A Different Way To Plan Cardio Training For Mountainerring

​In this episode I explore a slightly different way a mountaineer can plan their cardio trainin (over the long term) than the 'traditional' approach which is often talked about online. 

Chapters

0:32 
Cardio Training for Mountaineers
3:18 
Beyond Traditional Training Approaches
9:59 
Issues with Traditional Cardio Training
10:28 
Introducing Concurrent Periodization
14:50 
Benefits of a Mixed Approach
16:26 
Finding Your Training Style


Episode Transcript: 

[0:01] All right hello hello ladies and gentlemen so in today's episode we are exploring a slightly different way that a mountaineer can plan out their cardio training over the long term now one of the things that i often see in the world of mountaineering is when we're talking about training and talking about cardio training specifically is the idea and the principle that when you're planning out your training is you have

[0:26] to do some type of cardio training first before you move on to other things. And the typical example of this is having to spend weeks or months focusing on long, steady state cardio and just really, really honing in that and really, really putting the hours into that and apply that for week after week and month after month after month before you do any type of higher intensity training or more, you know, slightly different training. And the idea behind this is that aerobic capacity and aerobic fitness in general is the single most important aspect of fitness for mountaineering. And there can be no debate around that. So the idea behind this approach is initially you want to spend a lot of time developing this. So you can build this out, get this aspect of fitness as good as it can, get your foundations laid down. And then once you've developed this enough, then you'll be able to progress into this slightly quicker stuff, slightly more challenging stuff, slightly higher intensity stuff. And if you've got this foundation laid down, you will get better results from your higher intensity training further down the line.

[1:28] And there can be no doubt that this approach works for a lot of people. And I'm not saying this approach is wrong. I'm not saying this approach isn't beneficial or anything like that. There's absolutely no doubt that this particular approach are going really, really doing the foundational stuff first, and then moving into the higher intensity stuff, that it can be beneficial to people. There's no doubt on that. I'm not arguing that.

[1:50] But like so many things in the world of training for mountaineering, I just get a little bit frustrated when I see things laid out so black and white, because I see so many people online just parroting these ideas that are saying things like, hey, you shouldn't be doing any type of interval training until you've spent months on your aerobic capacity, or saying, hey, you won't get any benefits from doing zone four to five work until you've built out a proper aerobic base. Or you shouldn't be doing any speed work or any quicker work until you've seen, you know, have enough aerobic fitness. And you may be thinking like, Rowan, like, you know, does anyone actually say that? But yes, those are literal things I've taken offline just today. They're paraphrased to, you know, phrase them out, you know, cut them down into a slightly more digestible thing. But that was basically what was said. A lot of people talk about this in this whole black and white things saying you have to do this or this isn't going to be beneficial or you have to do this first before you do anything else but in all honesty it's never as black and white as this the traditional approach works as i said there's no doubt about that but it is not the only approach which works it's only one and there are so many ways when it comes down to training in general of getting to the same end result and for so many people out there and so many mountaineers out there, potentially taking a different approach with your training and specifically planning out your cardio training may be more effective for you.

[3:18] So I want to break this down a little bit today because I feel like it is a really important subject because I have talked with many mountaineers who've believed that this approach is the only way or at the very least saying, hey, if you're not following this approach, you're not really going to be getting a huge amount of benefits. But there is another way, and I want to break this down.

[3:37] Now, in a previous podcast, when we were talking about strength training, I previously talked about periodization schemes for strength training. And if you've listened to that podcast us before, I talked about the difference between block periodization and concurrent periodization.

[3:51] Now, as a really quick recap, if you haven't listened to that episode, or maybe it's been a little while, or whatever it may be, block periodization is the concept of training specific qualities of fitness at one time, and training one after the other after the other. So for example, you may do a block of eight weeks of training focusing on one aspect of fitness. And then for the next eight weeks, you'll focus on another aspect of fitness. And then for the next eight weeks you'll focus on another aspect of fitness and you literally spend block by block by block honing on you know really one priority now in the cardio context as i said before this approach can definitely work and it has worked for many many mountaineers but it does have a few drawbacks in a few specific situations now number one one of the drawbacks to this approach is time management in the sense of traditional endurance training. And when we're following this Brock periodization, it does require a significant time investment because long, slow, steady state cardio, where we're developing that aerobic base and we're really, really spending all our time doing that, it requires a big time investment to be done effectively because to develop this stuff, you need to accumulate long periods of time moving.

[5:07] And the problem is, For people who can fit that in, that's great. For people who just, you know, that isn't an issue, that's great. But there's a lot of mountaineers out there who may find it difficult to fit in two to three long sessions in a week, purely focused on this type of stuff. Maybe someone has a really busy job. Maybe someone's got a young family. Maybe someone is just like limited on time in other situations or whatever it may be. And sometimes the concept of fitting in multiple of these longer sessions is just a little bit difficult. And in fact probably 90% of the mountaineers that i directly work with that come and work with me through my coaching services have tried the traditional approach before of just fitting in all of these hours of training and they've tried it and they just haven't been able to sustain it, because life gets in the way work gets in the way family gets in the way or whatever may be.

