Planning Training Hikes For Mountaineering

In this episode, I discuss a simple approach a mountaineer can use for long-term planning for their training hikes (and other longer cardio sessions). 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking a little bit about planning training hikes for mountaineering, and specifically how a mountaineer who has a big expedition somewhere in their sights can do a little bit of long-term planning for the hiking they're doing

[0:18] as part of their training. Now, when it comes down to training for mountaineering, obviously the baseline of this is making sure we get plenty of long-duration, low-intensity cardio. You know, this has been harped on again and again and again and again. Mountaineers should know this because this is the best thing to develop aerobic capacity, best thing to prepare the body and the mind for long periods of movement. And it's something we just really can't skip in our training. Now, for mountaineers, when you're approaching this, you know, there's a lot of different ways you could incorporate this. You know, traditionally, a lot of mountaineers will do training hikes, which I think is the most simple way and the most accessible for a lot of people. Some people will use running or trail running for this. Some people will use longer cycling or, you know, even a combination of these. There's lots of different ways you can go about it. But essentially, the idea is just to expose the body to long periods of movement, which is going to be beneficial in a ton of different ways and slowly but surely build that up. And for a mountaineer who's just kind of getting out for regular season, they just want to kind of be ready for whatever comes their way. You know, you can kind of go out there and you can be a little bit ad hoc with it all and just approach it how you like.

[1:26] But if you are leaving leading up to a specific expedition or a specific date where you're going to be hitting the mountains you're like you know what i need to be in the best possible position for this particular date you probably do want to be putting a bit of longer term planning around this because i see so many mountaineers out there and i talk to so many mountaineers who don't really think about this so much they just kind of start with whatever level they're at and they're like, okay, the next time I go out, I'm going to do a little bit more. The next time I'm going out and do a little bit more. And they kind of take this sort of casual approach to building up. But the tricky thing with this is sometimes...

[2:06] If you're just taking this casual approach, you can't really identify where you are in the process. You can't really identify if you're ahead of where you need to be. You can't really identify if you're behind where you need to be. And it can end up getting people into trouble.

[2:22] And because of this, realistically, it is just crucial to have a bit of longer-term planning here. So you can be confident. You know where you are in the grand scheme of things, where you are in regards to your training metrics and where you are in regards to your whole journey leading into your expedition. And in all honesty, if you're not planning and if you're just flying by the seat of your pants and taking that more random approach, it can really, really make things tricky. If you just do realize like, oh my gosh, I'm eight weeks from my expedition. I'm nowhere near where I need to be. I ramped up way too slow and I was really way too casual about this. And you end up being really underprepared and really stressed and have to absolutely just ramp things up really quickly in the last bits, which isn't great. On the flip side, you know, some people, and this is very common in the mountaineering community, without a bit of planning, you might find yourself just ramping up way too quickly. You might actually hit your maximal metrics that you need months and months and months before an expedition. And I've talked to Mountaineer the other day who had hit their maximal pack weight and their maximal distances six months out before their expedition, which, you know, sounds all well and good being prepared.

[3:28] But this is a short road to just burning up mentally and like, oh my gosh, I've got six more months of this, or just picking up niggles and aches and pains from ramping up too quickly, or just maintaining these heavy loads for way too long. So realistically, a little bit of planning here can just go a long, long way.

[3:45] So today, to help with this, I'm just going to talk you through my simple process with this and how I actually personally go about planning this with my mountaineers. To be clear, this isn't the only way of going about this. It may not be the best way of going about this, but I personally like this approach because it's really, really simple. It's very, very effective. It's very, very flexible. And also, it kind of fits for a lot of different people, regardless of whether you have access to mountains or not, regardless if you can get out and do these longer sessions every single week or not, regardless of if your energy is up and down or whatever. It can be really, really flexible around all of these things. And I quite like it. So in this particular example, just to keep things simple, because in the podcast format, we want to keep things simple so it doesn't get too overly complicated. I'm just going to use the idea that as this mountaineer and you, let's say you are the mountaineer who's training for expedition. And you sort of say all the longer cardio sessions I'm doing. So all the one sessions of cardio that I'm doing that are accumulating multiple hours of movement at a time. All of this is going to be done with hiking.

[4:52] So it's just going to be hiking for my longer sessions and maybe in the week if you're a runner maybe you want to do some running in the week or some cycling or whatever it may be but these are going to be maybe shorter or more moderate sessions but our longer session for our training is going to be hiking that's what we decided on so once we've decided on that when we're sitting down to do this planning first and foremost you want to ask yourself a few questions and just get some clear information in your head number one you want to look at the expedition that you have coming up. And just ask yourself, what is the longest day of movement that you need to do on your expeditions? So, what that means is the longest day of you actually going up the mountain, how long is that going to take, roughly? Obviously, you don't know exactly, but roughly. Are you expecting a 12-hour summit day? Are you expecting an eight-hour day? Are you expecting a 24-hour day or whatever it may be? What do you think is going to be the longest day? Get a good idea of that. Number two, the next question, you want to ask yourself, what is the heaviest pack weight that you expect on the entire expedition? So this isn't like, you know, on that longest day, because typically we won't be carrying our heaviest pack on that longest day. But what is the heaviest weight that I actually need to do on any stage of this expedition, whether it's pack, whether it's sled, whatever may be.

