Better Metrics Of Readiness For Mountaineers

​In this episode, I explore some better ways of judging your fitness, preparedness, and readiness for mountaineering than using a VO2 max test. 

Episode Chapters:

0:13 
Introduction to Mountaineering Metrics
1:36 
Alternatives to VO2 Max
4:26 
Training Hikes as a Measure
8:02 
Planning Your Training Journey
10:14 
Speed and Elevation Considerations
12:22 
Final Thoughts on Readiness
14:20 
Personal Training for Mountaineers

Episode Trancript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking through a couple of metrics of readiness a mountaineer can use to know if they are ready and prepared for their adventures.

[0:13] Now, in the previous episode before this, I was talking about VO2 max testing for mountaineers. And I was talking through why I didn't particularly think it was super necessary or beneficial for most mountaineers out there. And one of the things I briefly touched on was I talked about how I did not believe that VO2 max is a good measure of readiness for mountaineers. And what I mean by that is I have had people in the past asking me, if I'm training for this trip, what VO2 max should I have before I go away? And then what they're kind of getting at is they're like, hey, what VO2 max do I have to hit to judge if I'm going to be ready for the mountains? And my personal opinion when it comes down to this is that having a high VO2 max, it's definitely not a bad thing. And having a higher VO2 max and improving a VO2 max is probably going to be beneficial and most likely going to be beneficial. But I would never, never, never use it as a measure of readiness for mountaineers.

[1:20] It doesn't matter if you have a high VO2 max. So many people have performed in the mountains with a high VO2 max. So many people have performed in the mountains with a low VO2 max. It's not something we use as a judge of measure of readiness.

[1:37] But if we can't use this neat, lovely number of VO2 max, what else can we use? Well, I want to talk you through what I use personally for my mountaineers on how we judge this. Typically, the way I use a measure readiness and what I use to judge people's.

[1:58] Performance and ability to get out there is I use our training hikes. I specifically use what we are doing out on the trail with a pack and use that as a judge because I personally believe that's probably the closest thing and I think everyone would agree that's the closest thing we can get to actually going out and mountaineering. So the metric I use and the measure of readiness I use is essentially when a mountaineer is leading up to an expedition, what I want them to be able to do is two to three weeks before they head off on their expedition, I want them to be comfortable and confident going out and doing a day hike, which is the equivalent of their longest day of movement on the mountain.

[2:42] And the maximal pack weight they expect on the mountain. So for example, if you were heading off an expedition and you said, look, my summit day is expected to be about 10 hours of movement. And on another day, my heaviest pack weight is expected about 20 kilos. This is what we want to hit. Two to three weeks before you head off, we want to make sure you're comfortable doing a 10-hour day hike with a 20-kilo pack. That's the metric I use. Now, right off the bat, you will probably be thinking and very, very aware that this isn't perfect because there's a very big difference between 10 hours worth of climbing up a mountain and maybe 10 hours just doing flat hiking. And I know this doesn't account for altitude. And I know this doesn't account for accumulated fatigue, so day after day and potentially week after week. And all of that, I know this isn't perfect and I know it's not exact.

[3:40] But over the years, I have personally found this is the most simple thing we can aim for for the vast majority of people and the most accurate thing we can aim for for the vast majority of people. Because if a mountaineer came to me and said, look, I've got this coming up, I've got to get ready for 10 hours with a 20 kilo pack and I live next to a mountain, well, they can go out and do this test and do this assessment out in a mountain. They can get close to the elevation they need to hit, like up and down, and they can have a really good challenge. Alternatively, if someone lives in Texas and it's completely flat and maybe they can't actually travel to go do training hikes, then they can still do this measure. They may not have a huge amount of elevation, but they're going to do a huge

[4:23] amount of distance comparatively with that pack weight. And I know it's not exactly the same, and I know it has a few blind spots, and I know it's not perfect, but it works well enough.

