Fatiguing Early During Longer Cardio? Look At These Areas.

​In this episode, we share some areas a mountaineer can look at if they are always fatiguing early in their longer hikes or runs. 

Episode Chapters:

0:10 
Introduction to Cardio Fatigue
1:57 
Assessing Your Progression
4:42 
Managing Intensity Effectively
5:57 
Nutrition's Role in Endurance
7:29 
Importance of Hydration
8:31 
Exploring Electrolyte Needs
9:26 
The Power of Mindset
11:28 
Checking for Underlying Issues
12:59 
Seeking Personalized Help​

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking through some simple ideas if you always feel like you're fatiguing

[0:08] early during longer cardio. Now, what I mean by this is any mountaineer who is in training, who's building up for the mountains, whether it's for a specific trip or just a big season, we wanna be making sure we're getting some longer, low-intensity cardio into our week. Whether this is hiking, jogging, trail running, cycling, or whatever it may be. Something where we can expose the body to long periods of movement at lower intensities for hour after hour after hour. This is the cornerstone of when it comes down to preparation. However, as much as this is really, really, really, really, really important, some people do struggle with this. Some people, when they get out, they're like, oh my gosh, I'm getting through things, but I'm really always tired. I'm always getting fatigued halfway through or three quarters and getting to the end is quite a struggle.

[1:01] This is bad enough if you're just training day-to-day and just having general fitness building up to things. But if you have a specific trip where you are actively building up and making your longer cardio harder and harder and harder and harder, if you're constantly having this fatigue early, it can be really tricky. It can really create a lot of mental doubts in us because we think, oh my gosh, I'm getting tired during my training here. What am I going to do on the mountain when it has to be day after day? Or maybe I'm at altitude or maybe I have these other challenges or whatever it may be. So if you are fatiguing early during your longer cardio, even if you're getting through it, it's definitely something you want to pay attention to.

[1:38] So if you do ever fall into this type of situation, today I'm going to talk you through a few really, really simple areas that you can look at just to kind of tick off and just make sure you're covering each of these. And if there's anything in here that you're not covering and you're like, hey, you know what? That doesn't really sound like I'm doing it. Well, it might make a bit of a difference.

[1:57] So with that being said, let's get into it. Now if you're fatiguing early during your longer cardio the first thing you want to look at is is your progression too fast now what i mean by this is anyone who is following a training plan and anyone who's using longer cardio should have a training plan in place and a plan of attack on how you're going to build that up how are you going to progress things week after week month after month whatever may be that may literally be as simple as sort of saying hey i'm doing trail running. Each week, I'm going to do 10 extra minutes of running. It may be a case of sitting down saying, hey, I'm going to do pack hiking as my longer cardio. And week after week after week, this is the distance. This is the time. This is the pack weight. I'm slowly building things up. If you're not doing that, start doing that. But even with the best plan on paper, if we're looking at a plan, we're like, cool, this makes sense, this slowly builds up and all of this. If you're constantly fatiguing early during longer cardio, you may want to revisit this because your progression may be too fast. You may be jumping up your distances too fast. You may be jumping up your pack weight too fast. And you may just not be giving the body enough time to consolidate things before ramping things up again.

[3:10] Now, you often hear like in the running world, the whole idea of the 10% rule of like, you should never increase your running by more than 10% per week or whatever. And a lot of people treat this as kind of gospel. But realistically, everyone is different. And there are so many different factors which affect how we recover, how we progress. So you may have sat down and put together a plan which follows certain rules of saying you shouldn't increase by this much and you're still getting tired, for you as an individual, you may have to slow things down.

[3:40] So first thing to look at is number one, look at your plan. If you don't have a plan, put together a plan. If the plan looks relatively aggressive in regards to increasing, reduce it down. What does that mean? Well, you could reduce how much you're increasing week by week, whether that's distance, time, pack weight, whatever may be. You could go into the approach of doing two weeks at the same distance or the same time and the same pack weight and then progressing. So instead of going up and up and up each week, you're just two weeks, two weeks, two weeks. You could look at doing a little step system where you progress for three weeks, pull things back for a week, progress for three weeks, pull things back. And instead of just going one, two, three, and then pull things back and then going four, five, six. So it's higher, higher, higher, higher. You may go one, two, three, pull things back. Then the next week, just do the same thing as week three. So you'll go one, two, three, pull things back, three, four, five, pull things back, five, six, seven, pull things back. There's a lot of different ways you can approach this. But first thing you want to look at is progression. Is it too fast? Have a look at it.

