A Simple System For Pack Preparation

Heavy pack carrying is one of the biggest challenges for many mountaineers. In this episode, I explore a simple system that I use with my mountaineers to prepare their bodies and minds for the demands of heavy packs in the mountains.

Episode Transcript: ​

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

[0:04] we are talking through a simple system for pack preparations. And what I mean by that is I'm going to be talking to you a really, really simple approach to your training to help prepare for those heavy pack carries in the mountains. Because when it comes down to mountaineering for a lot of expeditions, pack weight is a major factor that you need to get ready for. You know, yes, some people may not have to carry a huge amount, but there's a lot of trips out there where people are carrying significant amount of weight on their back. This is one of the major factors that they need to get ready for, one of the major things that can trip them up. And you want to be taking this seriously in your training, because if you can get the body feeling comfortable with this, if you can get the body feeling capable with this and whatever you need to carry, it can just make such a significant in difference to your trip. So today I'm just going to be talking you through a really, really simple approach to this, which isn't rocket science. It's not too crazy, but it does work. And this is the approach that I take with the majority of my mountaineers when it comes to our training.

[1:09] So first of all, if you've got an expedition or if you've got a climb coming up and you know there's going to be a significant hack weight involved, the first thing you need to figure out is just know what you need to be preparing for. And if you've got something coming up in six months or four months or whatever it may be, just be aware of what you actually need to be preparing for. So what I mean by that is you probably want to figure out sooner rather than later your heaviest pack weight. And I don't just mean your heaviest pack weight on summit day, which typically doesn't end up being outrageously heavy. You want to know your heaviest pack weight for the entire trip, whatever that's going to be. If you're not 100% sure, just a rough estimate, and it's probably better to guess higher than lower at this stage. The other thing you want to figure out is your longest day that you'll be carrying that pack weight. So again, if you've got a crazy summit day, which is going to be 15 or 20 hours, but you're not really carrying a huge amount of weight, you can kind of exclude that out of this. But we want to think about your longest day that you're going to be carrying that heavy weight? Ideally, figure out an hour. Is it going to be five hours, six hours, seven hours, eight hours, whatever it may be? What's your longest day?

[2:19] And on top of that, maybe approximate speeds. Like if you're aware that, hey, it's going to be a pretty slow climb, like we don't have to push anything, you don't need to worry about this. But some expeditions do have speed requirements. And some expeditions like, hey, you know where the window we're going to make here, or you know, point A to point B, we need to hit this. And it's probably good to be aware of this sooner rather than later. So make sure you know these three things, heaviest pack weight, longest day, and if relevant, your approximate speeds needed.

[2:48] Now from here, then we want to have a think about, okay, how are we going to leverage our training to get us in the best possible position for this type of stuff? And ultimately, when it comes down to this, there's three aspects of training that we want to think about here. We want to think about our hiking sessions, we want to think about our strength training, and we want to think about our conditioning sessions. And if we can get the right mix of these things and the right approach of these things, it can go a long, long, long way to helping you with this packway.

[3:17] So first place to start here is probably looking at your hiking. Like I always say, and I've said on this podcast a bunch of times, is one of the most significant things a mountaineer can do when they're doing their training is just having a longer term plan for their hiking. I know a lot of mountaineers out there, you know, tend to do trail running or tend to do cycling for their longer cardio. And yeah, that can absolutely be good. but if you've got a heavy pack coming up on your trip you probably need to be doing some pack hiking and sitting down and figuring out a plan for this really goes a long way.

[3:50] Ultimately what i recommend here is you know i've talked about this process a few times but what i recommend you've got those metrics you essentially want to sit down with the calendar and just do a little bit of rough long-term planning and essentially just coming up with a steady plan which is going to take you from now all the way up to your trip way we do this it's pretty straightforward. In your calendar, two weeks before your expedition, two weeks before your leave date. Essentially, what you want to do is schedule in a hike, which is going to be the equivalent of your heaviest pack weight and your longest day. So those two numbers we figured out before, that's going to be a day hike two weeks before you go away.