[4:36] It's kind of what I use for most people. The main situation, you know, we'd sort of really need to adjust this, and it doesn't really line up very well, is if someone's doing just like one of those silly long summit periods. And if you're in the situation where your summit is expected to take 15 to 24 hours or whatever it may be, well, you know, we're probably not going to ask you to do a 24-hour training hike two to three weeks before you head off, because that's just asking for trouble. So in that case, you know, we may look at, okay, what is going to be the longest we can reasonably aim for? Can we aim for 10 hours? Can we aim for 12 hours? Can we aim for 14 hours? Whatever it may be, we'll set that as a measure and say that is a maximum. Then we'll do the max pack weight and we'll probably add a little bit extra weight just to compensate. So in this situation, we may say your summit day is going to be 20 hours. Maybe our max thing is going to be about 14 hours with like a 22 or 23 kilo pack weight. or whatever. Again, it's not perfect, and I fully understand it's not pretty as a nice whole number like VO2max, but that's kind of what we're looking at.

[5:44] Now, I know what you're probably thinking. People, you might be thinking, okay, that's all well and good. I get it. But this only works two to three weeks out because we're only ever going to do this two to three weeks out. How can I know if I'm ready or on the right track at least a month out or two months out or three months out or whatever it may be?

[6:07] Obviously, this doesn't work there. And this is ultimately where it comes in to having a plan in place. And one of the things I encourage people to do at the start of any training journey, if you're leading up to a specific date, is to sit down and come up with a plan for your hiking.

[6:26] Essentially, start sitting down with this plan. You schedule in that end metric two to three weeks before you head off. And then what you do with your plan is you work backwards from there. And you work backwards, ensuring you have a slow and steady and logical buildup. So you're not just doing random hikes, you're not just doing random pack weights, you're not just doing random distances, but you have a slow and steady and logical progression to get you to that point.

[6:53] I really recommend doing that at the start of any training journey. Now, admittedly, this is just a rough plan because it will change a bunch of times. You'll be hiking, weather will be terrible, you won't want to go out, you'll decide, you know what, actually, I'm going to go fly out to get in the mountains and maybe I'm going to do more hiking than usual or whatever it may be. But having this rough plan in place and this rough guideline in place is really, really valuable. Because you can say, look, I've sat down and I've figured this out and I'm four months away. Then I look at this rough plan. Am I where I need to be four months out? If so, great. Keep on doing what you're doing. Keep with the plan. Happy days. If not, if you're like, I'm behind or you know what? I was supposed to be up to a 10 kilo pack now and I'm nowhere near that, well, that's a really clear sign you need to change something. It's a really clear sign you either need to step up how much training you're doing, get some consistency or whatever it may be. And that's kind of what we look at. And on the flip side, if you're like, hey, you know what? I'm four months out and I'm kind of ready for where I need to be. You're so far ahead. Then you might be like, whoa, maybe it's time to pull things back so you don't burn out or whatever it may be.

[8:02] Now, that is the measure of readiness I use for 90% of mountaineers. As I said a bunch of times, it isn't perfect, but that's what I use and it does the job.

[8:11] Now, the other measure of readiness I do use for some people as well. So I'll use that for everyone, but some people do get another one. And the other measure of readiness we sometimes use is if someone does have a specific speed requirement for their trip. And if an expedition art says, hey, on your expedition, you are going to be expected to be able to climb a certain amount of elevation with a certain amount of pack weight in a certain amount of time, well, we probably need to consider that as well. Because the original measure of readiness doesn't really account for elevation, doesn't really account for speed. It's purely just time under your feet with the pack weight. So if you do have a particular speed you need to hit for, we probably want to put another measure in a set. So what we'll typically do is we'll sort of say, okay, we planned in our final long training hike. We know what we need to hit there. What we're going to do the week before that, so we're not doing these things on the same week, but the week before that, we're going to schedule in a session where we can look at these metrics we need to hit with elevation, and we're going to try and hit that. So if we have a big long hill, we're going to do a big long hill or hill repeats until we hit that elevation and get the right speed we need. Or if we have the stair climber, we're going to do this or whatever it is, and we're going to figure out something to fit in there.

[9:37] Typically, the way we approach this is we aren't aiming for the exact metrics that they recommend. If they have a specific speed, specific amount of elevation per hour, or a specific pack weight, typically what What we do with these sessions is we set our targets saying, hey, we're going to be a little bit heavier and a little bit quicker than the stated needs. So we're not just aiming for that minimum baseline, but that target is a little bit quicker. And this way we can compensate a little bit for fatigue, for terrain, for whatever it may be.

