A Simple Mountaineering Training Plan

​In this episode, we explore a simple workout plan a mountaineer can follow to build their strength and fitness for the mountains. 

Workout Plan For Mountaineers

​Chapters:
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0:08 Simple Training for Mountaineering
4:32  The Balance of Simplicity and Effectiveness
6:37  Cardio and Conditioning Basics For Mountaineers
11:09  Strength Training Essentials For Mountaineering
16:56  Incorporating Longer Cardio Sessions
20:45  Managing Repetition and Boredom
24:08  Importance of Deload Weeks
25:03 Conclusion and Next Steps

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Interested in online training for mountaineering? 
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Check out the Online Summit Program: https://www.summitstrength.com.au/online-mountaineer.html

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The Training For Mountaineering Podcast

Listen to other episodes of Training For Mountaineers Podcast here:

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Episode Transcript:

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

[0:03] I want to talk you through a dead simple approach to training for mountaineering. And I'm going to be sharing with you an incredibly simple mountaineering plan, which you can use to build your strength, your fitness, and your condition for the mountains. Now, when it comes down to the world of training for mountaineering, we often see information and approaches on kind of two different polar opposites. There are people out there who just crave simplicity. Their idea of training and preparing is just going out and hiking, going out and running, going out and climbing. And they really, really like keeping things simple and just getting out there, building things up over time.

[0:46] Now, on the flip side of things, we often see mountaineers who are like, look, that doesn't quite work for me, or I need a little bit more. And they kind of like the idea of covering all their bases and following a plan to build them up. And essentially, they'll follow a specific training plan to help build up their mountaineering. And they'll either download one off the internet or buy one or read a book and put together their own plan or whatever may be. And either of these options can and have worked for many, many mountaineers. Many people just go out and climb and run, whatever may be, and see great success. Many people go out and buy a training plan or create a training plan and see a great success. But there are definitely problems to these two different approaches for a lot of people. On the simplicity side, sometimes and in often situations, this just tends not to be enough for many people. Just going out and hiking, running and climbing sounds good, but it does have massive blind spots when it comes down to injury prevention. It has massive blind spots where people just don't have a clear plan of progression. And, you know, it just misses a lot of other key things if we're looking at really improving our performance. And this type of approach, it can work for some, but it's really hit and miss.

[2:00] Now, on the training side of things, you know, sometimes these plans, and quite often in the mountaineering context, these plans just end up being a little bit complex. And they just be a little bit too much and a little bit too confusing for some people. A lot of people out there just are not interested in having to learn things. They don't care about training zones. They don't care about thresholds. They don't care about learning a bunch of different exercises. They don't care about tracking their volume or whatever it may be. And either people are just like not interested in this and they're like, ah, you know, that just makes me cross-eyed. I'm just not interested. Or, you know, they just don't have the time or the mental bandwidth to figure this stuff out. Maybe they work full-time jobs, got a young family, whatever it may be, and they just do not want to think when it comes down to their training.

[2:44] Now, when it comes to this podcast and what I do from Summit Strength, kind of the ideas around my training and the things I present has really been designed from the ground up to be in a kind of a balance between those two things, in the sense that one of my philosophies around training is keeping things as simple as possible for mountaineers, while also not sacrificing effectiveness. So my ideas around, say, cardio and conditioning are a little bit more simple than some of the approaches you'll see out there and the complex approaches many mountaineers take, but they can be really, really effective. And I feel like they can be simpler than what a lot of people do, but see just as good results. And my ideas around strength, which I recommend for mountaineers, may be a little bit more complex than what's often recommended to mountaineers or just a little bit different, but I feel like this is right level just to squeeze out as much benefits are possible for mountaineers at the right level of incompletity, in my opinion. So kind of what I try to do is find the balance between the two things. Now, these ideas and approaches that I talk about and that I share have definitely worked for a lot of people, and they've definitely helped many mountaineers over the years who find that simple stuff just a bit too simple and find the typical approach for mountaineers a little bit too complex.

[4:04] At saying this, I am well, well, well aware that what I present and what I usually talk about and the ideas that I share are still not quite right for some people. And it is still just a little bit too complex. And they're like, hey, I don't care about progression. I don't care about this. I don't care about these workouts. I want something really, really simple, but it's just a little bit more than what the hike run climb approach is.

