go to the working muscles and allows improved recruitment of those muscles, which in turn leads to lower perception of effort during exercise and greater exercise performance. Now, this is one of the big things that a lot of people, like when they look at this type of training, say, and they're like, well, it's not really like lung capacity, which is limiting us at altitude. It's not really this. So it's not really that. And like, you know, why would you train your breathing muscles? But this is the big one, because if those are the breathing is working harder and harder and harder. And if this blood gets pulled away, it can impact us. And respiratory muscle training has been shown to delay that, which is really beneficial.

[12:05] Next up is respiratory muscle training can improve clearance and tolerance to anaerobic metabolite products. Another mouthful. So essentially what that means is we often talk about on this podcast aerobic energy system. So that's the main energy system we use as a mountaineer to provide energy for long periods of time. Now on the flip side, we have our anaerobic energy systems, which is essentially our energy systems, which are designed to create energy without using oxygen as a fuel source, and we tend to rely on these more and more and more the more high intensity we go. Now, at high altitude, as much as mountaineering is predominantly an aerobic-based sport, when we go to high altitude, there is an increased reliance on anaerobic metabolism. Essentially, we will be using those anaerobic energy systems more because the intensity of exercise is more up in that environment.

[12:59] The issue here is when we are using those anaerobic energy systems, one of the drawbacks is there are a number of waste products which are associated with these and those things. That's one of the reasons why we create energy very quickly with those energy systems, but they fatigue relatively quickly. One of the reasons is because we have these associated products. So things like hydrogen ions build up in the body and that can lead to fatigue and affect exercise performance. Now, respiratory muscle training has been shown to upregulate the removal of those waste products, as well as improve our muscles' ability to effectively tolerate them, and especially in the respiratory muscles, meaning we can get rid of those waste products and those hydrogen ions a little bit easier, and also when they're there, they won't affect us quite as much, which is pretty significant.

[13:47] Next up is respiratory muscle training can decrease perceptions of dysnipia. And I always butcher that word pronunciation, but basically dysnipia, or however you say that word, is uncomfortable breathlessness. That is literally the term for it. And uncomfortable breathlessness is common in a high-attitude environment. Now, for a number of reasons, respiratory muscle training can reduce the perception of this breathlessness, help us feel a bit more comfortable, and delay that onset of us getting into that point where we're like, oh my gosh, this sucks. Now, this can be incredibly beneficial mentally because a lot of people do not enjoy this feeling. And if we get this feeling, we stress out about it, we can end up making things worse and worse as we stress and getting anxious and all of that. And this can also just allow us to feel more comfortable in that high attitude environment and maintain exercise performance and not let that just feeling get in the way of things, which is pretty significant. So two more to go. Bear with me. Hopefully this is still making sense. Next up is respiratory muscle training can increase blood oxygen saturation values at high altitude.

[14:51] Now, oxygen saturation is a measurement of the percentage of how much hemoglobin is saturated with oxygen. A lot of mountaineers are aware of this, like, hey, blood oxygen saturation, pretty valuable. A lot of studies have shown an increase in saturation levels at altitude after a respiratory muscle training program. Now, the reason behind this, you know, there's a lot of question marks around that, and they're like, could be this, could be that, not really sure, or at least from what I've seen. However, the general reasonings behind this is that if the efficiency of our entire breathing system, ventilator system is improved, the body just doesn't need to work as hard to maintain a certain blood oxygen saturation.

[15:30] It's pretty good. Now, I'm not saying that directly will affect your risk of attitude sickness. I'm not saying it directly, whatever it may be, but that's something that's definitely beneficial and happy days there. And then finally, this is a very interesting one. Respiratory muscle training can improve processing speed and working memory during exercise at altitude. Some studies have shown that RMT, respiratory muscle training, can improve both processing speed and working memory. Meaning, you know, if you're trying to do certain tasks and you're getting that spaciness or whatever it may be, or you're struggling to focus or you're struggling to remember or whatever it is, this can potentially somewhat reduce that, which may not sound like a huge amount, but it can be pretty significant for a high-altitude mountaineer.

[16:14] So there you go six potential benefits there and each of those in all honesty they're pretty interesting and each of those you know by itself i would sort of say that's a really cool benefit for a mountaineer and again i said this is all potential so this isn't set in stone there may be things that change or there may be other stuff that comes out but you know there seems like a good promising evidence for this type of stuff.

[16:39] Now, those are the benefits. Let me talk you through a couple of extra things because I have talked about this subject previously before on social media. And every single time I think about it, I always come back to a very interesting interaction I had with someone where basically this topic came up,

[16:57] I was talking about a little bit and a mountaineer piped up as I always do. And they seemed genuinely annoyed that this topic came up or very genuinely frustrated. And basically, they were sort of saying like, hey, you know what? This training was a waste of time compared to training aerobic energy system. And that was their kind of argument. And yes, absolutely. If you were thinking about this type of training, like, hey, that all sounds cool. And you're thinking, hey, maybe I'll do this instead of going for my cardio or instead of going for a run or a hike, whatever it may be. Yeah, that's going down the wrong route.

[17:28] This is not something you well if you had to choose between developing your aerobic capacity and building up your respiratory muscle strength absolutely 100 of the time aerobic capacity the way to go but the favorite my favorite thing about this particular method of training is you don't have to choose this isn't a type of training where you have to replace your other cardio sessions it isn't a type of training where you have to dedicate a lot of time it isn't a type of training which you have to apply into your training sessions, which compromises your performance in certain ways or another. There's a lot of methods of breathing and a lot of these extra types of training, which do those things. But respiratory muscle training does in no way replace or inhibit your normal training. If you're doing those fundamentals, you can still do them. You can still get all those great benefits out of this. And this is just an accessory method of training. This is just something you add extra to bump things up.

[18:25] The way we go about respiratory muscle training in a really, really, really simple nutshell is the training prescription for this is essentially doing three minutes of this type of training in the morning, three minutes of this in the evening, and you do this for about six weeks before a big climb. You can do this indefinitely if you want, but typically they say about six weeks to get the best results. That's literally six minutes a day. So it's not like you're running on a treadmill with a mask on. It's not like you're doing countless step-ups trying to do breath-hold training.