[6:09] And then number three, ask yourself, between now and your expedition, whether that expedition is like six months away or 12 weeks away or 12 months away or whatever it may be. How often are you thinking and planning on getting out for these longer training hikes? Are you going to be planning to do this once a week or every couple of weeks or every three weeks or whatever it may be? I strongly urge to be realistic here. Just really think, can I do this every single week? If so, great. Can I do this every couple of weeks? If so, great. But be realistic. Don't sort of say perfect situation. be realistic. That's much better for the planning.

[6:45] And then essentially, once you have the answers to these, you've got your longest day of movement, you've got your heaviest pack weight, and you know how often you think you can do these longer sessions, you want to sit down and get a calendar out or at least get a document out. And we want to do a little bit of planning. Now, first place to start, two weeks before you leave home. So two weeks before you leave your expedition. Typically, this is where I like to pencil in a hike, which is going to be the equivalent of your longest day of movement on the mountain plus your heaviest pack weight. So what this means is if you're expecting, say, a 12-hour summit day, that's your longest day, and you're expecting a 25-kilo pack somewhere in the expedition, two weeks before you go away, you kind of want to pencil in and say, on this day, I'm going to do a 12-hour hike with a 25-kilo pack.

[7:33] That's kind of where we want to start. Now, realistically, if you are expecting a crazy long summit day, depending on an expedition, you may be doing this, where you're doing 15, 20, 24 more hours or whatever it may be. You know, you may want to just be realistic here and you may say, look, I'm not going to go out for a 24-hour training hike. That's just not going to happen. So maybe you might just cap this at 12 hours or maybe cap this at 14 hours or just end up doing as much as you realistically think you can do. So that's first and foremost. Get this longest training hike penciled in. Now, once you've done this, and then you want to just go through your calendar and just mark off each week that you think you'll be able to hike. So if this is every single week, this is pretty simple. You just say, hey, every single week I'm going to be doing a hike. Or if it's every two weeks, then just put a little mark on each of those two weeks or every three weeks or whatever may be. So get that done. Then just go through those dates and go through those months and just double check any important dates. Things like birthdays, things like holidays, things like busy periods of work or whatever it may be. And if anything conflicts with what you've penciled in, either cross them out or move those dates around a little bit.

[8:39] Now, once we've got this, we've got our little framework here, then essentially we need to sit down and we just want to work backwards from that final hike with the heaviest pack weight and the longest day. We want to work backwards all the way back to today and our current date and pencil in some plans for hiking time and pack weight.

[8:59] So, for example, let's just use a really, really simple example. You may say, okay, in 12 weeks, I'm going to be hiking every single week. I need to hit a 10 hour hike in 12 weeks time with a 20 kilo pack. Then you may work back and you say, okay, 12 weeks time, I'm going to do a 10 hour hike with a 20 kilo pack. 11 weeks time, I'm going to do a eight hour hike with a 20 kilo pack. 10 weeks time, I'm going to do a six week hike with a 20 kilo pack.

[9:26] 10 weeks time, I'm going to do a eight hour hike with a 17 kilo pack or whatever. And you literally just work back. It's like, that's obviously, it's a bit hard to take that in audio format, but that's kind of the idea. And essentially, we just want to work backwards from that end date to today, slowly building up. Now, the ideas as you're figuring this out is essentially what you want to be doing is you want to try and figure out a way to plan this out, which is going to have the slowest build possible, which will still get you to those maximal metrics by the end. So what I mean by that is you don't want to be hitting these maximal metrics halfway through the process. We want to be as slow build possible while still getting you where you need to be. The idea behind that is the more gradual we can be with this type of stuff, the less likely you're going to burn out, the less likely aches and pains are going to creep up, and just the more realistic it's going to be. So the slowest build possible while still getting to those maximal metrics.

[10:22] Ideally, when you're figuring all of this out, in the perfect world ideally you either want to increase hiking time or pack weight each time you go out but you don't really want to do both in the same week meaning if you've got say three weeks and let's say let's just do a three to four hour hike with a 10 kilo pack to start now the next week you could either do a three to four hour hike with a 12 kilo pack or 13 kilo pack or a four to five-hour hike with a 10-kilo pack. So ideally, we don't want to be increasing both of those metrics, just one at a time. It doesn't always work, but that's the kind of perfect world. Now, realistically, this can take a bit of trial and error. I do this every single day for my mountaineers and my hikers, and it still takes me a while and quite a few tries to kind of get these things right. It does take a bit of a trial and error, but just go through it. Try something out. If it doesn't work, try another one, try another one, and just vary the different distances, times bumping up, and the different pack weights bumping up. And you may have to redo this multiple times until you can find something which works and makes sense. But please, work through it. it's all worth it.