[4:28] So if you're expecting to carry 15 kilos or 20 kilos, and you're going to be doing a six-hour day, you want to schedule in a six-hour day with 20 kilos on your back. And that's what we want. And then essentially from there, you just want to work backwards in your calendar and essentially making sure that we have a slow and steady buildup. So working backwards and kind of scheduling in each date you think you're going to be able to hike, whether it's every single week, whether it's every couple of weeks, every three weeks or whatever it may be, be realistic, but kind of schedule that in and then start doing a bit of trial and error and just sort of look at how can I slowly but surely build up from where I am now all the way up to this end date. This can take a little while to figure out. It can take a few passes and a few goes, but I promise you, if you can just take 15, 20 minutes to sit down and come up with a rough plan, this can be really, really, really effective and just making sure we're slowly and steadily building up and we're going to hit end point. I'm not going to talk about that too much more. I've talked about that a ton in different areas. So if you were interested in getting a really detailed breakdown of that, of exactly how to go about that, reach out to me, flick me an email to rowanatsummitstrength.com.au. I'm happy to send you over resources. But yeah, that's first step, making sure we have a nice plan of attack for our hiking. Number two, what we want to leverage is our strength. Strength training, every mountaineer should be doing it. If you're carrying a heavy pack and you're not doing it.

[5:53] You should be doing it basically And yeah strength will really go a long way, Now, some people, when it comes down to pack carrying, they'll kind of go down the route of being like, okay, I need to carry a pack. I'm using my strength training. They'll go down this whole route of specificity and they'll be like, hey, I'm going to get really, really, really, really specific with my strength training. I'm going to make sure I'm doing all my strength training with a pack on my back. I'm going to do this and that and this and that. And that's all well and good. But in all honesty, you probably get the best results or just as good results from your strength stuff with just a basic strength program. Basically following the same principles as every mountaineer should be following and just a basic, progressive, well-structured, comprehensive strength program. So what I mean by that is a comprehensive program covering all your bases. So making sure you're training lower body, upper body, core, mobility, ticking off which of your bases there. Making sure your exercises, there's some single-legged exercises, there's some double-legged exercises. We're getting exposure there. Making sure we're training the body in balance. So we're not just doing the front of the body and we're not just doing step ups and lunges and squats. Those are all well and good, but making sure we're also working the back of the body, the hamstrings and the glutes, making sure we're doing some deadlifts or glute bridges or whatever.

[7:09] Making sure our core is trained through multiple ranges of motion. And we're not just doing hundreds and hundreds of sit-ups, but we're doing multiple ranges of motions, doing things like dead bugs and side planks and payload presses. Those three exercises as a whole can be really good at covering a bunch of your bases and Making sure your core training is a challenge, and it's not just you can do hundreds and hundreds of reps, but treat it like strength training. Give yourself some challenge. Give yourself some load and make it tough. Make sure with your strength training there's a mix of both strength and endurance, that sort of lower, heavier, lower repetition, heavier strength stuff, and that lighter weight, higher repetition endurance stuff. And make sure you have a plan to progress, so you're not just doing the same thing over and over, but week by week or month by month, it's getting a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder. You know, that's a bunch of principles just thrown at you in two minutes, but in all honesty.

[7:59] Strength training for pack hiking doesn't have to be too complicated just follow a well-rounded program it'll go a long long long way now essentially now we've got our two things we've got our hiking plan which is going to slowly but surely build up that pack weight we've got our strength training which is going to be in general building up our strength and endurance and essentially what we want to do is fill the gap between that general training which is our strength training and that specific stuff which is our actual hiking and that's where our conditioning comes in. Now, the conditioning sessions, so essentially shorter cardio sessions, which you do, which aren't actually out on the trail, but they're in the gym, around the local neighborhood, or whatever it may be, these can be a really, really good place where not only can we bridge that gap between general and specific training, but it can be really, really good to expose the body to some specific challenges of pack training in a controlled environment. And what I mean by that as opposed to you being in the middle of a trail where you're trying to lug a crazy heavy pack around or do hill repeats in the middle of a hike, whatever it may be, we're doing it in a controlled environment. So if something goes wrong, we can stop.