[4:33] So that's what we're talking about today. And I'm going to be talking you through a dead simple training plan for mountaineering, something which is as bare bones as possible, but it is still going to cover the majority of your bases. So if you're in that situation where you've been listening to these episodes, you're like, oh, Rowan, putting this all together is still a bit too much for me, this is for you. Now, to be very, very clear, what I'm about to present, we are going to be getting very, very simple. And getting this simple will be sacrificing some effectiveness. By no means would I ever say this is going to be the best approach for training for mountaineering or that it will be suited for everyone, but it can be a much, much, much, much better option for those who want to keep things simple and it's so much better than just going out and do hiking and running and climbing and a few exercises here it here and there.

[5:25] Also, to be clear, the programming I'm back to explain, it's not going to be exciting. It's going to be boring. It's going to be monotmmous. But that's the idea because it's going to reduce as much thinking as possible for you. So you can have this bare bones, simple plan, which you can just get out and do. And then finally, this approach, it is probably admittedly not going to be a great approach for someone who does have a history or is currently managing some type of lower limb overuse injury. So if you get pain in the feet, the ankles, the shins, the knees, the hips, this probably isn't for you. But beyond that, let's get into it. Now, for this particular plan, you are going to be able to dedicate three to four days of consistent training in your week, each week, three to four days. Plus, you're going to be able to have to see somewhere where you can do some longer sessions, so multiple hours of walking, hiking, whatever it may be, on the weekends where you can. So three to four base sessions per week, and then longer sessions where you can.

[6:32] So let's talk through it. First of all, let's cover cardio and conditioning. How are you going to approach this on the simple plan? What you're going to be doing here is you're going to be doing two conditioning sessions per week. So two cardio sessions per week. The first session each week is going to be a pack session. What this is going to be, it's going to be flat, slow, walking with the pack. How are you going to approach this? The first session you do here, it's going to be at a pack weight, which feels comfortable for you. So it's not a major challenge. It's not pushing to the limits of your pack, but something that just feels comfortable. You whack it on. You're like, yeah, that's pretty easy. And essentially you're going to start with a time, which is just convenient to fit into your week. So if you can only fit in 30 minutes and you're like, that fits cool. If you can fit 40 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, whatever it may be.

[7:25] What you're going to do is you're going to go out and essentially you're just going to walk with your pack for whatever time you have available, keeping in a pace where you can breathe in and out through your nose. Super simple. Each week, what your plan for progression is, is you're going to add either one kilo or two pounds to your pack until you get to the stage where you are carrying either three or seven pounds heavier than your target pack weight for mountaineering. So if your maximal pack weight you're going to be carrying in the mountains is 20 kilos, we want to week by week by week build up to 23 kilos on this session. And then once you've hit this maximal pack weight and you're like, I'm three kilos or seven pounds heavier than where I need to be, what you're going to do is each week, instead of adding pack weight, you're going to add five to 10 more minutes of walking each week.

[8:18] And then once you get to a time which is the upper limit of time you can squeeze in during the week so maybe you started at 40 minute walks you spent 10 weeks building up your pack weight and then you spent four weeks building up your time and you're like i just can't fit any more in then you're just going to maintain this ongoing that for this cardio session could be a four-month plan a six-month plan a 12-month plan whatever may be that's your first cardio session dead simple, the second conditioning session in your week we've got our flat pack walking the second session is now going to be some type of elevation some type of going up and down where we can expose the body to this now depending on what you have access to this can be done on a local set of stairs or a local hill this could be done as a box step session where you just have a step or a box or a counter where you just step up and down up and down if you have access to a stair master or or Jacob's Ladder at the gym, whatever you have access to. Now, essentially what you're going to do here is you're just going to choose however much time you can commit to each week. Again, this could be anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes, whatever you think is realistically to fit in.

[9:25] And what you're going to do is you are going to climb whatever you're doing at a pace for the entire duration of your session at nose breathing pace. So a pace where you can breathe in and out through your nose. So if you can only do 30 minutes, you climb for 30 minutes. If you can fit in 60 minutes, you climb for 60 minutes and you just do that. Now, if you're in the position where you say doing the Stairmaster and you're like, hey, I can't actually do 60 minutes of nose breathing climbing up, totally fine. You just do as much as you can and rest wherever you need through the session rest every five minutes every 10 minutes whatever may be so you're going to climb this entire session at nose breathing pace first of all first week you do this you're going to start with body weight so just cruise along build up the time each week you do this similar to the pack walking you're going to add either one kilo or two pounds to your pack you're going to build up week week week week. Now, once you get to the point where you hit your target pack weight for your expedition, so again, the example, if you have to carry 20 kilos on your mountaineering, once you hit that maximal pack weight, then we're going to maintain this. We're not going to get any heavier on this one, but what you're going to do is start to increase speed. So what we're going to do is still sticking to that nose breathing, but we're just going to try and push the speed a little bit more. We're going to try and push the speed a little bit quicker each week and get through a little bit more during that time. So again, this plan, it could go for four months, it could go six months. You could do this for 12 months or whatever it may be.

