6 Pack Workouts For Mountaineers

​Pack training is a foundation of all mountaineers' training. But if you are following a long-term training plan, these sessions can sometimes get a bit dull. To help, I'm sharing six different pack workouts you can use to add some variety to your sessions. 

​Episode Transcript:

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

[0:03] we are talking through six different pack workouts a mountaineer can use in their training. Now, when it comes down to training for mountaineering, doing pack work and pack training is a fundamental workout for everyone. Whether you are carrying a relatively light pack, a super big pack, or anything in between, loading up your body in a specific way is going to be super relevant for you. Mountaineers will typically do this when they're hiking, when they're just doing pack walking around the local neighborhood or on the treadmill or whatever it may be. And it is one of the most specific and practical things for any mountaineer in their training.

[0:43] However, when it comes down to pack work, if you're doing a long term training plan, and if you're training for six months, nine months, 12 months, or anything more, sometimes pack training can get a little bit dull. Sometimes you can put on the pack and be like, oh my gosh, not again. And sometimes even though it can be so beneficial, you can just be like, oh my God, I've had enough. So in that situation, sometimes just getting a little bit of variance in your workouts can be quite useful. And whether you every once every four weeks throw something a slightly different in, or whether you do a training phase of three or four weeks and you do a slightly different workout before you go back to your pack training, having a little bit of variance and a little bit of variety can be great for motivation. On top of that, it can also be very useful for just pushing the body in slightly

[1:34] different ways and giving the body a little bit of different challenge. So today, on this note, I want to share with you six slightly different approaches to pack training, which are just slight variance of the typical put on a pack and go out and walk.

[1:49] These can be useful to slip in your training in many different situations, and hopefully it gives you a few ideas. So the first session or the first pack walk we want to talk about is what I call tempo walking. So essentially, most loader pack walking, we're just doing at a normal pace, just cruising along for an accumulated amount of time. Now, tempo walking is essentially just alternating speeds between quicker walking and faster walking. So you walk maybe for 40 minutes, 60 minutes, whatever it may be. You might do two minutes of just normal pace walking two minutes of slightly quicker now the benefit of this is it is still going to be a relatively low intensity workout it's not a run you're not pushing yourself you're not absolutely flogging yourself so it's still going to fall into our conditioning of aerobic conditioning but it can just be enough just to mix up the workout give you a little bit of variance to keep things interesting and just give the body just a little bit extra challenge just to push it and push it forward now for this you can really do any type of intervals. You can do two minutes on, two minutes off, three, three, four, four. You can even do one minute quick, one minute slow, whatever may be. Or alternatively, if you hate using a timer in these workouts, you can do the fartlek approach where you're basically just walking, walking, walking. You look at a landmark in the distance and you're like, yep, I'm going to go quick to that. Get to that landmark, then slow things down.

[3:07] Do that for a minute, then pick out another landmark and away you go. It's the same thing. Tempo walking, very, very simple. And with the pack on the back, it's just an easy way of bumping things up. Now, if you did do this workout, key to this workout when you are using the pack is we're not absolutely ramping up the speed. We're not turning this into a crazy power march or whatever it may be. The reason being is when we got the pack on our back, if we're ramping up the speed very significantly, this is an easy way just to aggravate aches and pains. I've seen it all the time where people just bite off a bit more they can chew. It can be pretty demanding on certain areas of the body because we have pack weight on our back. So when you are speeding things up, it's just a slight uptick in pace. You're bumping things up slightly. You're getting the breathing a little bit quicker, but it's not your full-blown power much. So that's our first workout, tempo walks.

[3:59] Second pack workout, which you can play around with, is what I call an overloaded pack workout. So typically with our pack training, what we'll tend to do is we'll whack on a pack, have a steady amount of weight and walk around. Usually during our training we'll build up to either the maximum pack weight that we typically need for our expeditions or we might build up a little bit heavier. That's the usual approach. Now the overload of pack walk is essentially the idea behind this is we are going to be loading up the pack with a weight which is significantly heavier than what we would expect on the expedition and also loading it to a point which is so heavy that we don't really want to carry up for a full session.