[6:01] And ultimately, when you ask someone to put in hours and hours and hours of training in a week, and it works for them, great. But if you ask someone to put hours and hours and hours of training in a week, and you say it's the only way that's going to be effective, and say if you cannot do this, all the rest of your training further down the line is just not going to be really beneficial, or whatever it may be, it can cause a lot of stress for people, a lot of worry.

[6:25] And honestly, it can be very, very tricky for certain situations. So if you can fit this type of thing in already in regards to time commitments, great. Go with it. Happy days. But if you can't fit it in, and if it is difficult on the time management side of things, just know there is another way, and we're going to be going into it in a bit. Now, the next issue I sometimes see in regards to the traditional approach, this block periodization, this really, really honing in on aerobic foundations before doing anything else, is the concept of boredom. Now, if you have a background in endurance training, or maybe you are really, really striving for like crazy big goals and you're like, this is my number one priority in my life or whatever it may be. Boredom may not be a big deal for you. I fully understand. But realistically, when it comes down to it, there's a lot of people out there who don't particularly love this type of training. They don't particularly love going out and doing long runs multiple times a week. They don't particularly love getting on a bike and having to do long sessions on that. They don't particularly like going out and hiking for super long periods. Some people may think that sounds crazy, but it is very, very, very true. And there's a lot of people I talk to who just the idea of going out and doing three long runs in a week is just crazy to them. And the idea to ask these people to do this for months and months and months on end before getting to the more, in quotation marks, fun stuff, it can be really difficult.

[7:51] So again, I'm not saying if you can do this, if this isn't boring for you and you don't particularly enjoy this, this traditional approach can be great. But if the thought of doing that.

[8:01] Just makes you want to cry. Just know there is another way. And then the third issue I see with the traditional approach is the concept of use it or lose it, which is something that I really don't see discussed enough. In the sense of when it comes down to training, the body will adapt differently to different types of training stimuli. If we apply one type of training stimuli, it will adapt to that and it will create adaptations to better be able to do that type of thing in the future alternatively if we don't apply training stimuli to a certain type of fitness or whatever it may be the body won't adapt towards that it's pretty straightforward and if we just don't do anything for a certain type of stimuli the body will probably lose that because over time the body will be like hey i don't really need to be able to do this thing anymore so i won't keep these adaptations it's pretty simple it's very very straightforward it. And ultimately, if we spend all our time going slow and all our training time just focusing on this long, slow, steady state stuff, we're going to get really, really good at going slow, which is great for mountaineering. And absolutely, this is the main thing we want because we want to accumulate long periods of relatively low intensity. But if we don't give any stimulus to other areas for months and months and months at a time, the body will reduce the ability to do that.

[9:25] So what I mean by that is if you are not applying any intensity, if you're not applying any speed, if you're not applying any of these more difficult things, eventually the body is going to lose the ability to do that effectively. And yes, there may be higher priorities, but we still want to keep some thread of this in my personal opinion. And this isn't a big deal. Like, you know, if you're not doing something for a month or two, it's not in the end of the world. But if you are focusing on this low steady state stuff for months and months and months at an end before doing anything else, it can sometimes just make things a little bit harder further down the line.

[10:00] Now, for these reasons, the fact that some people struggle with time management for the traditional approach, the fact that some people struggle with boredom through the traditional approach, and the fact that sometimes people will spend too much time doing this and lose the ability or lose the effectiveness of them to do other types of training, I sometimes feel like this traditional block periodization is not ideal for certain people. Yes, if you can do it, if you enjoy it, happy days, but there are certain people out there it's just not going to work with.

[10:28] Now, on the flip side of it, I've sort of laid out my case like, okay, this may not be ideal for some people. The flip side of this, concurrent periodization. I talked about this in the strength training episode on this, and it's a very, very similar concept in regards to cardio. Concurrent periodization is the idea of training multiple qualities of fitness at the same time. So when we're looking at a training block of looking at four or eight weeks at a time, instead of just saying, hey, I want to just train aerobic capacity, we can say, hey, over these eight weeks, I'm going to train aerobic capacity and something else. And we can do this and we can keep this thread and over long term we can train concurrent aspects of fitness at the same time, the way this sort of looks like in my uh in my personal training programs it's very very simple we will always always always make sure there is a focus and make sure there is exposure to the long lower intensity steady state stuff whether we're doing pack hiking running cycling combination those from day one to day zero or day final day of the training we will always make sure there is plenty of exposure to that, because that's always going to be relevant for mountaineers. And we're going to make sure that over time, we build this up, over time, we progress this. And over time, we make sure we are on track to hit the metrics we want before a trip. We're always going to have that in our program.

[11:46] But alongside that, we focus on other areas of training as well. We focus on other areas of cardio. So it's not just this for long periods of time, but we'll always have a thread of slightly different stuff. So typically through the training year, we will have a thread of not only that lower intensity stuff, but we might do some longer interval training where we're doing intervals of three minutes, four minutes, five minutes, six minutes, eight minutes, or whatever may do. We may do some little periods of short interval training where we may be doing 30 second intervals or 45 second intervals. We don't do a huge amount of that, but every once in a while, that can be good. We might put a little bit more emphasis into specific elevation workouts, maybe hill or stair climbing, whether it's walking with a pack or running. We might be doing pack-loaded workouts where we're doing particular things with a pack. We may be doing sled workouts or whatever it may be. But it doesn't always have to be this long, steady state. We have a combination. You know, all of this stuff I just mentioned, it is going to be beneficial for a mountaineer, even if it is applied early in your training. It's not the end of the world if you don't have a massive aerobic base before you do this type of stuff.

