Fasted Training For Mountaineers

​In this episode, I explore the strategy of fasted training for mountaineers. I provide a brief overview of this type of training and discuss when and if I recommend it to mountaineers. 

Episode Transcript:

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

[0:03] we are talking a little bit about faster training for mountaineering. Now, before I get into things, I just wanna say a few things from the outset. I know this is a bit of a divided topic in the mountaineering community. I know there are a lot of mountaineers firmly entrenched in one camp or another around this. Some people love it, they swear by it, it's the best thing in the world. Some people hate it, They think it's the most ridiculous thing ever, and they just do not enjoy it. And I know, you know, in the training for Mountaineering community, there's been, you know, some drama between certain businesses going back and forth about this type of stuff. And I know there's a lot of opinions. I will sort of say from the outset, the intention of this podcast is not to change your mind if you already have firm opinions on this. If you already do fasted training, if it works for you, if you enjoy it, if you see results and it's all good, then fantastic. Go right ahead. I'm not trying to change your mind.

[1:04] On the flip side of things, if you're the type of person who has zero interest in this type of thing, if maybe you've tried it before and you don't like it or whatever, again, I'm not trying to change your mind. I'm not trying to push anyone in any direction. the intention of this podcast today is more for people who are just kind of coming across this subject coming across this concept of faster training because it often gets talked about in the mountaineering community and they're just gathering information and deciding if it's going to be right for them or not and i just want this to be a very very simple and very very common sense overview of it without having to get bogged down in the more technical stuff without getting bogged down in all the science, without getting bogged down in a massive article you have to digest,

[1:50] but just something very, very, very simple, which can give you a bit of an overview. So with that being said, let's talk about it. Now, if you haven't heard of faster training before, essentially all it is, is going out and doing longer cardio sessions. So running, cycling, hiking, whatever it may be, without any food in your stomach. And depending on who you talk to, It may be avoiding eating from anywhere from four hours to 12 hours before training.

[2:19] Now, the general idea around this and the general principles of this, it's very, very simple. When it comes down to your body, the body has two main sources of fuel for exercise. And if we want to get technical, yeah, there's other things, but realistically, two main sources. We have carbohydrates and fats. Now, carbohydrates are typically very, very easy for the body to access.

[2:47] They're quick to digest, they're quick to use, and the body really likes using carbohydrates for exercise. Now, the drawback of carbohydrates for exercise is the body can only really store a certain and a limited amount of them at a time. The body doesn't have unlimited stores of carbs. So as we exercise, particularly when we're looking at endurance sports, over time, we will deplete our carbohydrates. And if we don't replenish them, then that can get us into not a great situation. And if you ever heard the term bonking before, where we basically just feel like we've absolutely just hit the wall in regards to exercise, that typically happens when we have just completely diminished our carbohydrate stores. So carbs are easily accessible. The body likes them, but their body can only store a certain amount at a time. Now, on the flip side, fats, our body fat. Fat isn't quite as easily accessible for the body when it comes down to energy. Especially as the body gets at a slightly higher intensities but the positive of that is the body has almost unlimited supplies of body fat even the skinniest person out there skinniest mountaineer out there still has a huge amount of potential energy in regards to the stored body fat.

[4:02] So if left to our own devices the body typically will prefer carbohydrates it will still use fat but we'll definitely have a lot of carbs that are trying to fuel our exercise. The idea behind this and the idea behind fasted training is if we train in a fasted state, during our hiking, during our running, during our cycling, if we enter those sessions and train without carbohydrates in the system, it will then force the body to diminish or deplete whatever stored carbohydrates we have. And then therefore, after that, it has to rely on fats.

[4:42] And over time, as we apply this over the weeks and the months, this will increase our body's reliance on fats during exercise, because the body will adapt to this and improve our ability to use these fats, which will reduce our need to keep on refueling, reduce the need for us to keep on eating carbohydrates during exercise and keep on replenishing that, which hypothetically will improve our performance. It's pretty simple and it's pretty basic. Body likes carbs, but we can train it to use more fat. Very, very simple. Now, this absolutely makes sense logically. From an endurance perspective, when we're looking at having to eat over and over and over on these endurance events, climbing up a mountain, making sure we're getting enough calories in, making sure we're getting enough carbs in and staying on top of that, it logically makes sense that if we can get away from that. We don't have to keep on refueling. We can actually access this stored energy a little bit better. This can be really beneficial.

[5:37] However, there are a few important points we kind of need to keep in mind here.

[5:41] Number one, when it comes down to improving our ability to access those fat stores and what's called fat adaptation, faster training can help with this. But one thing that a lot of people miss in this equation is just good endurance training, meaning doing large amounts of long duration training in a good training program that will improve your fat adaptation as well a lot of people like hey it's all or nothing if i don't do faster training i will never get a fat adaptation and they kind of miss the point that a good endurance training program will help this to a degree either way the second important point on this is faster training for the majority of people i'm not going to say everyone because some people don't have this issue but faster training can suck especially in the early days when you're just first doing this what can happen is you can do the sessions you'll be like initially like oh my gosh it's got no energy everything feels harder i'm getting tired earlier and this and that, a lot of people will try these fasted sessions and they'll just feel gross.