[9:07] If we want to challenge ourselves significantly and load things up a bit heavier, we don't run the risk of stepping in a pothole and blowing our ankle or whatever it may be. We're challenging the body for these specific demands, but it's in a controlled environment. It opens up a few cool options. Now there are lots and lots and lots of different ways you can go about this. And there's a million and one different sessions you can do here. But a few conditioning sessions that I quite like for Mountaineers, which fall into this sort of system of pack carrying is you've probably done these before and you've probably heard of them before. They're not rocket science, but number one is just doing some load of pack walking. So basically just around the local neighborhood, on the treadmill, even in a park or whatever it may be. Load of pack walking is shorter sessions. So you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours doing this. I'll typically get people to do anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on how much time they want to invest. This is pretty flat. So you're not attacking heels at this stage, but it's flat and it's kind of gentle. And essentially all you're doing is just whack in on a pack and you're exposing the body to your pack weight. And the idea behind here is we can, again, do it in a controlled environment. So we can expose the body to a little bit extra pack weight than we're doing with our hiking and get the muscles, get the connective tissues, get the aerobic energy system, get that all feeling good when we do these shorter sessions.

[10:25] Number two, stair and hill climbing. In this particular situation, going up and down a set of stairs or up and down a hill can be really good, again, to expose the body to the demands of pack carrying with this elevation. Now, for this type of stuff, we would typically start off light because we don't want to throw the body right in the deep end and then slowly but surely build up. And then the third way of going about this that I quite like is doing the overloaded hill sessions or overloaded stair sessions or whatever it may be, where essentially you may you just find a stairmaster or you may find a super long hill or whatever it may be. And here we intentionally load the pack up heavier than what we expect on the trail and heavier than what we expect on the mountain. So we can really, really, really challenge those muscles in a really specific way. And this is a mountaineer's tried and true favorite. Like a lot of mountaineers do this and it's very, very popular for good reason. And essentially you can look at those really, really simple sessions, but then we sort of say, okay, how can we sort of use these as a part of a longer-term

[11:22] plan to get us where we need to be? How can we use these as a longer-term plan to complement our other training, to complement the training hikes we're doing, and also make sure that by the time we hit our expedition, I'm feeling really, really capable with that pack?

[11:37] So, the way I like to do this, and again, you can go a million different ways here, but it can be really, really simple. Essentially, what I'll do is I'll progress through those three sessions. Over the period of a longer-term training plan, I will go from one to the other to the other. So at the start of a training plan, when we're just kicking off our training, when we don't want to be doing anything too crazy, we're spending a lot of time developing our aerobic capacity, just getting the basics right, I'll start off with that load of pack walking. And the idea behind this is I'm just going to be a little bit heavier than whatever I'm doing with my hiking. It's not like I'm weighing myself down like a turtle, but it's just a little bit heavier. And then essentially just exposing the body to that weight. Again, it's only 30 minutes or 60 minutes or 90 minutes up to maybe two hours if you We really want to spend a lot of time, but we're just building that up. And week by week by week, we just do a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And I'll do this for like six to eight weeks of just kind of building things up.

[12:31] Now, alongside that, when I'm doing my actual training hikes, the training hikes are actually building up as well. They're a little bit lighter than these shorter walks, but both sessions are kind of building up. Then after we've done about six to eight weeks of this, two kinds of things will have happened. Number one, in these shorter sessions, these shorter pack walking sessions, we've actually ended up building up a significant amount of pack weight because it's pretty easy to progress these sessions because they're technically easy sessions. They're not elevation, there's not rough terrain you can just keep on bumping this up and quite often not always but quite often what will happen is after about eight weeks of this for my mountaineers they may actually end up being at their target pack weight for their expedition after eight weeks of this just on these shorter walks so they're not carrying their max pack weight on their hikes yet but on these shorter walks they've hit that max weight i quite like to do this relatively early because it can be really nice just to expose the body to these stresses early build up confidence be like oh yeah i've already hit this and it feels good, even if I haven't done it in a training hike, but I've kind of built this up.