[4:43] So, we don't carry it for full session, but we slowly decrease it as we go through. So, essentially how we do this, very, very simple. We get a big old backpack. We get a few water jugs or dry bags full of water or whatever it may be, load up the backpack. We want to load it up with a weight which is significantly heavier than what we typically carry around. So, if you usually carry 20 kilos in your backpack, you might do 25 kilos or 28 kilos or something like that. Something that's a bit of a bump up. Then essentially what we're going to do, we're going to start walking. Let's say this is a 60-minute session and we're just doing a 60-minute walk. For the first 15 minutes, you carry that full pack weight. You just cruise along, steady state. At the 15-minute mark, you're like, I've had enough of this weight. Then we dump a bunch of water out. We'll dump two or three or four liters out so it gets lighter. Then we walk for another 15 minutes. Then we dump two or three or four liters out, walk for another 15 minutes. The idea behind this is we start at a weight, whatever is kind of uncomfortable for you, and we just dump and dump and dump. So we get this overload of weight initially. But because we're reducing it down, it ends up being doable for an extended period of time. Now, you may do this over 60 minutes, 90 minutes, two hours. You can even do this when you're hiking as well. If you want to do a full four-hour, five-hour, six-hour hike, similar to this. And the weights themselves will vary from person to person, but you get the idea. Simple thing where you can just break things up.

[6:12] The third workout I want to talk about, a little bit of a different one, but it can be pretty effective in small doses, is what I call a varied pack carry. So for this particular session, we're usually going to do relatively short. Might be 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes. You might do this on a short local trail if you really were super motivated, but it's not going to be a very, very long workout. Now what we're going to do, we're going to load up the pack with a reasonable amount of weight.

[6:38] We're going to walk normally for five minutes. Then at the end of the five minutes, we're going to take the pack off and we're going to carry it slightly differently. And every five minutes we're going to vary how we carry the pack so examples of this five minutes with a pack on your back five minutes just holding the pack in your arms at your belly, five minutes holding it under one arm five minutes holding under the other arm five minutes on one shoulder five minutes on the other shoulder five minutes wherever holding it in your hand and just varying and varying and varying now the idea behind this is back on the back is the most comfortable where you'll carry a pack because it's designed for that. It sits nicely this and that. So when we're carrying it in other areas, number one, it's going to be uncomfortable at a whole bunch of extra challenge. Number two, it's going to change different working muscles and give slightly different muscles a solid challenge. And number three, it also adds a significant stability challenge for us because if you're resting the pack on one shoulder, the body's going to have to fight to stay upright and not tip over. So it ends up being an interesting core workout. This very pack walk, I wouldn't do it on anything that's too complicated in regards to terrain but it can be a good option.

[7:51] Number four, and this kind of builds off the varied pack carry, it's very, very similar, is we're going to do a pack circuit. So, typically, I like to do this around like a sports oval. So, something that's just got like four, what do you call it, four sides, and they've got corners. And what we're going to do is very, very similar to this, but we're going to add a few little exercises in. So, how this works, you set up on your oval, you start on one side, You walk along one edge, holding the pack in one way. As I said, might be on your back, might be on your arms, shoulder, whatever it may be. When you get to that corner, then you do 10, 15, 20 repetitions of some type of strength exercise. You may do squats with your pack on your back. You may do glute bridges with the packs on your hips. You may do Romanian deadlifts holding the pack. You may do squat presses. You may do shoulder presses. You may do push-ups or whatever it may be. It doesn't really matter.

[8:50] But you do 10, 15, 20 repetitions at that corner. Then we walk along the next edge of the oval. We carry the pack in a slightly different way. We get to the corner. We do another exercise. Then we walk along the other edge. We hold the pack in a slightly different way, yada, yada, yada. And essentially, every single time we go around the different sides of the oval, we hold the pack in a different way, and we do a different exercise in each corner. Now, this particular workout is not designed to really push your strength forward because it's a little bit awkward. We're not really like really, really, really challenging the weight, and it's not designed to replace a strength workout. But it can just be an interesting way of just getting some different movements, getting some different challenges, fatiguing different muscles, and breaking up the pack walking. And if you wanted to extend this into a longer session, you could even do a 30-minute pack walk to a local oval, do this for 30 minutes, and a 30-minute pack walk home. That ends up being a nice 90-minute workout or whatever it ends up being, but it's just a nice way to break things up.

[9:49] So that's number four. Number five is a little bit different. This is a kind of good workout to do when you are going through a bit of a stressful time and you're like, you know what, I've got a pack walk coming up and I'm just really stressed this week. Or you know what, I've got a pack walk coming up and I'm just really low on energy. And you just need a little bit of like de-stress or a little bit of an emotional boost or whatever may be. So essentially, this is called a mindful pack walk. Very, very simple. Essentially, what you're going to do is you're going to get your pack on because we still want to get a pack training session here. And we want to go somewhere that has a little bit of nature, something that's a little bit green. So a local park or a local trail or just somewhere that's just not roads and cars and all of that. What we're going to do is we're going to walk along with a pack. And every five minutes, we're going to put all of our attention into one of our senses. So for five minutes you're going to walk and just concentrate on what you can see around you really really really look the trees the leaves the sky the animals whatever may be all of your attention into what you can actually see.

