Don't Peak Too Early

​In this episode, I explore one of the biggest issues I see from mountaineers when it comes to long-term training for a big expedition. 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking about probably one of the biggest mistakes I see from mountaineers with their training and specifically for mountaineers who are leading into a bee expedition and they're taking a little bit of a longer term training journey.

[0:21] And that is, please don't peak too early. Now, where this is coming from is I probably had in the last month, probably like four or five different conversations with different mountaineers around the world who kind of fall into this category. And the way I use inspiration for these podcasts is, look, if this is coming up again and again in my conversations, it's probably something that needs talking about a little bit more. And essentially, the situation goes a little bit like this. You know, these mountaineers, they've all sort of had a particular expedition or multiple expeditions as a long-term journey. And they've been about nine to 12 months away. And they were like, look, now is the time to start with my training. And they basically got into their training. They started building things out. They started doing some hiking, some running, some climbing, some pack training, some strength, a good mix of stuff. They were training well, and they were doing a lot of good things, each and all of them, which is great, which is fantastic. And that's what we want to see.

[1:24] And all of them, these five different conversations I had, I was asking, okay, like, you know, what have you been doing? Like, what have you built up to? What have you done recently? And all of them had gotten to this point.

[1:36] Or were very close to this point, where they were still about six, seven, eight, nine, even 10 months out from their adventure, and they'd already maxed out their pack weight. Whether it was from hiking sessions, and they were going out with the full pack weight that they kind of needed for their actual expedition, or whether it was for sort of elevation sessions, and they were doing box step workouts, or stair climber workouts, or whatever it may be, with this full pack weight which at first sounds good in theory because you're like well the more time i can spend using this heavier pack the better the more time i can sort of like the quicker i can build up with this the further i can progress so i can actually train with a heavier pack, in later training and that all sounds well and good but i'll tell you right now this approach which is a mistake.

[2:28] Because one of the most common issues we see in the mountaineering community, and I know I've said this is the most common issue, but there's another common issue, is overuse injuries in the sense of foot pain, ankle pain, shin splints, knee pain, hip pain. All these things are really, really, really, really common. And overuse injuries come from simply just doing too much too soon or doing too much for an extended period of time.

[2:54] And if you're a mountaineer who has a long-term journey, and you've already hit your pack weight six months before you go out, and you spend the next six months doing training hikes without full load, you know, that's a little bit of a red flag in regards to overuse injuries. The other situation is burnout. Purely, like, I think three out of five people that I talked to, they were telling me, look, I'm so bored of these workouts already. Yeah. Heavy pack training can kill the joy of hiking for a lot of people. Heavy pack training going up and down on a box step may be effective, but it's pretty boring. A lot of this stuff is very, very mononymous, which can be really, really, really good for mountaineers at certain stages of your training. But if you're trying to do this for months and months and months on end, again, it can just be a point where you just mentally burn out and we don't want that. Training for mountaineering is hard enough. Sticking with a long-term training journey is hard enough. And you want to be making sure you're doing the right things to give yourself the best chance possible of getting through it. So not only doing the right things to get your fitness and your strength where you need to be, but doing the right things to look after your body and make sure you're looking after your mind and your mood as well.

[4:09] So this is what I would really, really recommend. When you're sitting down and you're thinking about training for an adventure, and you've got a particular end date in mind. I think in the last episode, maybe two episodes ago, we talked about planning out your training hikes. That is the first thing you want to do. Sit down with a calendar, figure out where you need to be before your expedition, figure out what metrics you need to hit before your expedition and make a plan, to get there in the slowest and most gradual way possible. So if you have to get ready for a 25 kilo pack for eight hours and that those are your metrics that you're training for don't hit that four or five months before you go aim to hit that in the last month before you go, and then slowly and gradually build things up the same thing with like your conditioning sessions you know overload a pack training going up and down hills fantastic for mountaineers doing heavy pack training, doing step-ups or doing the Stairmaster or whatever it may be, can be really good for mountaineers. This is all really, really good stuff. But to get the best results from this type of stuff, I would typically say, leave it towards closer to your expedition. Don't overload things six months before. Wait until your last couple of months.