[18:54] It's not like you have to go do random things and this and that. It's literally six minutes a day. So if you are looking for an extra, which you can layer on top of your standard training, your standard preparations, this in all honesty is pretty achievable.

[19:09] Now, with all that bedside, this may sound well and good. You might be like, okay, cool, Rowan. I can see that's some pretty cool benefits. Six minutes a day sounds pretty good to me. Why haven't I heard about this before? Or why is this not just something you talked about all the time? Or why is this not huge in the world of mountaineering? And there is one drawback around this type of thing.

[19:30] Because the breathing muscles themselves, they're pretty strong. Even if we do feel like we regularly get out of breath, even if we do feel like we struggle without breathing, unless you have a medical condition, your breathing muscles are pretty strong in the grand scheme of things. So if you want to get them stronger, we need to apply enough resistance for them, for them to actually get stressed out, want to adapt, and want to improve their strength. And sometimes you do see people talking about this area of training in the mountaineering community, but they'll say, yes, it is important or valuable to improve your respiratory muscle strength. But then they'll sort of say, hey, maybe just do some one-nostril breathing, where you close one nostril and just do really powerful inhales through one nose. And you're like, well, yeah, that feels a little bit difficult.

[20:19] Or do breathing through a straw and literally hold a straw and do really powerful explosive breaths through the straw. Or maybe like lie down and put a weight plate on your belly and do weighted belly breathing or whatever. And I've seen these things recommended to people. And people say, look, this will improve your respiratory muscle strength. But realistically, this is tricky. These things, they're not going to provide enough resistance. As I said, the breathing muscles are strong. and the evidence when we're looking into this subject is like you need to apply quite a bit of resistance for them to actually want to get stronger and ultimately to adequately load these up and get these moving forward you need to buy a specific respiratory training device something which you basically put in your mouth you breathe through and it applies resistance and similar to a dumbbell it'll apply different levels of resistance so as you get stronger and stronger go, you can increase resistance, increase your resistance, increase your resistance. And the tricky thing here is it is investment.

[21:18] Typically, these will range depending on the brand, depending on the product, depending on how fancy you want to get. They'll range anywhere from a hundred bucks to maybe like 500 bucks, like dollars, from what I've seen. There's a bunch of brands out there these days. So it does require a bit of investment. And a lot of people are like, well, I'm already spending all this money on my mountaineering gear. I'm already spending all this money on my trip do i really want to spend this money like on just this thing which i'm going to use for six weeks so that is the the drawback to this and in all honesty this is why i think it's just not pushed in the mountaineering community quite as much because obviously you got to spend money here um, And a lot of people say, hey, we can develop this, but try to get around it. But in all honesty, I don't think it's going to be super effective. So that is the slight drawback when it comes down to this.

[22:05] But saying that, if you are in a situation where you're like, yeah, I'm happy to invest another 100, 200 bucks or something like that. And I want to layer this on top of what I'm doing. This could be potentially a really cool option. Now, if you're looking at specific brands or recommendations on where to sort of look at, as I said, there's a bunch of different options out there. There's really two brands that I have personal experience with. Number one, there's a brand called Power Breathe. Now, this is a brand that a lot of the research has been done on. I think they were kind of the one of the early adopters of this, and a lot of the research has been done on these specific devices, and they can be definitely great. They have a huge amount of products, but if you are getting something in your specific mountaineering situation, and you want to get an inspiratory muscle trainer. Again, you can get quite expensive ones, which are quite fancy and this and that. You can get quite cheap ones or whatever. I would more lean towards the cheaper ones. In all honesty, you don't need to get too fancy unless you're doing this as a really, really, really serious long-term thing. The other brand which I've experienced with is a brand called AeroFit.

[23:08] I've used a bunch of their devices. They're pretty good as well. They've got a simple device, which is relatively cheap, which does the job. They do have some more expensive ones, which kind of have like smart options and like online connectivity and all of this, which if you're interested in that, you know, can be cool. But again, you can kind of get the cheap one or whatever it is. Now, if you do buy a device, one thing I do often see from people when it comes down to this is, as a lot of any type of, I guess, training gadget or whatever, they'll buy it, they'll use it once or twice, and then they'll forget about it.

[23:40] See it all the time. If you are getting this and if you're investing the money or whatever it may be, just be aware if you want to see results, you need to be doing the right things for the right time. We don't want to just be doing once or twice or every once in a while and thinking we're going to get results. It's like similar training. Consistency is key and the right training protocol is key. Now, if you are buying a device, it should come with instructions for you. There should be like an app attached or some written inscriptions or whatever may be. Realistically, the training protocol for you is very, very, very simple. But if they don't give you specific things, what you want to be looking at is if you have an option, a bunch of options, you want to make sure you're choosing one, which will, it'll be like called inspiratory muscle training or something like that. That's what we're looking at. Something that's going to train the inspiratory training muscles. Now, the main training protocol that has been studied on this, that's been to be seem to be very, very effective, is essentially the studies have looked at doing 30 breaths in the morning, 30 breaths in the evening. That's three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the evening, and finding a level of resistance where we fatigue by the end of those 30 breaths.

[24:52] Now, the reason I mentioned this is some trainers, if you get them, some of them come with like apps or whatever may be, they'll have a bunch of different training protocols, all well and good to do the other stuff. If you're interested in breathing, if you want to do this, or whatever it may be, but that's the basic. That's what we want to be nailing. Dirty breaths in the morning, dirty breaths in the evening for six weeks as a minimum leading into your trip.

[25:14] On top of this, technique is pretty important with this type of stuff. You can just go out and absolutely just not even think and just train and train and train. It may not really do what we want. So make sure you're following that technique. And again, the brand should provide instructions in that and if they don't then reach out to their customer support say hey.

[25:35] Give me a bit more help and they should be able to sort you out. And then finally, as I said before, load is important. When you're using this type of thing, we want to make sure we're loading it up properly because there are a lot of studies that have shown that you can choose a resistance which feels difficult, that isn't quite of the specific load that they recommend and isn't quite as effective, even though it feels difficult. So when you're loading it up, again, Again, follow the instructions, make sure you're following what they recommend, and you're not just like, ah, I'm getting a little bit of resistance, but it's something that is getting you to fatigue by the end of whatever reps you're doing, by the end of those 30 breaths. Again, I'm not going to go into the specifics on all of this right now because that's a bit beyond this podcast, but if you do buy it from a brand, they should give you instructions. The protocol is very, very simple, but they'll lay it all out for you clearly, hopefully.

