An Unorthodox Endurance Workout For Mountaineers

In this episode, I explore muscular endurance workouts a mountaineer can use, which is slightly different from the typical approach of loaded elevation climbing or high repetition strength training.

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Alright, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are exploring an interesting muscular endurance workout, which a mountaineer

[0:09] can use to help improve their endurance in their legs. Now, muscular endurance, if you haven't heard the phrase before, is a really important quality of fitness for a mountaineer. And it essentially is the ability of your muscles to produce a moderate amount of force again and again and again and again without fatiguing. Now, in the world of mountaineering, this is really, really, really relevant for when we are actually going up mountains and climbing up mountains, our quads, our calves, a bunch of our legs are going to be burning out. And we don't want that being a limiting factor. So developing muscular endurance and making sure we can resist that fatigue and just keep on churning out step after step after step is a big priority. And traditionally in training, you know, mountaineers will typically develop this through loaded elevation work where they load up a pack, they go up a set of stairs, a hill, a stair climber, an inclined treadmill, even a box step, and just do repeated climbs and loading up the pack heavier and heavier and heavier. This is definitely effective. This is definitely the most specific thing you can be doing, and it's definitely something I recommend for mountaineers.

[1:18] Another way some people do this is doing hill running, where they'll find a nice long hill, and they'll do long efforts running up that hill. It'll get a good burn through the legs. It's not exactly the same thing as that loaded elevation work, but you know, can work well enough. And another option mountaineers will often do if they're a bit restricted in these areas is they'll do high repetition gym work. So they'll get a string of different exercises for the lower body, squats, step-ups, deadlifts, whatever it may be, and do high repetition stuff where they're getting a burn on the legs and just really, really repping, repping, repping, repping. And each of these work, you know, to varying degrees. And each of these can be really, really, really useful. And I would definitely encourage mountaineers to explore each of these options. You know, the running one is obviously one not everyone has to do. The high rep stuff is obviously not one everyone has to do. But, you know, if it appeals to you, go right ahead.

[2:10] But there are certain situations where these workouts and these more traditional approaches to muscular endurance, you know, maybe we want something a little bit different. Maybe we want to take a bit of a different approach. And that's where this kind of workout that I'm going to be talking about today comes in. You know, specifically for the elevation stuff, even though it is the most specific stuff you can do for mountaineering, and it's definitely something that's very, very worthwhile.

[2:35] Some people and some mountaineers out there, you know, they are going through their training, really trying to manage force through the feet and the knees. And they realize, look, this elevation stuff, whether it's the repeated going up or the repeated going down or whatever it may be, can be a little bit of a trigger.

[2:50] So they need to be careful of this and they manage how much they do and be wary. Or logistically, some people just may not be able to access these things. Maybe they don't have any hills or stairs. Maybe they don't have gym access or whatever it may be. Or maybe, you know, as a long-term program, a mountaineer might just be sick of this training. They may have been doing this for too long already and they kind of want to save these workouts closer towards their trips. But in the meantime, they still want to be doing some muscular endurance work and they just want a bit of variation. You know, in any of these situations, you know, this workout I'm about to describe can be quite useful. It can be a good option to help load up the quadriceps, build muscular endurance in a way that won't put a huge amount of pressure through the feet and the knees, in a way that doesn't really need a huge amount of access to elevation, and in a way that can be a little bit different and be a little bit fun for short periods.

[3:40] Now, this particular workout, it's called the cycle grind workout.

[3:45] What you need for this workout is you need a bike, a stationary bike, and specifically a bike which you can load up a significant amount of adjustable resistance. Now, what I mean by this is you need something that you can ramp up and get a lot of resistance on it. Some bikes you can do this on, some bikes in a gym, whatever it may be, or maybe if you just have one at home, may not be able to get quite as heavy. And this is really key. So old school spin bikes can be great for this because those you can just turn up and up and up and up almost indefinitely, and they're awesome. If you have access to like a Watt bike, that's obviously a bit more expensive option, but if you have one of those, or really any stationary bike, which does have a lot of resistance.

[4:27] And the workout itself, it's very, very simple. First of all, as always, warm up. Get a bit of blood moving around, make sure everything's ready to roll, and have a decent warm up. Then essentially what you're going to do on this bike is you are going to crank up the resistance very, very heavy. And essentially what we want to do is we want to find a resistance on the bike where we are basically cycling along and we are limited to a level where we can only go between about 30 to 40 RPM. So we can't really go heavier than that, even if we want to faster than that, even if we push harder, that's kind the limit. So the idea behind this is the limiting factor is the legs are just getting burny. The resistance is so heavy, it's holding you back to that 30 to 40 RPM. And we push through that. So I'll say it again, crank up the resistance to a level where you are limited to 30 to 40 RPM.