[10:54] Start body weight, keep the same amount of time, add that pack weight to the maximal pack weight, and then start pushing a bit quicker. That's your plan.

[11:04] So those are our two conditioning sessions, one flat pack walk, one elevation session.

[11:09] Next up, let's talk about strength. Now for strength, again, we want to keep things very, very, very simple. Essentially, how we're going to be approaching this strength plan is you're going to be choosing some baseline exercises, which you're just going to stick with over time. You're not going to be changing exercises over this plan. We're going to keep some things you're going to do indefinitely, and we're just going to go with that. So what we want to do is when we're choosing these baseline exercises, we want to ensure that we get a good spread of exercises so we are working the body as a whole. What you're going to be doing is you're going to be choosing six exercises in total. I'm going to list off a few ideas, and you're going to choose one from each category. First of all, you're going to be choosing a lower body pushing exercise. So an exercise which is predominantly going to work the quads. So this could be a squat, a step up, a split squat, or a lunge. One of those four.

[12:07] Number two, you're going to choose a lower body pulling exercise. So an exercise is going to target the hamstrings and the glutes. You're going to choose a deadlift, a single-legged deadlift, a glute bridge, or a hip thrust. Number three, you're going to choose an upper body pushing exercise. So something working the chest and the shoulders. This could be a push-up, a dumbbell or a bench press, or an overhead press. Number four, we're going to choose an upper body pulling exercise, working the back. This could be a row, any type of row variation, a pull-up variation, a chin-up variation, a lat pull-down, anything like that.

[12:45] Number five, you're going to choose a calf exercise. For this one, probably choosing a single leg calf raise.

[12:53] Number six, you're going to choose a core exercise. And specifically, you're going to be choosing a core exercise, which you do repetitions with. So not something you're just holding, but something you're doing reps. So this could be like a V-sit or a leg raise or a payload press or a seesaw plank. You can really choose any core exercise here, which you enjoy, which you do reps with. So now we have six exercises, lower body pushing, lower body pulling, upper body pushing, upper body pulling, calf and core.

[13:23] Essentially how you're going to structure your workout. So if you're listening to this and you're working through it, get out a pen and paper and do this now. You're going to stretch your workout and split it in half. The first half of the workout, you're basically going to do lower body pushing exercise, upper body pulling exercise, calf exercise. You're going to do your lower body pushing first, then straight into your upper body pulling, straight into your calf. And you're going to repeat that three to five times, depending on how much time you have to train. So hypothetically, this might be squat into a chin-up, into a calf raise. Squat, chin-up, calf raise, squat, chin-up, calf raise. That's what you're doing. Once you've gone through those, then we're going to do the other exercises. You're going to do your lower body pulling, your upper body pushing, and your core. And again, repeat this three to five times. So this could be glute bridge, push-up, V-sit. Glute bridge, push-up, V-sit, whatever it may be. That's how you're structuring your workout. And that's your entire workout there.

[14:26] Now, at this stage, hopefully, right now we've got our exercises, we've got our workout structure. Essentially, now you're going to choose how often you're going to do this per week. If you're in the situation where you can only train three days per week, so you're doing two conditioning sessions and you have one more session to spare, you're going to do this once a week. Alternatively, if you can do four days per week, so you've got your two conditioning sessions and your two days to spare, you can do this twice a week. Now, how we're going to approach this is we're going to keep the same exercises and the same structure phase after phase and month after month, but we're going to change the repetitions and the weights every single phase. So essentially what you're going to do here, the first phase you do, every single exercise, you're going to do eight repetitions. So you're going to find a weight and resistance where you can kind of hit about eight repetitions. It doesn't have to be pushing to failure, but it's going to feel like a good challenge. You're going to do this for four weeks, sticking at eight repetitions. And each week, you're going to just try to increase the amount of weight and resistance you use for the same amount of reps. It may not happen every single week, but over the four-week period, we want to increase things a bit.