[4:43] Number two, if you're fatiguing early during your longer cardio, are you managing your intensity? If you've listened to any content or read any content about training for mountaineering, you would have had shoved down your throats, managing intensity, low intensity, making sure you are working your aerobic energy system.

[5:02] Even if you've heard it a million times, are you doing something to manage this? Because if you're going out for your runs or your hikes and your heart rate is just jacked the whole time or you're getting out of breath and huffed and puffed the whole time or whatever it may be and you're getting tired early, well, it's something you want to look at. How can you manage your intensity? Well, there's a bunch of different options. If you like heart rate training, you can use a heart rate monitor and aim for zone two. If you don't like heart rate training, use conversational pace where you can maintain a conversation or use nose breathing pace where you can maintain breathing in and out through your nose. Simple, simple, simple ways. But if you can stick to that for 95% of what you're doing with your longer cardio, and yeah, there probably will be periods where it's a little bit steeper, a little bit tougher, and your heart rate goes up or the breathing goes up, that's fine. But as long as the majority of it is managed, that goes a long way. So if you're not managing your intensity and you're fatiguing early, well, get on top of that.

[5:58] Number three, are you eating enough? This is the first place I look for so many people that I work with, because realistically, most people, when it comes to longer cardio, whether you're doing long runs or long hikes, you can survive with eating barely anything. You can survive eating nothing. But if you really, really want to optimize your energy, you probably want to be paying a bit of attention to your nutrition. And most people, when it comes to longer cardio, just don't eat enough. They're not replenishing their energy as they go through.

[6:27] General rule of thumb, if I'm looking at hiking and you're doing pack hiking as you're longer cardio, I try to get my mountaineers to get in the habit of having a bite or two or something every hour to 90 minutes. Now, this doesn't mean a full-blown snack or a full-blown energy gel every 60 minutes or whatever, because that'll make you sick, but just constantly grazing, aiming for something that's high carbohydrate, low protein, low fat, low fiber. The idea behind that, high carbohydrate to replenish our carbohydrates, which we are using, low fat, low protein, low fiber, easy to digest, not going to sit in your stomach, away you go. As a runner, obviously this is going to adjust a little bit because typically we're burning through a little bit more energy while running. So our energy mans may go up, but then obviously we're moving and digestion and carrying foods are a little bit tricky. So you need to put a little bit extra attention around that. But just general rule of thumb, are you eating anything on your longer cardio? If so, are you eating enough? Do you feel like you're eating at regular intervals and you're replenishing those carbohydrates? Because if not, probably something you want to look at.

[7:29] Number four, are you hydrated? The most basic thing, but my gosh, the amount of people who neglect this. Simple rule of thumb for hydration. Before you start your longer cardio, go to the toilet.

[7:40] If your urine is clear to straw colored, you're good to go. If it's a little bit darker, drink a glass of water. Go on your run, drink whatever your normal amount is. Whatever you usually do, just drink away on this and that. Once you're finished, go to the toilet again. Look at your urine. If it's clear to straw colored, you probably nailed your hydration. You're probably pretty good. If it is a bit darker than that, then that means, look, your hydration levels may have been off a little bit. So maybe next time we just want to emphasize eating, drinking a little bit more. Same thing for your hiking. Hiking is a little bit easier to get it in because, you know, you can just drink and drink and drink and it's a little bit easier. But same thing, you just want to just get a judge. I'm not going to throw around specific numbers for specific hours and this and that because everyone is a little bit different. But just do that little hydration test before and after, get a general vibe and just tinker with it as you go through.

[8:32] Number five are you using electrolytes realistically any type of longer cardio over two hours even 90 minutes if you're running it's probably going to be a benefit from some electrolyte supplementation a lot of people a little bit hesitant to use this but there's a lot of evidence to say it can be very very beneficial especially if you're doing something harder especially if you're doing something in hot weather you want to be taking it the added benefit for this a lot of electrolyte supplements you can get them with added carbohydrates in so that can double up as eating enough. But if you're doing longer cardio, you're fatiguing early and you've never really had electrolytes, well, probably something to look into.

