Breaking Up Long Cardio For Mountaineers

​In this episode, I explore whether breaking up your long cardio days into shorter sessions throughout the week is an effective or recommended strategy to help manage scheduling.

Episode Transcript:

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

[0:03] we are talking about breaking up your longer cardio sessions. Now, when it comes down to training for mountaineering, one of the cornerstones of effective preparation is fitting in long, steady state, lower intensity sessions. Most mountaineers will do this either through running, whether it's road running or trail running or hiking or a combination of two. Now for me as we talked about on the podcast before even if my mountaineers absolutely love running i always encourage them to do some longer pack loaded hikes and one thing i really really really advocate for pretty much for every single mountaineer that i work with and that listens to this podcast is in their preparation try to make sure sure they get some long days hiking with a pack, trying to eventually, at the peak of their training, replicate the longest day they're going to do on their climb with the heaviest pack weight they may expect. So some people may start off doing, you know, three, two, three, four hour hikes or whatever with a relatively light pack, and then slowly build up to a seven or eight hour hike with a full pack, or a nine or 10 hour hike, or even a 12 hour hike, or whatever may be. Obviously, this isn't always perfect for people who are doing big summer days of 15, 20 hours, we may not end up doing that much in your training, but you get the general idea.

[1:29] Now, obviously the buildup to that, there's a lot of details that goes into how we build that up, what we do around that, because obviously there's a lot of different training that helps support that, but that's kind of the general idea. And while this makes sense on paper, and this looks really, really good, and if you can do this, you can just consistently build up your hiking and your pack weight week after week after week after week after week and hit that peak towards the end, fantastic. Awesome. Go with it. Really, really, really good.

[1:55] But this often ends up being this long hour consuming hike ends up being the trickiest session just to really be consistent with for a lot of people. Why? Well, you know, it's pretty simple. Obviously, this is the biggest time commitments you're going to be doing. Three hour hiking is hard enough to fit in sometimes if we've got a busy life or the young family or whatever it may be. Building up four hours, five hours, six hours, seven hours, eight hours, all of that. It can be tricky to fit this in consistently. Not everyone's doing it every single week, but even so, if you're doing it every two weeks or three weeks, it can be tricky.

[2:29] Now, weather considerations can be really tough. Rain can just get in the way of a hike and build that out. Snow, if you're in the middle of winter, some people are like, I just cannot get that length of hiking. It's not safe for me or whatever. Same thing for heat. If you're in the middle of summer and you're like, hey, it is stinking hot by like 10 a.m. It's not safe for me to doing hiking with a heavy pack by then. There's only so much hiking you can do. And obviously travel, if you don't live right next to a trail, maybe that extra time of driving to trails can just be a real thing that gets in the way. So being consistent with this type of thing can often be tricky. So quite often, mountaineers are looking a way to be flexible here with these

[3:06] sessions, which leads to today's topic. Because usually the first thing people ask me here is we put together a plan or make some recommendations and we say, look, you can hike you've sort of said you can hike every couple of weeks but realistically it's getting a little bit tricky to fit in some of the longer sessions many people's first thought will be like, is it okay if I just break this up? So if I've got a six-hour hike for this week, is it okay if I break this up and do three hours in the morning or three hours in the evening? Or is it okay if I break this up over the week? So instead of doing one long hike, I end up doing two medium hikes. And that's the question that often comes up.

[3:43] Now, in the perfect world, if you have considered this in your training, perfect world without any other considerations, The best thing you can do for your preparations is try to do these longer sessions all at once. Like obviously you can rest during the session, you can have lunch when you're on the trail and this and that, but try to do it in one session.

[4:02] Why? Well, getting this accumulated fatigue and this accumulated time spent moving is really, really valuable. You know, number one, it'll train the body and mind just to move for this duration. Just get the legs used to going for this amount of hours over time, get the mind useful to be able to keep up with this over time. It'll expose the body to fatigue, which will creep up hour after hour after hour. It will give specific training adaptations to help deal with this long-term fatigue. These longer sessions also give us the opportunity to practice practical skills, things like nutrition and hydration and pacing and resting schedule to see what works best for you. Because when we do shorter hikes, two three four hours whatever it may be quite often we can kind of just do whatever for nutrition whatever hydration whatever for pacing it's not a big deal but when we get up to five or six or even seven or eight hours these things get more and more important so it's important to practice this early and find out what's going to work for you and then also practicing mental skills like purely just staying switched on and motivated and paying attention and making good decisions When you're fatigued after five hours of pack hiking, it is important to practice.