[15:35] So that's for four weeks. In the next phase, what we're going to do is we're going to keep exactly the same exercises, but what you're going to do is you're going to reduce the repetitions down to five repetitions of each exercise. And what you're going to do to compensate, because we're doing less reps, you're going to increase the weight. Same exercises, lower reps, more weight. You're going to do this for four weeks. And again, over the four-week period, try to increase the amount of weight you're doing. Then the next phase, again, you're going to keep exactly the same exercises, exactly the same structure, but you're going to do 15 repetitions of each exercise. So in this situation, we're going to increase the reps. You're probably going to have to reduce the weight down a little bit. And you'll do that for four weeks. In the next four weeks, you go back to the top. You go back to eight repetitions of everything. Do that for four weeks. Eight, five, 15. Flow between those three different rep ranges, four weeks at a time. With the intention of each time you get back to the top, we can do a little bit more, a little bit heavier. That's our strength plan. Now, it does like in the audio format, listen to this. It may take a little bit like, you know, wrapping your head around that, but that is a really, really simple strength program, which you can do for six months, 12 months, pretty much indefinitely. Very, very simple, but it works.

[16:57] So now we've worked out our two conditioning sessions, our flat pack walking and our elevation session. We've worked out our strength training. Now we just need to talk about longer cardio because longer cardio, very, very important for mountaineers. And realistically, this is always going to be the hardest one to fit in consistently because obviously it's the most time intensive. So first of all, just ask yourself, how often can I fit in longer cardio? What is realistic? Can I do something a bit longer, like multiple hours every single week? Can I do it every two weeks, every three weeks, whatever it may be? Now, again, in the situation, we are keeping things simple. What I would recommend here is we're thinking about hiking with a pack.

[17:40] That's what we're going to do for a longer cardio. What you're going to do is you're going to start on a local trail, which is convenient for you to get to. Ideally, this is going to be like two hours or more. So something that will take you two hours or more, but whatever you fit in. Essentially, you're going to do the same trail week after week after week after week. What we're going to be doing is each time you head out, you will do this same trail and you'll aim to stick to nose breathing pace. So that's our pacing. That's our measure. You're going to start with pack weight, which is 100% comfortable. So you should feel the first week or two that this trail and this pack weight is pretty easy. And then essentially each time you do this, whether this is every single week or every couple of weeks, whatever it may be, you're going to increase that pack weight by one to two, one kilos or two pounds. Then essentially you're going to build up and build up and build up week up to week doing the same amount of distance, same amount of time, but just building up your pack weight. once you get to the point where you've hit your target pack weight for your mountaineering. So again, in the hypothetical example, there was 20 kilos we were aiming for. Once you hit that 20 kilos, then what you're going to do, you're going to maintain that. And every single time you go out, you're going to add one extra hour of hiking. This may require you doing the same trail and repeating sections. This may require you going out and finding other trails or whatever it may be. Each week, you're going to keep on adding an hour, adding an hour, adding an hour.

[19:05] And then finally, there will come a point, because if we're adding hour after hour, there'll come a point where you're like, this is just too much. I just cannot fit this one anymore in. This is my top level of what is convenient for you. Once you reach that, you're going to sustain this. If you can do five hours, if you can do six hours, if you can do eight hours, or if you can only do four hours, whatever it may be, that top level, you sustain that. And then what you're going to do to progress from there, so we've increased our pack weight, we've increased our time, now you're going to start pushing the speed on your inclines so what you're going to do is when you hit inclines on these trails you're going to push as quick as you can while you're going up that incline while maintaining nose breathing and for the rest of the hike you just progress speed over time so in this situation build up the pack weight build up the time and once we run out of like can't get any more time we just go quicker and quicker and quicker on those speeds while still maintaining that nose breathing Thank you.

[20:03] Pretty simple, but it can work. Alternatively, if you're like, hey, I don't really want to hike, maybe I want to run, you could sort of start at like a manageable distance. So whatever works for you, run at nose breathing pace each week at 10 to 20 minutes. And once you reach that top level of time you commit to, you can start bumping up to speed and nose breathing pace. That works out pretty well.

[20:26] So now, hopefully at the end of this, we have a really, really simple plan. It covers conditioning, strength, and longer cardio. This plan is going to give you plenty of exposure to pack weight, plenty of exposure to elevation, gives you simple options to progress. It covers the majority of our bases.

[20:45] As you can see, it definitely isn't the most exciting thing in the world. It's definitely probably, you know, some people are going to drop out of this relatively quickly, but it does cover a lot of bases here. It's so much more effective than just going out and doing random hikes or random runs. It's going to get your strength coverage. It's going to have those elements of progression. It's going to cover a bunch of different bases and hitting elevation, hitting pack weight and exposing quicker speeds and all of this stuff. It covers the majority of the bases we want, but it's very, very simple.