[26:29] So with that being said, let's wrap things up because it has been a bit of a long episode going on about this. Just to remind you, whenever we're talking about something like this, when it comes to training for mountaineering, nothing is ever going to replace the fundamentals. Nothing is ever going to beat the basics. make sure you are doing good solid endurance training you are building up your aerobic capacity over time you're getting exposed to some slightly longer higher intensity efforts that you are getting exposure to specific challenges for mountaineering you're building up your pack tolerance you're getting exposure to elevation you're working on speed requirements if you have them make sure you're doing the basics there make sure you're following a structured strength training program which progresses over time and exposes you to strength and endurance, Get the fundamentals right. This type of stuff is never meant to replace it. It's never going to give you as many benefits as the basics.

[27:27] But if you are already doing that, if you're nailing that, if you're confident you are being consistent and building up and really, really, really getting the basics right, and if you want to do a little bit extra, I truly do believe that respiratory muscle training is a really valid option and potentially very, very useful for mountaineers. It has some really great potential benefits from this type of thing. And just as important, and this is kind of where it differs from a lot of different breathing, it has very little drawbacks. It's not going to negatively affect your training. It's not going to negatively affect your energy.

[28:02] It doesn't really have a huge amount of drawbacks as opposed to having to invest in that device. Best case scenario, if you apply this type of training, you'll get all of these amazing benefits. It'll make a genuine difference and you'll feel really, really good. And it'll be a great use of your time and effort. Worst case scenario, absolute worst case scenario. Say you did this and it didn't do a single thing. It didn't make a change to any of those things I mentioned before. And it was just an absolute waste of your time in regards to training. Worst case scenario, it's not going to impact your other training because you're not doing it combined with your other training. It's not going to impact your energy because it's only three minutes a day. And at the very, very worst case scenario, if you're doing that three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the evening for six weeks, you're only going to lose about three to four hours worth of training time over a six-week period, which in the grand scheme of things compared to other stuff that you could potentially waste time on isn't too major. Yeah.

[29:01] So, I honestly think it can be potentially really cool. So, with that being said, I am going to wrap things up here. There's a bunch more I could say on this subject, but I think I've talked enough on it. Respiratory muscle training, very, very interesting. If you're interested in breathing training, I personally think this is definitely a way to go. Hopefully, there's more and more research coming out in the future looking at high altitude. But either way, I think it is pretty cool. Not a huge amount of drawbacks and definitely potentially interesting to look into. So with that being said, going to wrap things up here. Thank you for listening. I hope it was interesting. I hope it was helpful. And we'll talk to you very soon. Bye.

In this episode, we explore the idea of rucking for hikers (e.g loaded-pack walking). And we give a bit of a nuanced take on this subject (to try and balance out a lot of the exaggeration that is seen online with this subject).

Inside, we answer the questions:

• Is rucking an effective way to build muscle strength?
• Is rucking useful for improving or maintaining bone density?
• Can rucking help with weight loss?
• Is rucking beneficial for the immune system?
• Can rucking help with longevity?

Episode Transcript:​

[0:00] Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. In today's episode, we are talking about rucking for hikers. We're going to be exploring a few, I guess, myths about this type of training and just getting a little bit of context, a little bit of nuance, and a little bit more factual information around where this type of training fits into the grand picture. Now, if you haven't heard of it before, rucking is literally walking with a weighted backpack. In the hiking context, we often call this load a pack walking or literally hiking with a pack. And in all honesty, when it comes down to training for hiking, training for backpacking, training for mountaineering, this is a staple for most people. At some stage, we're going to be doing this in our training, whether it's walking on the treadmill, walking around a local neighborhood, or just doing this when we're hiking, because it's pretty much the most specific thing we can do for our hiking.

[0:51] But in recent times, Outside of the hiking context, this is going to be gaining more and more and more popularity in the world of just general fitness and general training. And many people out there are recommending it. Big influencers, big coaches, big names. Lots and lots of people are talking about this online. You'll go on Instagram, you'll go on YouTube. People are talking about rucking, rucking, rucking, rucking, rucking. Heck, even some coaches I've seen popping up are coming out and saying they're rucking coaches and this is all we do with our clients. or this is what 90% of what we do. And rucking is the way to go. And it is cool to see because, you know, it's always interesting seeing other areas of training come out and get promoted and give other people different options and this and that outside just the normal go lift weights and go for a run or whatever. But the tricky thing here is, is anytime something gets popular and this type of training has been around forever, but when it gets popular and people start talking about it.

[1:50] People start taking this particular thing. At first, they're like, hey, this is pretty good. Hey, this will do these things. And they'll get more and more and more. And people will get more overblown and more overblown and more overblown. And all of a sudden, they'll start promoting it and saying, this is the best thing since sliced bread. This is the most amazing thing. This will replace all these different types of training. This is the best thing you can do for your workouts. And then it gets a little bit overhyped. And the trouble is for hikers, if you're interested in hiking, you're going to get bombarded with this information. Because the way social media works, the way the internet works is if you show interest in something, you get bombarded with videos and posts around it. And so a lot of hikers are getting this information from the general population about rucking. And they're like, well, I'm training to carry a pack. This is all going to apply to me.

[2:40] So today, we kind of want to dive into a little bit more. Now, on the whole load of pack walking for hikers, I've talked about this a million times on this podcast, and I often talk about load of pack walking as just an essential area for training for hiking. Whether you are training for a full pack hike, a day pack hike, or anything in between, I really do believe every single hiker should be doing this at some time in their training. It can be absolutely amazing for developing aerobic fitness. It can be amazing for just adding extra challenge to certain workouts. If you're doing stairs or hills or tempo walks and you need a way to progress, this can be great. It can be really, really good for loading up the muscles and the joints in a really, really hiking-specific way and just getting them used to carrying these types of loads for long periods of time. And it is one of the most relevant and useful methods of training for hiking. But I've talked about that stuff loads. I'm not going to be diving into that all today because hopefully as a hiker, you already know that. Instead what we're going to be diving into today is some of the more popularized claims that i've kind of seen about rucking in the general fitness world that have kind of popped up more and more and more which i know hikers are seeing more and more and i just want to dive into some of these more popular ones to just give you a bit more clarity just so if you see it you can be like cool that makes sense but i kind of understand the context or maybe you know that doesn't really make sense and someone's just been a bit overblown just so you can have that information to make your decisions, and just not going to get overblown with the hype.