[6:50] And on top of that, you know, fasted sessions can compromise our training performance, meaning maybe we're going out for runs, we're going out for our bike rides, whatever it may be. We just can't actually go as far or as fast or whatever it may be. And if we don't improve on that, that can compromise the actual adaptations we're getting from our training. And on top of that, you know, some people kind of get stuck in a failure loop with this in the sense they're like, hey, I'm going to do fasted training. I stick with it for three weeks, but I absolutely hated it. I didn't do it for long enough to really get the adaptation effects coming in. But like I did for three weeks, I'm like, this sucks. And they fall out of it. And then they're like, well, I'm a failure because I couldn't stick with it. And they start beating themselves up. They start getting negative. And then they do for normal training for a couple of weeks. And they're like, I'm going to try it again. And they do it for a few weeks and they fall off and this and that. And this is like a failure loop where we keep on just beating ourselves up and being negative and keep on returning the stuff that we don't particularly enjoy. Now, I know there'll be people out there who do this and they're like, hey, I have no issues. I've never struggled with it. It's fine with me. They'll be like, what are you talking about, Rowan? But that is a direct story that I've heard from many people and probably a dozen different endurance athletes over the years who've directly been in that failure loop with this type of stuff. We don't really want it.

[8:05] The next point for this is when it comes down to the research, and I'm not going to get too deep into quoting studies and all of that but as a general overview of the research on fasted training it does still seem pretty debatable if faster training is going to lead to better performance in endurance sports however as we are talking about the training for mountaineering podcast one big caveat to this is mountaineering obviously isn't a race we typically don't have to hit certain speeds. We typically don't have to sort of like beat other people. And a lot of the evidence is looking at performance markers.

[8:46] So can you do quicker speeds? Can you do like sustain quicker and more outputs or whatever may be? So looking at the research that looks at endurance sports, it doesn't, it seems debatable whether it improves or not. But then you could argue that, okay, mountaineering, it's not exactly the same. Like, yeah, there is a bit of debate there. Bit of a gray area. And then finally, the last point I want to make before I get into my opinions on this is specifically for high-attitude mountaineers. As we go up to high-attitude, the body will prefer carbs even more so. The higher we go up, the more the body wants carbs, the more reliant the body goes on carbs. And that does need to be a consideration we need to take if we're doing high-attitude mountaineering. Now, as I said before, with all of this, there are people infirmly in both camps. Again, some people will be listening to this already and they'll all be mentally checked out saying, oh, Rowan, that point's wrong, that point's wrong, that point's wrong. You know, I do all of this, I don't have these issues. Or, you know, there are other people like, well, Rowan, you're sort of being, you know, a bit vague there in regards to performance benefits. Like, you know, isn't there studies saying there isn't performance benefits or whatever it may be? There's a lot of people in both camps. And again, I'm not trying to convince you if you already have a very strong opinion.

[10:00] Definitely some people go out there, enjoy it and love it and see good benefits from it. A lot of people out there do it, hate it, don't love it at all. For me, as my recommendation, when it comes down to faster training for mountaineering, it's pretty straightforward. For the most part, and for the majority of my mountaineers, I don't particularly

[10:21] recommend faster training. If someone comes to me and they're like, hey Rowan, what do you think of this? Or should I be doing this? For the most part, I don't recommend it. As long as you are doing a good and effective and well-structured and progressive endurance training program, you're probably going to be improving your fat adaptation either way, which is going to be beneficial. And I would argue that it is much easier and potentially more effective to simply make sure that when you're actually out on your expedition, and when you're doing your climbs or going up the mountain or whatever it may be, just making sure that you are fueling right and you're regularly replenishing those carbs by the food you're taking in, I would argue that is much easier to do and potentially more effective for your performance.

[11:11] On top of this, if you go about this and just train well and fuel right, it saves all the misery of faster training. So when you go and you do your training sessions, you can train at the best of your abilities, you can reduce excuses around mood, around energy and all of this, and just get you in a really good spot. But the majority of mountaineers out there, that's kind of what I typically recommend. Again, if someone comes to me and they already do it and they love it and they enjoy it, I'm not going to argue that they shouldn't do it. But for the most part, if you're considering it, that's my recommendation. Now, there is a caveat to that. In the sense, there is a section of mountaineers that I can see the argument being a little stronger and typically the mountaineers i'm kind of more on the pro side of this for those who logistically.