[21:17] Now, one thing you do need to be aware of if you're following something like this, something that's just so mononymous and so repetitive and just so like the same thing. There is definitely the risk of both overuse and burnout. We need to be aware that if you're just doing the same thing over and over and over, you may get really, really bored of this. And on top of this, you may start to pick up aches and pains because we can't just progress indefinitely week after week after week after week. So when we're taking this type of approach, we need to be really, really, really, really smart. Now, this is one of the reasons why I only recommend small bump ups and progressions. A lot of people listening to that be like, well, a kilo each week or two pounds each week that's super slow i could go way quicker than that.

[21:59] But I find a kilo or two pounds each week is just slow enough to really significantly reduce the risk of things going wrong. And if you're being super mononymous with stuff and super repetitive, the more gradual we can be to give the body time to adapt and get used to these things, the better.

[22:15] On top of that, what I really recommend if you're following this approach is you definitely want to be proactive with using deload weeks here. So having specific and strategic weeks where we pull back the intensity to give the body and the mind space to recover, to adapt, and to make sure you're not overdoing things. So again, leaning on the idea of simplicity here and keeping things as simple as possible so you don't have to think a really, really straightforward way of doing this is aim to have a deload every four weeks. So what this means is with the pack session and the elevation session, every fourth week, you go out and do the same session, but you don't use a pack. You just do body weight. You just cruise along and you maintain the same speed. So you go out for an unloaded walk or you do your elevation session without any weight. You maintain the same speed. This will feel really, really easy. Some days you'll be like, I have so much energy. I wish I was pushing a bit more, but for the sake of simplicity, every four weeks. The same thing for the strength, you could do every fourth week where you just do a lighter week, where you basically do the same exercises, the same reps, but reduce the weights down significantly. So over the period of the four weeks, because we said we're four weeks and four weeks and four weeks changing things up, you would do three weeks where you're trying to push things and progress, and then one week of lighter stuff.

[23:39] And then for the hiking, you would make sure that on this deload week, when you're doing a deload for your pack and elevation, when you're doing your deload for your strength, and this should be in the same week, that you just take an easy week for your hiking. Either line this up with the weeks you're planning on not going out and hiking, or if you're hiking every single weekend, have a complete rest weekend.

[24:02] Or just do an easy trail, whatever it may be. So essentially,

[24:05] when we're looking at this type of thing, every fourth week, deload. Usually this deload approach, you don't have to proactively deload every single four weeks if you're following another program, but because this one is so mononymous and so basic and just so the same thing over and over, proactively doing this, very, very valuable.

[24:24] Now, if you were a mountaineer who was just wanting to maintain mountaineering fitness, theoretically, you could keep this approach going for a long, long, long time. It will work technically. Yes, mindset will become an issue. Yes, boredom will become an issue. But theoretically, you can do this for a long time. If you're leading up to a specific trip, this can also be pretty well. The only thing you just need to be aware of is just if you are leading up to a date, just making sure that you are going to be ready for the time requirements and pack weight requirements by the time you need to be ready. So look at your dates, work backwards, make sure you've got a slow and steady ramp up, and just make sure it all lines up.

[25:04] But that's about it. as you can hear like this is definitely not the best approach to mountaineering or the most exciting but if you are someone who is like hey, i want a little bit more than just the usual hiking and running approach, but the thought of putting together a full-blown program which changes each phase and does different things and follows different progression programs learn different exercises is a little bit too much for me this will probably be a good fit for you it will still cover a lot of the bases and most the bases you want to be fit, strong, and prepared for the mountains.

[25:36] This better in my way work for you. So with that all being said, hopefully this makes sense. If you are trying to put this together for yourself and you're like, hey, I kind of want to figure things out, but like, look, I've listened to this and it's a little bit hard to like wrap my head around it. Flick me an email. Let me know. I can send you through a transcript of this episode if you want. But hopefully this will make sense. Last thing I will sort of say, if you listen to this, like, hey, Ron, cool, this is interesting, but that's just too simple for me. Like in all want to see the thought of doing the same sessions, same exercises, month after month after month after month. No, not for me. In that situation, if you were looking for something a little bit less simple and a little bit more complex and something which will be a bit better suited to you, I would love to chat with you. If you want to learn a little bit more about our personalized online personal training for mountaineers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a big video, talks through our programs, talks through our training in a bit of detail. 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 that team and we can have a bit of a chat and see if and how 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 a few people get out of it, get some value out of this and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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