[4:09] So today, yeah, we're just going to be diving through a few things and one, two, three, four, five, five of the biggest claims I see and just give you a bit of clarity. So the first claim and the first kind of myth, I suppose, is rucking will develop strength. And the way I've seen this talked about is people say these will give you the strongest thighs and glutes you've ever had. Rucking will be amazing for developing that leg drive going uphill. The rucking would be awesome to build rock hard, strong legs, stuff like that. People just absolutely pump it up. To be incredibly clear, rucking or load a pack walking is never going to be an effective strength stimulus. If someone's telling you this is a good way to develop strength, they're not really being very honest. To be clear, rucking, no matter if you can't load up your pack or your vest to the absurd amount of weight where you can just hobble around like a turtle, it's never going to be enough load to be an effective strength stimulus. Now, when we're looking at building muscular strength, if you look at strength training.

[5:20] Generally what people are recommended for strength training, and if we want to develop strength and the specific aspect of fitness called muscular strength, we are recommended to do sets of 10 repetitions or less at a time. Now, if you're a little bit more experienced, you may have to go less even more. You may have to do eight or less or five or less or whatever may be. But generally, just talking about the general population, we want to be doing 10 repetitions or less, which means you're going to find a resistance on an exercise or a weight on an exercise where after doing 10 repetitions of a movement, after doing 10 squats or whatever may be, you kind of need a rest and you need to rest before you do any more.

[6:05] Pretty simple. Now, if you look at this, and if you count out how much time you're spending here, if you look at repetitions, you may say a normal repetition in strength training would take about five seconds. You do four-second lowering, one second up. If you're doing 10 of those, that means 50 seconds per set, which means after 50 seconds of doing something, you kind of need a rest. That is an effective strength stimulus. Go back to rucking. No matter how heavy you load up a pack or a vest, you're never going to fatigue after 50 seconds. It just doesn't line up.

[6:39] Rucking is not an effective strength stimulus for 99% of people. The only people who are going to see genuine strength increases from rucking is someone who is outrageously deconditioned, someone who just hasn't done any exercise in forever.

[6:58] And that type of person, they can literally do anything and increase strength. They could go kayaking and increase strength. They could go cycling and increase strength. Rucking isn't magical in that situation. It's just an extra load. And this will only last for so long. And then eventually, or not even eventually, after a few weeks, you need to apply more. Rucking as a whole can be a really, really good muscular endurance stimulus.

[7:21] And that can be very, very effective. That is the fact. That is the truth, that it's not effective for building strength. And if someone's claiming that it will build strength, they're either just being confusing in the way they're phrasing things, they don't really understand strength development, or they're lumping in muscular endurance and muscular strength as the same thing when they are different aspects of fitness. So that's number one, rucking is not going to develop strength.

[7:50] Number two rucking is amazing for bone density and again the way people phrase this is like rucking will build the strongest bones you've ever had or get you feeling i can't remember exactly what someone phrased it as but get very very hyperbolic of it now for hikers and a lot of people in general we worry about bone density a lot of people are concerned about reducing bone density during our age or are concerned about osteopenia and osteoporosis and something as a hiker we really want to avoid. And when it comes down to reducing bone density loss or increasing bone density, we, general rule of thumb, is we want to apply stress to the bones. We want to apply stimulus to the bones. And if we can apply stress and stimulus in a good way, which isn't too much, this can be beneficial. This can reduce the risk or reduce the rate of bone density loss and potentially increase our bone density. Now, we often get recommended as a doctor, like we want to do weight-bearing activities.

[8:53] At the very, very lowest end of the spectrum, if someone is quite inactive, just doing some weight-bearing activity, just going out and walking on our own two feet can be beneficial for bone density, which is true. But for a lot of people, this isn't quite enough. Maybe they just walk around all the time and they still have bone density issues. So we need to apply more stimulus to the bones. And this is where rucking can come in. It can be a nice step up because rucking, we will put extra weight on our body. So therefore, when we're walking around, we will apply more stress and more stimulus to the bones, which can be good for bone density loss. It can be good. It can be effective. It can be a step up from walking. Great.

[9:35] To be clear, and just to separate the myth from the fact, rocking is not going to be the best thing for bone density, and it's definitely not something you should rely on completely for bone density if you have issues with that. As I said, stimulus is important. Stress is important. And rutging will give you a decent stress. But the gold standard for applying stress to your bones in a good and controlled way is strength training. Because with strength training, again, we can apply a lot more load. We can apply a lot more stress. And we can really, really, really challenge the bones. And the majority of research out there looking at bone density prevention comes from strength training.

[10:19] And on top of that, rucking probably isn't going to give a massive stimulus to upper body. Even though we're carrying a load on our upper body, it's probably not going to do a dramatic change for that. But with strength training, we can really target the upper body as well. So when it comes down to the whole bone density picture, rucking can be a nice addition. If you've been doing lots of walking and you step up to rucking, this can be a nice progression. This can definitely help, but don't get swept up in the hype and think it's magical for bone density. Don't get swept up in the hike and think it can replace strength training for bone density. Just think of it as a nice addition, a nice upgrade, but don't get too carried away in the grand picture.

[11:04] Number three, rucking is amazing for weight loss. And rucking will burn off those flappy thighs, I think I read somewhere, or it will melt that body fat or whatever it may be. You know, all that really interesting verbiage around weight loss. Now, I don't often talk about weight loss. I don't particularly love talking about it. It's not an area that's close to my heart or anything like that. But I know a lot of hikers are going through this journey. so we do need to talk about it. The claim here is rucking is amazing for weight loss, that it will burn that fat off. It is the best thing you can do or one of the best things you can do for weight loss. Now, weight loss as a whole, as we know, is a pretty big, complex subject. There's a lot of things that goes into it, a lot of different opinions, a lot of different nuance or whatever it may be. But if we're really, really simplifying things to the most simplified way, I'm sure you've heard the idea of calorie balance in the sense if we want to lose weight, we need to take in less calories than the body needs, meaning the body has less energy than it really needs, and therefore we will lose weight over time. Obviously, there's a lot that goes into that. Obviously, there's a lot of nuance, but if we're getting the most simplified way, that's kind of what we're looking at for weight loss.

