A Quick Note On Strength Training For Mountaineers

In this episode, I explore one crucial point about strength training that all mountaineers should keep in mind when going about their training and preparations. 

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. And today's episode, we are just doing a short and sharp episode around a really quick note for strength

[0:09] training for mountaineers. And I have a very, very important reminder for any mountaineer who is doing strength training in their week. Because if you've followed my stuff for a while, you will know I am a big fan and a big advocate of strength training. And strength training can absolutely be an amazing conclusion for so many reasons. But one thing you need to keep in your head is if your strength training is negatively impacting your cardio or your climbing or your hiking, you are doing it wrong. Because as a mountaineer, your main goal, your main outcome is to get better for the mountains and ultimately you are an endurance athlete. Your number one priority with your training is to improve your ability to move for long periods of time under load.

[1:09] Your second priority, which pretty much goes hand in hand with this, is to improve your aerobic fitness. Your strength development is important. Your strength development is really beneficial, But never, never, never forget that those two things are the priorities. And the reason why I'm saying this is a mistake I sometimes see from Mountaineers, and I just saw recently, and that's what's prompted this episode, is they get so excited with their strength. They get so pumped up with their strength and just so into it that it actually becomes detrimental to their main priorities.

[1:46] Now, what do I mean by detrimental? Well, if you are absolutely flogging yourself in your strength workouts and you are pushing it and doing a huge amount and really, really, really, really going for it, and you are constantly waking up the next day with legs which are just sore, which are like steel rods that you can barely move, and if this is actually affecting how you can perform in your cardio, in your hiking, in your running, whatever may be, this isn't good. Now, if you love that feeling and you always have a rest day afterwards and you just go into work, cool, happy days. But if you are finding that, look, this is negatively impacting how I perform in my cardio and my hiking, yeah, not great. In this situation, then you do need to look at what you're doing. If in your sessions, you are absolutely pushing all your exercises to failure and going to the absolute limit, well, you may need to have a look at your intensity. You don't have to push to failure to see improvements in strength.

[2:50] Look at that. Or if you're just doing a ton of exercises, if you're doing leg day and you're squatting and deadlifting and lunging and single leg deadlifting and leg curling and leg extension, you're doing all of these exercises on one area of the body, then maybe you want to look at volume and instead of doing this big big big volume of exercises choose one or two or three key exercises and nail them and don't worry about doing all this extra, we don't want sore legs tired legs really really impacting you it may happen to a degree but if it's really really really noticeable and it's happening every week that's a problem and another way it can be detrimental is if strength training is just taking too much time up in your week. If you have limited hours of time to train in your week and you find strength training is taking the majority of that time, or even if it's taking like you don't have limited hours and it's taking a large, large, large portion of your week, well, you may want to be adjusting things. If you're spending four or five or six hours a week strength training, it's probably too much.

[4:01] Drop it down small amount of smart work can get you such a long way and as a mountaineer we always want to keep in mind that no matter how great strength training bit can be for your preparations and for your time in the mountains we do not want to forget the bigger picture improving in the mountains making sure we're getting the right things and making sure our other qualities of fitness and not being negatively impacted.

[4:28] So with that being said, I'm going to wrap today's episode up here. It had to be said, cause I have seen this very recently and I had to have a stern talk with someone or a nicely stern talk. And I was like, look.

[4:40] It needs to be talked about here, just in case other people are falling into this situation. Last thing I will sort of say is, look, if you are a mountaineer and you're like, you know what? I love strength training, but you know what? It does sound like I'm just doing too much. I'm always just knackered or I'm struggling to do this, or I am just training like a body builder and just doing huge amounts of things.

[5:00] If you want a little bit of help getting a little bit more honed in with your training and getting the nice balance between strength and cardio and everything else, I would love to chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit more about our online personal training for mountaineers go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer on that page you'll see a big video talks through our programs and if it does sound like something you want to get involved with or at least learn a little bit more about there's a link on that page you can book a free call with our team and we can have a chat from there 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 I hope this helps a few people. I hope there's maybe a bit of a wake-up call for some. And yeah, and I hope it really just helps to keep this top of mind. So thank you for listening and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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

Check out
​The Online Summit Program