[11:59] Find that refueling on their expedition is just not going to be practical. Meaning logistically, getting that nutrition in and getting those carbohydrates in on your climb is just not going to be realistic. This typically ends up being the people who are kind of doing those 8,000ers, who are getting up really, really, really high, who have those massive summit days of 10, 12, 20 hours or whatever may be, where for temperature reasons or equipment reasons or whatever it may be. It just may be literally impossible for you to get food in during that time. You may be spending hours and hours and hours up there and you're like, well, all my food's frozen or I can't get my gloves off, my mittens off or whatever it may be.

[12:39] And I'm 100% sure that I'm not going to be eating for all of this time. In that situation, I can definitely see more benefits.

[12:48] I still wouldn't sort of say, hey, you know, mountaineers coming to see me and saying, hey, I'm going to do an 8,000er. And i would say you have to do faster training but i can see more sense on that because it makes sense that okay we're not going to be able to refuel we make sense we need to get get ready for that type of challenge of just not eating for so long and moving and exercising and it makes a bit more sense there but outside of that logistical situation i would sort of say you know you probably don't need to do it again if we went like on the subset like if we were looking at say someone who's doing a race, like trail runners or something, and maybe their eating opportunities is a bit limited, or maybe they don't want to have a huge amount of stuff or whatever it may be. Yeah, again, logistically, I could see a bit more argument for that. But for the most part, mountaineering, you can stop a little bit more. It's a bit more practical to eat as we go. I think fueling is...

[13:42] A little bit more practical in the mountaineering community.

[13:46] So ultimately, as a summary, faster training, it's not something I love. It's not something I really, really recommend, but I can see potential benefits in certain situations and I can fully understand if some people want to lean towards it. Last little thing before I wrap this up, if you are going through faster training and if you are going down this approach, a few things you just want to keep in mind. Number one, what I'm talking about today, faster training, it doesn't mean a completely a no-carb diet. It doesn't mean keto or anything like that. We're talking about specifically fasting before long-duration cardio sessions. There's a whole other kettle of fish when we're talking about keto and everything like that, which is a bit more of an extreme version of this, but we're not really talking about that today. I may do an episode on that further down the line, but that's not what we're really talking about.

[14:33] Number two is if you are doing fasted training, just to be aware that this type of fasted stuff, It's only really appropriate for your lower-intensity sessions, for your long-duration cardio. When you're doing higher-intensity exercise, no matter how fat-adapted you are, the body's going to want carbs. So if you're doing interval training, if you're doing sprint training, if you're doing higher-intensity elevation sessions, like going up and down stairs or hills at higher intensities, if you're doing strength training, don't do those fasted. Make sure there is some food in you. make sure there is some carbs in you because the body's going to want it and if you're not having it you can probably survive but you're probably not going to perform as well as you can and then finally faster training even if you are doing lots of faster training and even if you're that this and that it doesn't mean you always want to be fasting when you're climbing when you're actually on the mountain yes logistically as we said before there may be situations where it's just not feasible, but when it is feasible you still want to fuel you still want to replenish things you want to give the body the advantage it has the advantage of maybe fat adaptation and maybe there's the potential advantage there and then you complement that with fueling appropriately as well don't fall into the trap of saying hey i fasted trains i'm just not going to eat on the mountain, again you may survive but it's probably not the best way of going about things.

[15:53] So with that being said hopefully that makes sense hopefully that just gives a little bit overview of the topic. Obviously, there's a lot more nuance that goes into it. You can get a bit deeper in different situations and get a little bit more scientific and this and that, but hopefully that's just a general overview around kind of what it's all about, what you can potentially get about, get from it, and kind of what my personal opinions are on this. As I always say, when I approach these subjects, everyone does have their own personal approaches. The mountaineers that I typically work with, I'm never someone saying, hey, you have to take this approach, you have to do this, or you have to change that, or whatever it may be, because everyone's an individual. Everyone's got their own preferences or whatever it may be so i do have mountaineers who do faster training even though i'm not a massive fan of it um i do have mountaineers who've gone up to 8 000 and haven't done any faster training um.

[16:40] Yeah, it's not one way or the highway, but hopefully, you know, this gives a bit of an overview of my thoughts. So last thing I will sort of say, as I said, when it comes down to this faster training and fat adaptation, the key to any of this is making sure you have a well-rounded endurance program anyway, because if you're falling short on that, if you're not getting in the right training, you're not seeing the right progression, you're not being consistent, you know, you're leaving so many results on the table regardless. So for any mountaineer, as I always say with these episodes, if you are interested in getting a little bit of personalized help with your training for mountaineering. You can learn a little bit more about my online personal training for mountaineers at summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, you can learn a little bit about our training. And if it sounds like it's something you want to explore a bit more, you can book a call with our team and we can have a bit of a chat, get to know you, learn about you, your needs, your situation, and see if we might be able to help you out. So with that being said, 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, I'm going to wrap up today's episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope this made sense. I hope it helps a few people. If anyone has any follow-up questions, feel free to reach out anytime. But aside from that, have a lovely day and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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