[10:07] Now, again, this type of thing, we're scheduling in this type of elevation and

[10:11] speed. I'm going to hit this. But again, it is a long-term target. We're going to do this three to four weeks before we head off. In this situation, how do I know if I'm on the right track? Four months out, three months out, two months out? Well, again, this is kind of where pre-planning comes in and where you have at least a rough idea of what you're doing with your training. You know, on this, typically, we want to just have a decent rough idea around at least how we're going to approach our elevation over the months of our training. This admittedly can be a little bit harder to nail down because it's not quite as clean cut and as easy as saying, I'm going to hike once every two weeks and I'm just going to build up and build up and build up and build up. Obviously with elevation, we may be in the situation where I don't want to do this entire training program or I'm going to do different sessions or I'm getting different variation or whatever it may be. So it can change from person to person situation quite a bit. But just charting out a rough idea around how you're going to do this personally can be really useful. So you may sit down and say, look, in six months, I'm going out and climb. And you might hypothetically say, okay, in the first, what's six months? The first few months, I'm going to focus on elevation and I'm going to focus on just hitting a certain amount of elevation, just building up to be able to climb for 60, 90, two hours at a time or whatever.

[11:27] Then the next period, I'm going to focus on these sessions. I'm going to start hitting some speeds. so I'm going to set myself a speed target and I'm going to start ramping up the speeds and really maintaining and hitting that then you might do that for a little while and you may say okay once I've nailed that then I'm going to introduce a bit of pack weight and what I'm going to do is I'm going to do week after week after week I'm going to introduce a little bit of pack weight and maintain this speed and you can kind of chart this out roughly again it'll change a bunch but it can give you a gauge you may take a completely different approach you may say you know what actually I'm going to start with pack weight then hit elevation then hit speed or whatever like a million and one ways to go about it but just for you personally having a bit of a plan, but ultimately when it comes down to it those are realistically the main measures of readiness i use for my mountaineers, it's not as pretty as having VO2 max a number. It's not as pretty as having some other type of test where you can just be like, hey, boom,

[12:19] good to go, or whatever it may be, if you can do this amount of stepping or whatever. But personally, I think they're the most relevant. I think they're the most applicable and also the most flexible for different mountaineers in different situations.

[12:31] As a general measure, they work out pretty well. And the way that we want to use these, just to follow up on this, is it should never be a guess that you're going to be able to do these things. It never should make you nervous on this final training hike or this final elevation whether you're going to be able to do it. The way that we want to use these is through your training process. There should never be any doubt that you're going to hit these things before you go.

[12:59] Because if you have that target in front of you, we should have a plan in place where you are crystal clear that you have a logical way of building up to that. And you are crystal clear you know how that's going to go over time and on top of that when you have that plan in place you should be crystal clear at any stage in your training if you're on track you should be able to say look i'm three months out am i on track for where i need to be to hit this if so great and if not you should be able to identify this very very early and have a clear sign that something needs to change need to do more training different training look at your nutrition look at your recovery, whatever it may be.

[13:40] That's the power of this thing. It's not shooting in the dark, just hoping you're going to be ready for it, but it really comes into part of a long-term plan and having a really logical buildup over time.

[13:53] So there we go. I know a lot of people when it comes down to mountaineering won't particularly love this approach. And a lot of people much prefer to have really more set in stone metrics and merely more set in stone things that want to in for, that's absolutely fair enough. But for me personally, I find this works really, really well. And I think it is a very relevant and flexible approach for mountaineers to look at this. So if you are a mountaineer who's wondering if you're going to be ready and wondering how to judge that, this is kind of what I like.

[14:20] So last thing I will sort of say on this is if you are a mountaineer and you're like, cool, this makes sense, but the thought of putting together a long-term plan just makes me cross-eyed. Or you know what, how the heck am I supposed to get up to these numbers. Or you know what? I've done my plan. I've sat down. I've figured things out and I'm so far behind where I need to be for now. Any of those situations, I would love to have a chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit more about our online personal training for mountaineers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, a bunch of information about our program. And if it sounds 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 for a bit of a chat. 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 you got a little bit out of it, and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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