[12:23] Now, if you're using exercise or training as a tool for weight loss, and that's like you're trying to lose weight and that's why I'm training. Really, the main thing we're looking at with our training is calorie burn. In the sense, if we can burn more calories via exercise, it will contribute to that calorie balance. It will mean we're burning more. So therefore, we can maybe have less calories again, or whatever it may be. And it will usually be beneficial. Now, at one end of the scale, when it comes down to the weight loss journey, this is one of the reasons why high-intensity interval training is so popular. Because you can go into a high-intensity interval training session, you can wear a heart rate monitor, and you can see, oh my gosh, look at all these calories I'm burning, and I'm pumping it, I'm pushing it. And compared to other types of training, if you're just walking or whatever it may be, HIIT can burn a lot of calories. Some people love this. Some people see good results from it, whatever it may be. But again, in the weight loss context, a lot of people really struggle with HIIT. Maybe they don't enjoy the format. Maybe they're just like, hey, having to be really high intensity for multiple times a week ongoing is a real struggle because if I'm losing weight, I'm already low energy. And if I'm really, really working hard, plus I have a busy job and a busy family or whatever it may be, that can be really tough. Or some people, it just gets ground up by this type of training and it's just like high impact, high intensity, they get sore joints or whatever it may be.

[13:47] So coming back to the original topic, a lot of people will sort of say, okay, HIIT just doesn't work for me. So what I'm going to do instead is with my training, I'm just going to do like lower intensity stuff. I'm going to do walking and do cycling. It doesn't really affect my energy so much. It's a little bit more gentle and I'll focus on my nutrition and that can be a nice balance people find. So where rucking can come in here and then this type of person, if we're doing lots of walking and all of a sudden we replace that with rucking, we will burn slightly more calories.

[14:16] And also, it doesn't come with those barriers of HIIT. It won't burn that so much energy and make us feel nasty. It's approachable. If we're not really feeling amazing, it's not going to grind us up or whatever it may be. So it can be effective on the weight loss side of things by just burning more calories than normal walking. Effective but not magical now final note just to be clear on this like anytime we're talking about weight loss just to be clear 95 of your weight loss is going to come from nutrition exercise very very very very small part of you so when people say hey rucking will burn that fat off, well and they're not talking about nutrition well yeah come on don't expect to just start rucking and things to change we need you know the full context there the next claim we often see about rucking or i often see about rucking is rucking is amazing for your immune health rucking is amazing for your immune system realistically without going into too much detail any type of lower intensity exercise is good for your immune system.

[15:23] Walking, cycling, hiking, all very, very good for your immune system. Rucking falls into that. So yes, if you're not really doing much lower intensity exercise, you start rucking, that can be good. Pretty simple. I would sort of say that's great, but it's not like it's magical and different to other types of training or other types of lower intensity exercise. It kind of falls into that bucket. Not much more needs to be said about that, but just like if someone says, hey, this is amazing for this, just know there's lots of other options. It can be good, but it's not the only thing.

[15:54] And the same thing for the last claim here as well. Rucking is amazing for longevity. Longevity is a big subject at the moment. In all honesty, when it comes to training, there's a lot of things that are going to be beneficial for your longevity. Strength training, beneficial for your longevity. High intensity training, beneficial for your longevity in certain ways. Lower intensity training, beneficial for longevity in certain ways. And one of the ways that we kind of look out for longevity is if you can find some type of lower intensity sustainable exercise which doesn't cause you pain this can be good for certain things for longevity as a hiker if you're doing lots of hiking boom cool we've already got that covered um rucking can kind of fit into this as well um so when we're looking at longevity it's not like hey rucking is amazing in itself it is just an option for lower intensity sustainable exercise that doesn't cause pain, which can give certain benefits, which as a hiker you're probably already going to be getting.

[16:50] So when it comes to longevity, good, not magical, just another tool.

[16:55] So in summary, I'm going to wrap things up here. You know, rucking in the hiking context, low-to-pack walking is an amazing form of training. And every hiker should be doing it at some stage in their training. And for hiking specifically, it is very incredibly specific. It's very incredibly beneficial. It's very, very honed in towards your needs. Very accessible. It covers all your bases. No, it covers a lot of your bases that you want as a hiker.

[17:20] But if you're interested in this type of training if you start getting bombarded with the general discourse around this and you see the big influencers the big coaches the podcast hosts the videos talking about these things just remember rucking is not magical it can be very very specific and effective for hikers needs but when we're looking at general training health outcomes a lot of information out there may be true but it's a lot of it overblown and most of the things we're looking at can we can get from other types of training and really rucking is just accessible and enjoyable for a lot of people.

[17:55] So what does this mean? Well, do your rucking. Go for it. Absolutely. As a hiker, you should be doing it. But no, it's just, just no, it is not, never going to be the sole aspect of your training. Don't get swept up in the hike. Don't replace things with it. Keep up your strength training. Keep up your other types of cardio. Keep up whatever else you're doing. Just don't get swept up in the hike. It's great. It has a place. Not the whole be all end all. So with that being said, I'm going to wrap things up here today. I hope that makes sense. I hope that was useful for you people. I hope it gives a little bit more context. Last thing I will sort of say before I wrap things up, as I always say on these episodes, if you were a hiker and you're interested in getting a little bit of help with your training, if you're interested in load-a-pack walking, building up to a full pack carry, just general training over the long term, whatever it may be, and you want a bit of a personalized help with that, I would love to talk with you. If you want to find out more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online. On that page, you can learn about our online personal training for hikers, learn a bit about our process, how we go about helping people. And if it sounds like something you want to get involved with, there's a link on that page. You can book a free call with our team and we can have a bit of a chat and see if and how we might be able to help you out. So if you want to learn a bit more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online. We can take it from there. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening. Hope you've enjoyed today's episode. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.

In this episode, we explore an often-neglected area of training for mountaineers - upper body strength.