[13:34] So that's number one, we build up a significant amount of weight pretty quickly with that. And then number two, you know, over these six to eight weeks of just doing this load of pack walking, our hiking, which we're doing alongside this, is probably building up quite a bit as well. So essentially, by the time we transition out of this shorter pack walking session, our hiking can kind of pick up the slack of this heavier pack stuff. And that ends up being our heavier pack stuff moving forward. So that works out pretty well.

[14:02] Now next up we'll basically take out that load a pack session and we'll substitute that for one of those stair and hill climbing sessions and essentially what we'll do is we'll say hey we're going to find a nice long set of stairs a nice long hill and we're going to go up and down up and down up and down that for an extended period of time now here what we're going to do is we're not going to just go straight into a heavy pack on these things because that can grind a lot of people up but we'll significantly drop the pack weight when we introduce this Sometimes we'll start with body weight, sometimes with a light pack or whatever it may be, and then we will rebuild.

[14:36] And over, again, six to eight weeks of doing these steering heels, we'll get a little bit heavier, a little bit heavier, a little bit heavier, a little bit heavier, slowly progress this. And because our actual hiking during this stage is a bit heavier already, we're kind of still getting that balance. We're exposing the body in this elevation up and down to pack weight and slowly building it up and up and up. And we're still getting plenty of pack exposure during our hiking.

[14:59] So again we may do this for like six to eight weeks and then we'll transition that stair and hill session into the overloaded stuff so we'll look at that overloaded stuff we'll load the pack up really really heavy and weigh the body down like a turtle and go with that and we might do that for six to eight weeks so you can kind of see this natural progression here we start with a flat walking then we go to the stair and hill climbing with like light moderate weight and slowly build that and then we go into that overloaded stuff and step by step by step that's going to really complement what we're doing with our hiking. And then the strength training itself is just going to.

[15:33] Help enhance that very very very simple and then obviously you know that may not be the only cardio you're doing in the week but if you're doing extra training and say i want to do more conditioning want to do more cardio you just can do other sessions which aren't which aren't so much pack related so you may do some interval training you may do some running or some quicker walking sessions or whatever but essentially we end up doing two pack sessions in a week and the rest the training is kind of worked out in other areas.

[16:01] So there you go, in all honesty. It's pretty simple and it doesn't have to be too complicated, but sometimes just putting a little bit of thought into this and a little bit of planning into this and just being aware of, okay, these are the different things that go on into my training. This is how I'm going to approach this challenge and this is how it's all going to come together. It can really go a long way. First of all, make sure you have that longer term hiking plan down. Rough plan goes such a long way. Number two, just make sure you are following a basic strength training program, which covers those bases. Doesn't have to change too much between a standard mountaineer and a mountaineer who's carrying a particularly heavy pack, but make sure you're being consistent with that. And then number three, just leverage your conditioning sessions. Just think about starting from easy, progressing over time, use those to complement your training hikes, use those to expose the body to different stresses with that pack on, and use those to make sure by the time you hit your expedition,

[16:56] everything's feeling pretty good. A very, very simple system, but I promise you it'll go a long, long way. So with that being said, that's probably enough for me today. Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully that helps a few people. And hopefully it just gives some people a bit of a nudge just to do a little bit more structure in regards to this preparation. Because in all honesty, just with a tiny bit of planning, this can be so much more simple than a lot of people end up making it.

[17:22] So, last thing I will sort of say on this is if you are a Mountaineer and you're listening to this and you're like, okay, Rowan, this is cool, but in all honesty, I want some help with this. I want some help figuring out these training sessions. I want some help figuring out my strength training. I want some help figuring out this longer-term planning, whatever it may be. If you need some help with this, I would love to chat with you. If you want to learn a little bit more about our online personal training for Mountaineers, which we offer through Summit Strength, what I'd like you to do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a big video where you can learn a little bit more about our training, about how we go about things. And if it sounds like something you want to get involved with, or just the very least learn a little bit more, there's a link on there where you can book a call with our team, where we can have a chat, learn about your situation, your goals, and see if we might be able to help you. So if we want to learn a little bit more, 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 got a little bit out of it, and we'll talk to you very, you very soon. Bye.

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