[5:23] Now, you will then get this resistance and be like, oh, yeah, I get a bit of a burn pretty quickly. And essentially what we're going to be doing is long intervals with this. You might do an interval for five minutes and just push through, crank through, or just churn through for five minutes, have a bit of a rest. You might do an interval from five to 40 to up to 60 minutes even. And essentially as you're breaking this up, you know, have a little rest and then repeat. Now, the key to this particular workout is just finding that sweet spot of resistance. Similar to when we're talking about like doing the incline elevation stuff when you're doing overloaded hill intervals we kind of want to get to a pace where we're so loaded in the pack that we feel the legs burning but we're limited in speed that we can't really get out of breath that's pretty similar to what we're doing here we want to load it up so heavy that we feel that burn on the legs but we are stuck at a pace where we don't really get out of breath we can probably still do nose breathing the entire workout where we're breathing in and out through the nose, And ultimately, if you are getting to a point where you're getting huffed and puffed with this workout and you're getting out of breath, then you probably need to crank the resistance up and slow your pace down a little bit more. And that's the key. This isn't really a cardiovascular workout. You're not trying to get out of breath. You're just loading up those quads.

[6:38] Now, to progress this, you would sort of start with whatever. You give it a go, see how it feels, and break it up in intervals. It's a little bit of trial and error initially. But essentially, whatever you start on, then we want to think about progression week after week. So, you will notice with this particular workout that it'll improve really, really quickly in the sense that at first, you might be like, this is a little bit awkward, it's a bit tough, but week by week by week, it'll get easy quickly. So we do want to progress this. So number one, you want to make sure that you are regularly adjusting and bumping up the resistance where you need. So even if you get to, you do a workout and interval one and two and three, you're kind of at the sweet spot. And then interval four, you're like, hey, this is actually feeling pretty good and feeling pretty easy. Well, crank the resistance up. And then the next week, when you do it again, you'll probably hop on, I did the resistance I did last week and all of a sudden it feels easy. So you just need to keep on constantly adjusting the resistance so you stay in that sweet spot.

[7:30] And then on top of that, each week, beyond just increasing resistance, we typically want to progress the intervals. And what I like to do is increase the length of the working intervals and reduce the rest. So to give you an example of this, what it may look like over a four-week period, really, really, really simple. Week one, we may hop on the bike, play around, figure things out, get the right resistance, do a bit of trial and error, get that right. Then our workout, we may end up doing five minutes of high resistance, just cranking it out, churning it out for five minutes, then two minutes of low resistance. We still like moving along, but it's a rest. It's easy. It's casual. And you might do that six times. So you'll end up getting 30 minutes of high resistance work.

[8:09] Then week two, as I said, improves very, very quickly. So we may end up doing 10 minutes of high resistance, two minutes of low resistance and doing that three times. So it still ends up being the same amount of work, like 30 minutes, but you are producing the rest extending the intervals.

[8:25] Then the next week, you may end up going, okay, I'm going to do 20 minutes of high resistance, have a couple of minutes rest, and I'm going to do that twice. Ends up being about 40 minutes, a little bit more, but a progression, and you probably will notice it's very, very doable. And then week four, you might just hop on and just do 45 minutes straight of just churning it out, grinding it out, and away you go. Obviously, there's a million or one different ways you can go about this progression scheme, but that's the kind of sort of route you may take.

[8:51] Now, this workout, up, it can be very, very useful. It can be a nice mix up for endurance and it can be a nice thing of just getting a little bit of a different force in the quads, which can play out pretty well for the rest of your training.

[9:03] I would sort of say, you know, I wouldn't stick with this workout for too long because as I said, it improves pretty quickly. And then it does tend to stagnate pretty quickly as well. On top of that, you know, we don't want this completely taking over your endurance work. So we do want to make sure you're still leaning into the more tried and true and traditional approaches. So what I would typically do here is I'd use it in like three to four week blocks where I would do my heels or my stairs or high rep strength work, whatever it may be. Then I might do four weeks of this and then go back to something else and just filter it in every once in a while, just to give you a little bit of a break, give you a little bit of a different stimulus. Now, the other situation I will sometimes use this in a little bit more is if a mountaineer really does have like feet issues and they've got like history of plantar fasciitis or whatever it may be. And we're really, really, really trying to limit how much force is going through the feet. And when we're looking at their longer cardio in the week, if we're doing longer hikes, we realize that's kind of, we're pushing that and that's the little limit of how much stress we can put through the feet. Then in that situation, we may do the cycle grind a little bit more because we can work on this, build up the quads, help that, but doesn't put stress through the feet. So this can be a handy one for people who do have foot issues because it just can manage to load around that.

[10:21] But with all that being said, you know, if you are looking for a different option for your muscular endurance work, this can be a good go. It's not going to completely replace your heels or your stairs or your steps or whatever it may be, but it can be something nice to mix things up, give the body a bit of a change, apply a slightly different stimulus, and it can be pretty fun to do as well. So if you're looking for another muscular endurance workout, you know, give this a go. You might be surprised about how much you like it. Now, last thing I will sort of say, as I always say in these podcasts, if you were a mountaineer and you were interested in getting a little bit of help with your training, what I'd like you to do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. Now on that page, there's a big video talk through our programs. And if it does sound like something you want to explore a little bit more, there's a link on that page where you can book a free call with our team. We can have a chat, learn about you, your situation, your mountaineering and everything you got going on. And we can 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 and we'll talk to you very very soon.

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