[12:49] It's still going to be beneficial for a number of ways. Now, one thing to be clear is I'm not just saying, hey, go out and do generic high-intensity stuff. Go do your CrossFit. Go do your random sprints or whatever it may be. But if you're going to take this type of training and apply it in a way which is specific to your needs and follow it in a way that is structured, it can be really, really effective. So to put this in a little bit more context, the typical way I may make up a training week, when we're looking at cardio specifically, is if someone comes to me and says, hey, I need a training week, we will break down their week and we'll say, okay, you're going to do longer cardio, you're going to do strength training, you're going to do shorter cardio, whatever it may be. Now...

[13:29] Everyone, everyone, everyone, we will always aim for some type of that long, low, steady state stuff in the week. Everyone will be doing that. And ideally, one day on the weekend, we'll go out and do something pretty long. Most people can get away with that. Now, around that, if someone in their week, they can do one more cardio session in their week, their Monday to Friday, on top of the strength training we're prescribing, if they can only do one more cardio session in a week, we may do something a slightly higher intensity. So end up being one super long steady state session and it's not super long but like one long steady state session where we accumulate lots of hours of moving and then we'll have one shorter higher intensity session somewhere in the week that works out pretty well and over the year we'll keep that long thread of training and progress that and the higher intensity stuff will change and vary as we go through or alternatively if someone says to us hey you know i can actually fit in two cardio sessions in the week plus my long thing on the weekend plus my strength training, then we'll probably look at doing one higher intensity session and then another lower intensity session. So we're still getting more hours in that lower intensity stuff, but we've got the thread. As you can see, it's really, really simple, but this concurrent periodization, I feel is just so effective for a lot of people. It gives us, can get a lot more work done in a short amount of time if we're struggling with time efficiency. And if we can only fit in 20 minute, 30 minute, 40 minute, or 60 minute workouts through the week, we can get a lot of work done with this sort of stuff.

[14:51] Or if you get a bit bored doing the same thing over and over, doing the steady state stuff, the thought of just doing one of these sessions a week or two of these sessions a week and the other days we're doing something a little bit more exciting really works well. And the concept of lose it or use it, if we're concurrently working on different aspects of fitness through the year, if we regularly apply little stimuli to this higher intensity stuff in different ways through the year, we're going to make sure we're developing it, we're going to make sure we're maintaining it, and we're going to make sure when we actually have to hone in on something and really, really, really, really dial in your training just before you go, it's all going to be easy to step into.

[15:30] Now, I really, really like this approach. I think it works really, really well. And in all honesty, I usually use this for most of my mountaineers. Now, over the long term, when we're looking at this, we will still follow the principles of easier to harder as we progress face by face. For our longer cardio, we will start relatively short and slowly build out the hours over time. For our other sessions, we'll start with slightly easier interval sessions and then slowly over time, make it harder and harder and harder and harder and harder. And before someone goes on a specific trip, we will still aim to hit the most, in quotation marks, specific workouts before a trip. You know, for example, doing overloaded heel work or if we need to hit speed targets or whatever it may be, we'll hone in on that just before they go. But either way, throughout the year, we still got a thread of everything. This approach works. It's not something I'm just talking about. It's something I use every single day, every single week, and I've used for many, many mountaineers very effectively.

[16:26] So if you have tried the block periodization approach and you're just one of those people you're like oh my gosh it just doesn't work for me whether it's from boredom time management a desire to fit in other aspects of fitness and worry about neglecting them or whatever may be maybe give this approach a go it doesn't have to be too complicated but as long as you still apply smart planning as long as you're still hitting the things you need in your training and as long as you're still applying progressive overload over the year this will work for you.

[16:56] Doing the traditional things it is a way it is an approach but is not the end of the world if you take a different approach there are many roads to roam keep that in mind when you're planning out your training now last thing i will say is if you've been listening to this and you're like you know what rom sounds pretty good to me the thought of doing three long runs in a week makes me want to cry or you know what i've done that and i just don't have time anymore to fit in all of these hours or you know what you know i like the thought of just keeping in a thread of everything through the year so i can be ready to step into anything i want whenever that comes around any of that sounds good and you're interested in getting a little extra help with this what i'd like you to do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer from there you can check out what we do for mountaineers how we go about our programming and if it sounds like something you want to explore you can book a free call with our team where we dive into your situation, learn a bit about you, learn a little bit more about you, your needs, your goals, and everything going on, and see if we may be able to help you out. So if you did want to learn a little bit more, go to summerstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and you can check it out from there. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it. Hope it opens up a few people's eyes, and I really do hope it gives a few mountaineers out there an alternative approach which works for them. So thank you so much for listening, and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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