[5:30] Maybe last 10 weeks, depending on how much you're doing. If you're doing those super heavy pack sessions, time it out so it is closer towards your adventure. And in the meantime, you still want to train, you still want to be doing things, but just don't absolutely overload that pack weight. Don't peak too early. Chip away at your aerobic fitness. Work on that aerobic capacity. Build out those sessions. For your elevation, do elevation training, do box stepping, do stairs, do hills, do the step up, whatever it may be, use a moderate pack, use a light pack and progress the body in other ways. Play around with speed, play around with different box heights, play around with intervals, play around with doing different paces. All of this stuff can be really, really effective. But for that really, really heavy stuff, try to peak it closer towards your trip.

[6:19] If you don't want to do elevation training, then you don't even have to do it in the early days of training. Hold that for a little bit further down the line. Focus on other areas of cardio. Do some bike intervals. Do some rowing intervals. Do some sled work or whatever may be. And then introduce that elevation a bit further down the line. Essentially, you want to think about what are the, in the grand scheme of things, the best, hardest, most specific, most effective sessions that I can do for mountaineering. And we kind of want to create a plan which is going to get that all happening in the last phases of your training. So this may be anywhere from six to eight to 10 weeks. I don't know, 12 weeks, some people can hold on for, but that can be a little bit tough in itself. You want to make sure you're peaking where you need to peak.

[7:07] It sounds simple, but I promise you there are so many people out there who are kind of just doing a little bit much too soon, too much too soon. And again, I'm not saying you can't train hard. I'm not saying you can't do fun and challenging sessions, but those specific ones with the heavy pack, lots of elevation or full pack hiking or overloaded pack hiking go in with a bit of a plan. So, with that being said, I think that's enough on this subject. I hope that makes sense. I hope that helps a few people and maybe just opens up your eyes a little bit for some people who may be in this situation. If you are in this situation, it's not the end of the world, but maybe just revisit your planning, rethink about what you need to do in those final periods, and then maybe just adjust to training for now. The last thing I'll say on this is, you know, And this is specifically for mountaineers who have a particular big expedition in their sites, which is, you know, it's very, very easy to do longer-term planning. Now, for people who are just regular climbers, like they don't have one particular thing, but they have lots of climbs in the year or have lots of things going on, you can do this heavy stuff any time you want.

[8:14] But just don't do it for too long. So, the way I like to approach this is if you don't have a particular end date, but you're just, you know.

[8:23] Climbing whenever, is just cycle this in and out. So, maybe do four weeks of heavier stuff and then four weeks of stuff with a moderate pack and then four weeks of a different type of stuff and then four weeks of this and cycle it in and out of your training in one way or another. There's a million and one ways you can go about that and I'll probably do this in other – I'll talk about this in a bit more detail in other episodes. But just don't think about, okay, I have to do six months of full pack hiking just to maintain my fitness because, yeah, it may work but, my gosh, it's not much fun. Can suck a lot of the joy out of things, can be a real struggle with a mental battle, and if you're just doing it for too long, may lead to niggles. So, be smart on this. So, with that being said, as I said, I hope this helps a few people. Enough on this subject for now.

[9:09] Last thing I will say before I wrap things up is if you're a mountaineer who might find themselves in this position and you're like, oh my gosh, I've been training. I'm at this point where I'm just not enjoying myself or I'm picking up aches and pains, or I just have no idea how to go about this longer-term planning or literally anything like that, if you do feel like you need a bit of help with your training, I would love to chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit about how we help mountaineers with their training, what I'd like you to do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. Now, on that page, there's a bit of a video which talks to how we go about our training, how we go about our programs. And if that is something you want to explore a little bit further, there's a link on that page where we can book a free call with our team. We can sit down, we can learn about you, your situation, what you got going on, and see if we might be able to help you out. So if you did want to learn a little bit more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and we can take it from there. But with all that being said, thank you so much for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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