[10:59] Then you're going to spend five minutes paying attention to what you can hear. Listen to the wind. Listen to the crunch of your shoes. Listen to the leaves rustling. Then you're going to spend five minutes on what you can smell. Can you smell sweat on you? Can you smell your pack? Can you smell flowers? Whatever may be. Then you're going to do five minutes concentrating on what you can touch.

[11:23] How do your feet feel in your shoes? How does the wind feel on your skin? How does the sweat feel as it drips down? And essentially five minutes at a time, you're just gonna concentrate on each of your senses. Now, this is also known as like a mindful walk. It's a really, really nice de-stressing technique. And if you just need a little bit of a change in your pack walks,

[11:43] this is a nice way to combo it. And then the final workout I wanna talk through is a bit of a breathing control workout. So essentially for this one, again, we're gonna have a pack on and we're gonna do on whatever trail we want. The idea for this workout is essentially we are going to go at speeds, certain speeds, where we basically get the breathing really, really, really huff and puff. We get really out of breath in one way or another. And then we're going to concentrate on pulling the speed back, getting our breathing under control while still moving.

[12:13] Typically, the way this is best worked is if you can find something that has a bit of incline. So a hill, set of stairs, or whatever it may be. And essentially, we're just going to walk and walk and walk with our pack. When we hit that incline, we're going to hustle. We're going to push. We're going to get to the speed where we're like, hey, I've got really out of breath. Now, depending on what your heel looks like, if this takes 30 seconds, if it takes 60 seconds, takes a couple of minutes, whatever, you want to hustle. Once you get to that point, you're like, yeah, my breathing's pretty cooked. Then you're going to keep on going, but you're going to pull back the speed a little bit and really, really, really, really concentrate on trying to bring your breathing slow and controlled and steady. A good rule of thumb to aim for is try to get back to that point where you can comfortably breathe in and out through your nose.

[12:59] And then essentially you're just going to walk around like that till you hit a bit more incline and then hustle the speed again, get out of control, breathing out of control, and then pull it back. And the idea behind this workout is it's basically just teaching you breathing control, teaching you that skill of getting very, very high breathing and pulling it back while we are still moving. Now, this isn't a full structured workout. Like you can do this type of thing on a Stairmaster or whatever may be in the gym and you can do a really, really set interval structure, but you can also just throw this in a bit more casually in your pack walks. So if it doesn't have to be certain lengths or whatever it may be, but just where you find and what you have access to.

[13:37] So there we go, six simple workouts, the tempo walk, the overloaded pack walk, the very pack carry, the pack circuit, the de-stressing walk, and also the breathing control. Now, the way I would typically use this is, as I said, standard pack carrying and standard pack hiking is always going to be the foundations of what we want. And this isn't meant to completely replace that, but I would typically recommend using these things as just slight variance. So as I said at the start of the episode, you could use it in two ways. I think you'd use it in a bunch of ways, but two ways really make sense. Number one, if you're doing training phases of four weeks at a time, so you're doing four weeks of training and four weeks and four weeks, you may spend three weeks doing your standard pack carrying. Just standard session, build up the time, build up the weight, yada, yada. And then every fourth week, you pull one of these out. You do a tempo walk or you do a pack circuit or you do the breathing control and you just get that slight variance to change it up every fourth weeks. Sometimes as a longer term plan, just having that every four weeks doesn't sound like much, but it is enough just to keep things fresh and keep you moving forward.

[14:47] Alternatively, you could use this, as I said, like as just different training phases. So if you were doing a training phase for three or four weeks, you may do three or four weeks of just a normal standard pack workout, flat walking or hill walking or whatever it may be. And then three or four weeks of one of these, Just have a few weeks, break it up. And then three or four weeks of your standard workout and three or four weeks of this. And again, it just gives us a little bit of variance.

[15:11] So if you are a mountaineer who's been doing lots of pack work and you're like, you know what? I'm getting a bit bored of the sessions. Maybe give one of these a go. They aren't a massive change, but they can be enough just to give you that boost in the training, give a little bit of extra challenge to the body and just help things feel a little bit more fresh. Now, last thing I will sort of say before I wrap things up today, As always, if you were a Mountaineer and you're like, yeah, I like the sign of having a few different workouts, but I'm not really sure how this goes into a training plan. I'm not really sure how to cover this off. I'm not really sure how to fit this in with everything else I'm trying to do. If you want a bit of help with your training, I would love to chat with you. If you want to learn a little bit 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 to a bit about our programs. And if it sounds like something you want to explore a little bit more, 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 we may be able to help you out. So if you want to check it out, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer and we can take it from there. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening. Hope you've enjoyed it. Hope you can give one of these a go and I hope it helps a few people out there. Thanks for listening and we'll talk very, very soon. Bye.

Want to get
fit, strong and resilient
for your
mountaineering adventures?

​Check out
The Online Summit Program