You will learn:

• Why is upper-body strength important for mountaineers
• Principles of effective upper body training
• A few great upper-body exercise options for mountaineers
• How to program upper body strength into your week

Episode Chapters:

0:07 
Upper Body Strength for Mountaineers
4:42 
Common Mistakes in Upper Body Training
7:00 
Principles of Upper Body Training
11:49 
Programming Upper Body Strength
15:29 
Best Upper Body Strength Exercises
18:41 
Tips for Success in Strength Training
21:04 
Conclusion and Next Steps​

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode,

[0:03] we are talking about upper body strength training, the mountaineers. Because when it comes down to it, mountaineers love to focus on lower body training, both when we're talking about cardiovascular training and running and walking and hiking and cycling and all of that, and also strength training in the sense of doing step-ups and squats and deadlifts and all of this. And it is absolutely 100% true, and there's no argument that lower body training is always going to be the most critical area of mountaineers to develop. And when we're looking at strength training, that's always where the majority of your training effort and time is going to go. But to be very clear, it is absolutely a mistake to completely neglect your upper body, which many mountaineers do, or they end up just doing the bare, bare bones when it comes down to upper body strengthening.

[0:57] So today we're going to to be diving into this topic a little bit, just talking about, upper body strength, exploring a little bit more and giving you a bit of information, which hopefully is going to be very practical for you. Now, what we're going to cover is we're going to cover why upper body strength is important. We're going to cover a few common mistakes I see from upper body training for mountaineers, a few principles of upper body training that mountaineers should remember, a few great exercise options, and probably what I would consider the best upper body strength exercises for mountaineers, and also some simple ideas on how to program upper body strength into your week. So to start with, why train upper body as a mountaineer? Well, when it comes down to it, there's a lot of different situations upper body strength is useful. Number one, upper body strength is very, very, very useful to help with climbing. Now, common sense, if you're doing any type of technical climbing or if you just enjoy climbing on the side, you're probably already doing upper body strength training because you're aware it plays a massive role for any type of technical climbing. But even if you're not doing non-technical climbing, if you're purely just using some ropes or whatever may be, upper body strength is going to be important. So any type of climbing, whether it's technical or non-technical, as a mountaineer, upper body strength is going to be pretty useful.

[2:16] Number two, upper body strength can make pack carrying much more comfortable. If you are carrying any type of load on your expedition, upper body strength is gonna be useful. It's gonna help you be a bit more comfortable. It's gonna reduce aches and pains in the neck or the shoulders or whatever it may be and just help you just maneuver your pack as well.

[2:36] Very, very valuable. Number three, and this doesn't often get considered, but it is very important, is upper body strength training can help prevent pain and injury during accidents, trips, falls. As a mountaineer, we are constantly, or you are constantly, on some very treacherous terrain. It's very, very common to have slips, tumbles, falls. Very, very common to kind of just trip over and whatever may be. May not be as dramatic as falling down a mountain or into a crevasse, but literally just tripping over, major.

[3:09] One thing upper body strength training can do is can reduce the risk of that turning into an injury. Of you just falling over and posting out with your arm, upper body strength training can help prevent that turning into a shoulder injury. If you have some type of issue or whatever it is, it can really make a big difference. A lot of people don't consider this very, very important.

[3:27] Number four, upper body strength is very valuable. If you're doing any other type of, I guess, upper body strain while you're climbing. If you're using poles on a certain part of your climbing, very, very useful. If you're doing sled carrying very very useful if you're doing anything that does require the upper body to exert a bit more force or deal with a little bit more pressure very very useful, and then number five and one thing that doesn't often get considered but it is really really really really valuable is upper body strength training very very very useful for bone density now if you're a younger mountaineer if you're a bloke or a guy you may not really consider this but if you are a mountaineer who's maybe 40 50 plus or if you're a mountaineer who is female then you may be at a higher risk of bone density issues and having bone density issues when we're up in extreme environments or very inaccessible environments not particularly amazing so upper body strength training does play a major role in maintaining bone density in the upper body specifically if you're in this type of situation. And then also if we're looking at any type of scrambling or steep climbing or anything like that, it does play a big role as well. So there are a lot of situations where upper body strength is useful.

[4:42] Next up, let's talk about some common mistakes for upper body strength training for mountaineers. Because while a lot of people may be aware that, look, I'm going to do a bit of upper body strengthening because I have climbing coming up or whatever it is, the application of this sometimes not so great. So mistake number one I often see, and this goes for all strength training, but also common with upper body, is training like a bodybuilder. In the sense that while many mountaineers neglect their upper body strength, those who do train this area often fall into the trap of just training like a bodybuilder. They end up having the chest days and the back days and the arm days. They just do lots and lots and lots of exercises. They end up isolating every muscle group. This isn't really necessary. As a mountaineer, we want to make sure our training is focused and time efficient. We want to make sure our training is not detracting from our training time in other areas, which are more important. We want to make sure our upper body strength is very, very targeted and we are seeing the best results from the smallest amount of time and effort invested. And realistically, if you do the right things, you can see a lot of improvement with a very small amount of work in this area.

[5:51] Mistake number two is neglecting certain muscle groups. Now, many mountaineers, especially mountaineers who are training at home, When they're looking at upper body, they will focus on exercises which hit the chest and the shoulders, purely for the fact that it's very, very easy to train. At home, you can do a bunch of push-ups. Maybe you have a couple of dumbbells, you do some chest presses or some shoulder presses or whatever it is. And all of this stuff is very, very valuable.

[6:18] However, as a mountaineer, we need to be aware that like with any type of strength training, we want to balance things out. If we are training the front of the upper body, we want to train the back of the upper body. We want to be on top of that. And mistake number three is just never loading things up i often talk about the value of strength training for mountaineers and the value of getting slightly heavier in your strength training same thing for your upper body many mountaineers even if you can convince them to do heavier lower body stuff they'll end up with their upper body stuff just doing higher rep endurance work which is definitely valuable and definitely valid but we want to get a spread of both like lower body strength mountaineers can get some great benefits from both heavier strength work as well as endurance.