[9:10] Number six, what is your mindset like? And what I mean by this is if you are going along your longer sessions and the first sign of challenge, the first sign of fatigue, you notice that mentally

[9:25] you're getting quite negative. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm so tired. Oh my gosh, my legs really suck. Oh my gosh, I'm so weak. If we concentrate on the negative and keep on thinking about it, it will actually make things feel harder. It will actually emphasize those types of feelings, and it will actually help us fatigue earlier. Alternatively, if we're positive and we're like, oh, I'm a bit tired, but you know what? I feel pretty good. I'll push through. Or you know what? I'm strong. You know what? I'm really, really happy I'm doing this or whatever.

[9:55] Purely keeping a more positive outlook can make a massive difference to your energy levels. It sounds a little bit woo-woo, but it is 100% true. So there's two things you can kind of look at here. Number one is if you do feel like you get a negative sometimes, use what we call positive reframing. Anytime you catch yourself getting a bit negative, thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so tired, oh my gosh, my legs are sore, whatever it may be, take a second, slip that statement into something positive. Instead of my legs are tired, my legs are getting a really good workout.

[10:27] Instead of, oh my gosh, I'm so tired. You know what? This is great. I'm preparing myself for the mountain or whatever. Just reframe it positively. This can take a little bit of effort to try and catch yourself at that, but it can be really, really powerful. And the more and more and more you do it, the better. The other option, and a lot of people don't particularly love this if they're hiking or trail running, but it can be an option. It's just using distraction in the sense of if you notice you're starting to get a bit negative, then having something which you can use just to distract yourself, break your mindset out, whatever it may be. The most simple option here is getting your headphones out, putting on a podcast, putting on some music, and just distract yourself there. Again, I know a lot of people don't love that when they're outdoors or on the trail or whatever may be, but it can be a really good option if you fall into it. So that's number six, what is your mindset like? And then number seven, this is for if you've had a look at the first six and you're like, you know what? I'm covering all of those. I'm pretty confident all of those, and I'm still getting pretty tired.

[11:26] Number seven is the next one, the final one you want to look at. And that's like, when was the last time you got your bloods checked? When was the last time you went down to the doctors and got a blood test?

[11:35] Maybe your iron level's low. Maybe your B vitamins are low. You know, occasionally these things do get flagged up and they can affect our energy. So if you've done all of these basic things and you're like, I'm covering that, I'm nailing that, I'm still always tired, maybe go to the doctors, just get a bit of a check up there.

[11:50] Always good to know. If you go on a high attitude, definitely good to know about that iron. That's always useful just to get that ticked that off. Now, all of that is pretty basic. All of that is pretty simple to self-direct. But nine times out of 10, something in there will make a bit of a difference. And then if you've done all of those, you've done your seven, you've seen all of that, and you're still struggling, well, that's probably a sign that you need a bit of extra help. On the progression and the intensity, you may want to be working with a coach or trainer who You can plan things out and make sure you've got a different perspective or make sure someone's putting guardrails in place to make sure you build up and managing the rest of your week or whatever it is. On the eating enough hydration electrolytes, maybe looking at a dietician instead of saying, you know what, let's sit down, figure out my exact numbers so I know what I'm doing and what exactly I'm doing and to help support me. Or in the mindset, even working with a mental strength coach.

[12:43] Or whatever it may be. If you think you're doing all of this right and there's still an issue, maybe getting that extra personalized help there may be the next step. But either way, hopefully, this gives a little bit of insight, a little bit of direction, and nine times out of 10, something in there will be making the difference.

[13:00] So with that being said, I'm going to leave things here. Hopefully, you never fall into this session where you're just constantly fatiguing. Every once in a while, getting tired, totally normal. But if it's a week after week, month after month, it's always happening, well, you definitely want to look into it. You definitely want to investigate because these longer sessions are so crucial for your long-term development, and we don't want them to turn into an absolute chore.

[13:22] So have a think about these things, and hopefully it'll help. Now, last thing I will sort of say when it comes down to this is if you did need help with this, or at least on the training side of this, and you're like, you know what? I need some help planning this out. I need some help applying this. I need some help adjusting this around my busy life. I need some help managing this around all my other training in the week and making sure I'm not overdoing things and I'm still progressing, or whatever it may be. If you did want to look at a bit of personalized help for your training for mountaineering you can check out the online summit program at summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer now on that page there's a big video talks a lot about our program and if it sounds like something you want to explore a little bit more there's a link on that page you can book a free call with our team and we can have a bit of a chat and see if and how we may 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 going to wrap things up there. Hope this is useful. Hope it helps a few people. Have a lovely day and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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