Improving Breathing For Mountaineering

In this episode, we explore a brand new, free course to help your breathing when tackling steep ascents. 

​Sign up for our free breathing mini-course here:
https://www.summitstrength.com.au/breathing-mini-course

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Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So if you are a mountaineer who struggles controlling your breathing on steeper climbs and steeper ascents, I have something for you.

[0:11] Today, I have released a brand new free mini course, which covers a few simple but very, very effective drills, which you can use to help improve your breathing, comfort, and control when going up steep climbs. Now, in the mountaineering community and the hiking community, one of the biggest issues a lot of people face is they struggle with getting out of breath during steeper sections. We all go through it at certain times, but some people find this as a really big limiting factor because not only is it uncomfortable when we're going up and we're getting huffed and puffed, we're getting breathless, we're feeling red-faced and we're really, really struggling, but it can be a big limiting factor in regards to our performance because if we are constantly huffing and wheezing our way up a sense, we will fatigue earlier, we'll churn through more energy, we won't be able to focus on what we have to do technically, and it can be very, very tricky. So it makes sense if a mountaineer wants to improve this and get a little bit more control of their breathing, get a little bit more comfortable with their breathing when they're on steeper sections.

[1:14] Now, the world of breathing performance, the world of improving breathing, it is a bit of a rabbit hole. And there are a lot of people out there who talk about this subject. And one of the biggest issues I see around breathing training in the mountaineering and also the hiking community is I feel like a lot of people just get a little bit too complicated because there are a lot of breathing coaches out there or breathing specialists out there, which promote some certain ideas. Some of it were pretty good. Some of it maybe not so good, but in all honesty, for the majority of mountaineers out there.

[1:46] This type of stuff, I feel like it's just a little bit too complicated. Similar to training, to get the best benefits from training, you want to master the foundations. You want to master the basics. You want to do the pouring basic stuff, and that will give you the majority of your benefits. And then once you've done that, once you've got that foundation, once you've applied that, then you begin to layer on the more advanced stuff. But I often see in the mountaineering community is people like, all right, I struggle with this, so I'm just going to jump to the advanced stuff. I'm going to do breath holds. I'm going to use a training mask. I'm going to use your device, whatever it may be. And that's all well and good. It probably will be beneficial or potentially be beneficial in certain situations.

[2:25] But I feel like there's just so much benefit to do some really, really basic stuff. And that's kind of the idea of this mini course. Essentially inside, I just share with you some really, really simple, no frills breathing exercises, which are going to be relevant for you.

[2:41] Now, the course itself is titled Breathing Drills for Hikers. And throughout the course, I talk about hikers. And obviously, mountaineers and hikers, a little bit different, but pretty very similar. And as much as this course is talking about hiking, it's still going to be relevant for my mountaineering community. So, I wanted to talk about it today. Now, ultimately, in this course, it's really, really, really basic stuff, but it can be super, super beneficial. And the majority of mountaineers I talk to, I don't really hear them applying this or doing anything similar to this and just taking the time for this. And essentially in the course, we cover a couple of really foundational breathing strategies, which you may have heard before. It's not too much rocket science, but more importantly, I share three very simple breathing drills, which you can apply as part of your training and as part of your training sessions, which can make a big, big difference to your comfort and your competence when you've got those steeper sections.

[3:35] The big benefit of this is it's not going to add more training time to your week because you can literally use these sessions as your normal training. You can slot it into your training week and it's still going to be really beneficial for improving your aerobic fitness, improving your muscular endurance, and ultimately improving your mountaineering. And then just to wrap everything up, I do give a simple 12-week training progression around these drills.

[3:58] So you can actually get a visual around, okay, this is how it looks over time. This is how it naturally progresses. And this is how it works through. So you can get a visual around, okay, it's not just a few random drills, this and that, but this is actually how it will look as part of a training program.

[4:12] So if you did want to get your hands on this mini course, it is completely free and it's freshly released today. Now, to be very, very clear, as I said before, this is simple stuff. This is designed to be basic stuff. This is designed to be foundational stuff, which if you do a nail and are consistent with, it can make a really, really big difference. But to be very clear, this is not an advanced breathing course.

[4:35] We're not talking about breath hold training. We're not talking about using masks. We're not talking about fancy complicated techniques, but we're just doing some simple stuff which anyone can apply.

[4:46] Which will be very, very useful. The drills themselves may look deceptively simple, but I promise you, if you do them, it will make a big, big, big difference. So if you want to check this out, as I said, this mini course is completely free. All you need to do to check this course out to sign up is just go to summitstrength.com.au

[5:03] slash breathing slash mini slash course. That's summitstrength.com.au slash breathing slash breathing dash, I should say mini dash course. I'll leave a link in the show notes below just so you can check it out. But yeah, if you do struggle with your breathing, going up hills, going up steep climbs, going up steeper sections, or just in your training in general, I think this will be very, very useful. So if you want to check it out, I'll leave a link in the show notes below. You can take it from there. So with that being said, thanks for listening. Hope you enjoy it. Hope a few of you can enjoy the course and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

​Sign up for our ​
free breathing
mini-course here