[7:00] So on the flip side of common mistakes, when it comes down to upper body strength for mountaineers, let's talk about some just general principles of upper body training for mountaineers and general things you should be following just to make sure you are seeing the best results. Number one, when it comes down to upper body training for mountaineers, pretty much all your upper body work or the majority, 99% of your upper body work should be focused on compound exercises. Essentially, what compound exercises are, if we're talking about an isolation exercise, this is an exercise that works on one muscle at a time, doing bicep curls or tricep pushdowns or whatever may be, or chest flies. Compound exercises work multiple muscle groups at the same time, push-ups, bench press, whatever may be.

[7:48] Probably already know that, but it is important to define. 90%, 5, 98, 99% of mountaineers are probably going to get the best benefits from just focusing on compound exercises. Don't even worry about isolation. The only time I would ever think about isolating upper body strength and doing those smaller, intricate exercises is if you just have lots and lots and lots and lots of time and time is not an issue and you really enjoy this type of training, yeah, go ahead. Isolate your exercises. No big deal. Number two is if you've been prescribed specific exercises from a physio or physical therapist. And it's like a prehab or rehab thing. And they're like, hey, I need to do that. Or number three, if you're very, very aware that you have a particular limiting factor, which is holding back other things, whether with your mountaineering or climbing performance or with your other exercises. So for example, if you're aware that like, look, I've been really, really, really trying to improve my climbing and I've been doing lots of pull-ups and chin-ups and I've been doing that compound stuff, but what I'm finding is when I'm doing those exercises that it's always my biceps that cook out before my lats do, that is a limiting factor, then yeah, you could argue maybe doing a little bit of curl work may be beneficial. But majority of the situation, as a mountaineer, just focus on your compound stuff.

[9:07] General principle number two is find a balance between push and pull. Very similar to lower body work, a really simple strategy to make sure you're getting a good balance of your upper body training is to find a balance between pushing and pulling exercises over the week. Pushing exercises are exactly what they sound like. Exercises where you are pushing. You're doing push-ups and pushing your body. You're doing chest presses. You're doing shoulder presses or whatever it may be. You are literally pushing. Pulling exercises are the opposite. Anything rowing, anything pulling down, anything pulling apart, they're all pulling. Typically, in a week, for each pushing exercise you do, try to balance out with a pulling exercise. Very, very simple. You don't need a huge amount of training knowledge. That's a simple way of just balancing out your week. Now, if you do want to take this a step further, then you can sort of look and you can split each of those categories into horizontal and vertical. So you can split your push into a horizontal push and a vertical push. So a horizontal push is what it sounds like. doing a push-up, doing a chest press, doing a bench press. A vertical push is doing a vertical movement, doing some type of shoulder press or overhead press. On the pulling motions, a horizontal pull would be some type of row when you're pulling into you. To do a vertical pull, you'd be doing some type of chin-up, pull-up, or pull-down.

[10:30] If you want to take a bit step further, balancing out all that hot push and pull, but also horizontal and vertical, really good way to go about it.

[10:39] And then principle number three is just make sure you are training both strength and endurance at some stage in your training. It doesn't have to be in the week. It doesn't have to be in the workout, but some stage in your training to get the best benefits of any type of strength training, upper body work included, get a good spread. Many different ways you can go about this. You can follow the traditional approach to this where, you know, you do six weeks of 10 repetitions and then you do eight weeks of like max strength. We're doing like five repetitions and then you do like eight weeks of endurance work you're in like 15 to 20 repetitions and follow that a lot of people do it that works fine i personally prefer as i mentioned on the podcast before is just keeping strength and endurance in all year round um so maybe i'll do half my workout with heavier strength and half my workout with endurance so if i'm doing two strength exercises in a workout one of them will be strength one will have my endurance or maybe I'll do strength on one day, endurance another day, or whatever. That works well enough, but just making sure you're getting a nice spread of both.

[11:41] So with that being said, general principles, pretty basic, and most of that

[11:46] covers the lower body as well. So you probably already heard this. Next up, let's talk about programming upper body strength for mountaineers, because sometimes it can be a little bit complicated or seem a little bit complicated to how to apply this into your week. Now, I have an incredibly simple system for you as a mountaineer on how to apply upper body strength for your training. Incredibly, incredibly, incredibly simple. It doesn't take a huge amount of knowledge to do this. Realistically, most mountaineers... Probably you can get away with two full body strength sessions a week. Most of my mountaineers are doing two body full strength sessions a week. If you have time to do a 60-minute strength session, and that is the training commitment you have, typically I would recommend doing two upper body strength exercises per workout. In each of those workouts, one push, one pull. Over the week, I make sure I would have one horizontal push, one horizontal pull, one vertical push, one vertical pull. Super, super simple.

[12:53] Alternatively, if you're doing two sessions a week, but they're a bit shorter, maybe they're 45 minutes or 30 minutes or whatever it may be, I would typically just do one upper body exercise in each session. And then one workout, I do a push, one workout, I do a pull. And then phase by phase by phase, I'd get different exposures to vertical and horizontal and this and that. Realistically, this may not seem a huge amount. If you're coming from a bodybuilding background or like that type of training where you've done like five exercises on your chest just to get a pump. This may not seem like much, but I guarantee you it can be effective if you hit the right intensity. And we always need to be aware that as a mountaineer, upper body strength, while valuable, it isn't going to be the priority. Lower body, lower limbs, core, maybe a bit of mobility as well. All of that stuff you want to be fitting in your strength training as well. So we need to be intentional around this. Then essentially over time with our training, some things will get heavier, some things will get higher reps, vary the repetition. So we get some good solid maximal strength training. Over time, we get some good solid endurance training. And then every once in a while, probably every phase, every three to four to five weeks, depending on what you're doing, I would just change the exercises you're doing while still hitting push and pull, but just change what you're doing. So for example, if we're looking at a vertical call.

[14:18] Over time, phase by phase by phase, I would just change doing different variations of a chin-up.

[14:25] And then over time, I'll do different variations of a pull-down. So for example, if we were following a program and say each phase we're doing for four weeks, it might look like, okay, for four weeks, I'm going to do eccentric chin-ups, where I'm not doing the pulling part, but I'm just jumping to the top and lowering with a weight. Then I might do four weeks where I'm doing a band-assisted chin-up, where I've got a band, I'm standing on a band, it's helping me up and down with chin-ups. Then I might do four weeks where I'm doing bodyweight chin-ups or loaded chin-ups, depending on how strong I'm feeling. Then I might do four weeks where I just go down to a pull-down machine. And I'm like, I'm going to have a break from chin-ups for a while. And I'm going to do like a wide grip pull-down with my hands facing away from me. And then for four weeks, I might change the grip. I might do a neutral grip pull-down where hands are a little bit closer together and my palms are facing each other. Then four weeks, I might do an underhand grip pull-down where I'm doing a pull-down and it's kind of got my palms facing me. Each of those phases, we're still doing a vertical pull, we're doing a slight different variation, and we can kind of push and challenge ourselves, go, go, go. There's a million and one ways you can go about this, but a really, really simple approach.