[5:17] So it can be very valuable there. Now, on the flip side, if we end up breaking up the hikes and say we have to do two three-hour hikes as opposed to one six-hour hike, we can lose bits of this because it is going to be a little bit different on the body and the mind than just doing that one session all over. Yes, even if the equivalent volume in the end, you've done six hours worth of hiking and over the weeks, you're still building out the same amount of time in those energy systems with that pack weight, this and that, it is a little bit different. You won't hit that accumulated fatigue of hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. You won't quite need to lean into those practical things. As I said, it's very easy to just do whatever on the shorter stuff and still survive. And if this is all new to you, you never really figured out your nutrition for longer days or never figure out your hydration or pacing, this can leave some blind spots, which just don't hold up on longer days. So we definitely you know we do lose a little bit so in the perfect world if you have the opportunity i strongly advocate aiming for these longer sessions and just doing them as one session.

[6:22] However obviously big caveat to this one thing i often talk about on this podcast is i'm a big advocate as well of practical over optimal in the sense there are the perfect things we can do with our training, the optimal things. But if that's just not going to be practical for you to do consistently, to fit into your life, if it's going to add a huge amount of extra stress or concern or whatever it may be, it may not be the best option for you. If it is just not realistic for you to do your longer cardio all at once, all the time, then break it up. It may not be optimal, but if it's more practical, go for it. Instead of doing, for example, one long hike per week, You could sort of say, you know what, I'm going to break up these hikes and I'm going to do two or three sort of shorter hikes through the week, which, you know, some people that may be easier. And then just once a month, I'm going to fit in something a bit longer. And I'm going to make sure that I block out time in my calendar once a month to get some exposure to that.

[7:23] Or you could sort of say, you know what, I'm going to, I just, it's really hard on my calendar to fit stuff in. So maybe my base plan is I'm just going to break things up. I'm going to do these shorter hikes multiple times in the week. And then just if the stars align, if I get some time, if the family has a social occasion or whatever it may be, then I'll just fit in a longer day. That's not ideal, but you can get away with it. It isn't perfect. It's not optimal, but you obviously have to work around what you can do with. Now, the only caveat to this, I would sort of say that practical option, use it if you need. Don't feel bad if you need to do it. It's fine. Work around your life. The only caveat to this.

[7:59] Is I would sort of say, if you are getting closer to a major expedition, if you've got a big particular goal coming up, and if you're getting to your last like six to eight weeks of training and you haven't really been able to do much consecutive long stuff, you've been leaning into breaking up sessions and this and that, you know, at this stage, some sacrifices may need to be made to fit this in. I'm not saying you have to do this for months and months and months at a time. But in this final period, you may just have to get it in somehow because you do need to make sure the body is ready for these hours. You do need to make sure the mind is ready for these hours. And if you haven't done it all the way up to the end prep, yeah, you may just have a few gaps in your prep. So I'm not usually someone who sort of says, hey, suck it up. You're going to make some sacrifices, fit things in. But if there is a major expedition and this is missing, yeah, you know, the last little period, might have to do things. Now, you may be in the situation if you're struggling with heat, you may have to wake up stupid early and get up at like 3am and just start the hiking then so you can get it all done. Or you may have to say no to some social events, or you may sort of have to ask your partner like, hey, do you mind me disappearing on Saturday to do this?

[9:15] I know that's a tricky conversation, but whatever it may be. Or whatever it is, Just do what you need to do to kind of fit all of this in. In this situation, it probably does need to happen. Again, it may not be every single week, but you do need to get some of this longer days before you head away. But aside from that, strive if it is possible, do the longer sessions as one, but if not, break it up how you can. Practical is typically better than optimal minus obviously that last little period. So there we go. I'm not going to talk too much more about this. I think it's all pretty much common sense, but it has come up pretty a few times recently. And it is something that most people ask the question of first time when it

[9:53] is end up being a bit tricky to fit in. So do with that as you will, but I hope that makes sense. I hope that's useful. Last thing I will to say as i always say on this podcast if you were interested in getting a bit of help with your training and preparation for your mountaineering you can learn about our online personal training for mountaineers at summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer if you want to learn more go to that page there's a nice video you can check out a bit about our program and if it sounds like something you want to learn a bit more about 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 from there so go to summitstrength.com.au slash Mountaineer. So with that being said, thank you for listening. Hope you've enjoyed it. Hope you get a bit out of it. And we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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