[15:30] Next up, let's talk about the best upper body strength exercises for mountaineers. Now, I fully, fully, fully understand when it comes down to choosing strength exercises, there aren't, you know, any best. There are so many different options that are perfectly valid, but people always ask me for specific recommendations. So I'm going to list off a few things that I use all the time that I really like. And if you want to get technical, what I consider the best for a number of reasons. To be clear, there are countless other things that fit into these categories. Is. If something's not in here, it doesn't mean it's bad, but these are the ones I use. And if you're unfamiliar, because I know in the podcast format, what are these exercises, maybe a bit unfamiliar, go to YouTube, type them in, there'll be a million videos.

[16:12] So when we're looking at the best upper body strength exercises for mountaineers, we're going to break them up into those categories. Horizontal, vertical, push and pull. Now to start with, let's talk about horizontal push. A few different options. Number one, which everyone's familiar with, push-up variations. When I'm in variations, a million and one different ways to do your push-ups. You could do normal push-ups. You could do close grip push-ups. You could do weighted push-ups. You could do incline push-ups. You could do decline push-ups. A bunch of different options there, but push-up variations, great. Number two, doing dumbbell press, dumbbell bench press variations, where you're lying on a bench with dumbbells. Now, variations, you may do this with a normal grip, which you're used to, where your palms are kind of like, facing away you might do this in neutral grip where your palms are facing towards each other you might do this on a flat bench or an incline bench or even a decline bench all of that is perfectly legitimate same thing for barbell bench press variations if you're in the gym you like barbell work using a barbell perfectly valid again variations normal grip neutral grip incline decline all of that and if you're at home and you're like oh what i'm sick of push-ups but i need another option um floor press can be great if you have some weights lying around doing a pressing motion, which is lying on the floor, can be a great option.

[17:29] Vertical push. Great options include like dumbbell overhead press variations. So pushing dumbbell straight above your head. You can do the standing, kneeling, half kneeling, seated, neutral grip, normal grip, all of this. You could do barbell overhead press. And if you're at home and you're limited on options, you could load up a backpack, do an overhead press with that. Horizontal pull options. You could do a three-point or bench-supported row using dumbbells. Really, really useful. You could do cable row variations, doing a seated row, doing a half kneeling row, doing a standing row. You could do TRX row variations or inverted row variations where you're pulling yourself up to a barbell. All of those are fantastic. If you're at home and you're limited on equipment, you may do pack rows or band rows. Very, very useful. And then vertical pull, you know, chin-up variations are great. As I mentioned before, eccentric options where you jump up and slowly lower. You could do band-assisted, machine-assisted, bodyweight, loaded, pull-up variations just using different grips or wide grips, whatever it may be. You could do pull-down variations where you're on a lat pull-down machine using different grips and different handles. Or if you're at home, another option is like a banded pull-down where you get like a thick band attached to something on the roof and pulling it down. All of those are great.

[18:42] Now next up or finally let's just run through some few quick tips for success when you're looking at upper body strength for mountaineering um two really really really simple things when we are doing a small amount of this type of training we want to make sure we're getting the intensity right because if you're just bathing around you're doing like oh i could do this all day it's not very challenging whatever may be you're probably not going to see the results you want but also on top of that as a mountaineer we probably don't need to be lifting to the absolute limit you don't need to be maxing out all the time. We want to be making sure you're getting enough intensity to push you forward, but at a level which is sustainable, which isn't going to make you uncomfortable or whatever it may be. So realistically, a really, really, really, really good target that I like to hit when we're looking at upper body strength training, but also strength training for mountaineering in general, is using two reps in reserve. What that means is for whatever rep target you're doing, you're choosing an appropriate weight or resistance or difficulty, where if you absolutely pushed yourself to the limit, you could probably do two more reps than the specific target, but you just finish up at that target. So to put that into context, if I ask you to do a dumbbell bench press for 10 repetitions, you want to find a weight, which if you absolutely pushed your limit, you couldn't do any more. You could do 12 repetitions at that weight, but instead you just do 10, two reps in reserve. Really, really, really, really simple, but very, very effective level for intensity.

[20:11] And then the second tip of this, as like any other type of strength training, progression over time. The body gets used to things pretty quickly, so we want to make sure we're giving it new challenge to keep it moving forward. So each time you do an exercise, try to push yourself a little bit more. Add a little bit extra weight. Add some slight pauses at certain points. Maybe add another rep or two or whatever it may be. And then each week or so, change the exercise variation. Admittedly, there are a million and one ways where you can progress things over time, but I find that's a really simple system. Do the same exercise for four weeks. Over those four weeks, try to increase the weight or add some extra challenge somewhere else. And then after those four weeks, do a slightly different variation. Go from barbell bench press to dumbbell bench press to some push-up variation or whatever. It works well enough.

[21:01] So I think that's probably enough for me. When it comes down to strength training for mountaineering, all strength is important. Lower body strength, lower limb strength, upper body strength, core strength. Make sure you're covering all your bases. Upper body strength doesn't have to be complicated for mountaineers, but it is important. Make sure you're doing it. Make sure you're doing it right. Make sure it doesn't let you down on the mountain. Last thing I will sort of say, wrapping this up, is if you're a mountaineer and you're like, you know what, I need some help with my strength training, whether it's upper body strength training or strengthening in general, or just change training in general or whatever it may be, I would love to chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit more about our online personal training for mountaineers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. Now, on that page, there's a big video, talks a lot about our program. And if you want to learn a little bit more, there's a link on that page where you can book a free call with our team. We can have a bit of a chat about you, your mountaineering, your training, and your goals and see if and how we may be able to help you out. So if you want to learn more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and we can take it from there. So with that being said, thank you for listening. Hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.