[11:34] Once you've kind of gone through this and you figured this out, and literally just having this laid out and being able to see this build up and you'll be like, okay, cool. Week after week after week, this is kind of what I need to do.

[11:45] And just being aware of what you need to do to get you where you need to be. It's just worth its weight in gold. It can just give so much clarity to your longer term planning. It can give so much clarity in regards to where you're at. And it can just fill you with confidence, just knowing I am on the right track to get you where you need to be.

[12:01] Now, a few important notes here. Number one, just to be clear, this is a rough plan. I really am not a big fan of just sort of saying planning six months in advance and be like, yeah, this is exactly what I'm going to do because it never works. Things always change. Weather changes, scheduling changes, you get sick, you get busy, whatever it may be. This will always change and that's fine. You can be flexible with this as you go through, but just having this framework and this rough framework is important as it will allow you to just adjust your plan as necessary. Because if you miss a week or two or three, then you can be like, all right, I need to readjust this to still hit my metrics and still be on track. How am I going to do that? And on top of that, having this plan and having this framework will help you actually plan out your other training sessions and see what you actually need to do in your week to help support these longer sessions. So for example, like with pack weight, if you've done this plan, you're like, oh my gosh, I've got to actually ramp up much quicker than I was expecting with pack weight, and I haven't been doing much pack training in a while, and this is making you a little bit nervous, then you can sort of say, you know what, actually... For the next month or two, I'm going to do some shorter, heavier pack walks to complement that, to help me get better. Alternatively, you might look at the pack ramp up and you're like, oh my gosh, that's easy. Like I could do this in my sleep in regards to pack ramp, not a big deal at all. And then you might say, I don't really need to do other load of pack sessions. I can just do my hiking and then focus on other areas. So it gives us a bit of a clarity there.

[13:24] Now, the next important thing is you may be wondering, why am I talking about hours here as opposed to like distance and elevation? because a lot of hikers and a lot of mountaineers will plan this stuff out with kilometres and miles and then elevation going up and down. And obviously, mountaineering's got a bit of up and down. So, why not chart this out? Personally, I like the hour approach purely for flexibility in the sense that I quite like using this hour approach because you can manage it around how you're feeling. Meaning, if you do get to one week and you're like, you know what, I've got like a six hour hike coming up, but you know what? I've just been slammed at work this week. Or you know what? My kids have been sick this week. I've barely been sleeping and I'm just flat on energy. I'm not feeling great. Then you can choose a height, which kind of fits within that time period, but it's quite flat. It's quite gentle. It's quite easy. And you kind of just cruise along, just accumulate that time.

[14:19] Now, alternatively, if you get to a week and you're like, you know what? I'm feeling really good. I'm feeling super great. I kind of want to push things a bit more, then again, you choose a hike which fits within the time period, but has a bit more up and down, maybe a bit rougher terrain or whatever it may be. And essentially, I like this approach because it just gives you the ability to just sort of regulate around how you're feeling, as opposed to being like looking at the calendar and be like, oh my gosh, I've got this outrageously strenuous, difficult hike that I was supposed to do this week. But it just happens to line up with a week that you haven't slept well for like five nights in a row, which ends up being a big counterproductive. So I personally like this, but you can plan it out with distance elevation if you prefer. And then typically on top of this, you know, worst case scenarios, some people will be like, oh my gosh, I just didn't get, I'm going to get a huge amount of hiking with a lot of up and down. Like, what am I going to do? Well, typically on top of these longer sessions, then we will build this out with your strength training. We'll build this out with specific elevation sessions, doing stair climbing or hill climbing or the stepping machine in the gym or whatever it may be. So even if you're not getting a huge amount of elevation on these hikes, that's fine because we can find it in other areas.

[15:25] And then another question that people often ask about, what about overnighters? What about multi-dayers? Like, where is this? And you can add these in anywhere you want. In all honesty, it works absolutely fine. You can just add them on the weeks and just sort of say, look, the plan that I set, if this week I was going to do a five to six hour hike, then that's your longest day on your overnight or multi-day. And then just make sure the other days are either that distance or a little bit shorter. It works well enough. And then finally, some people like, okay, I've done this plan, but realistically, there's going to be some months where my hiking is just limited. Winter, snow, I don't like hiking in the snow or it's not safe or whatever it may be. Or summer, I live and it's really hot and I just cannot be out for five or six or seven or eight hours in the middle of summer. This does get a little bit trickier. And in these months, you may have to limit that time and just go out for one or two hours or whatever it may be, or even just walk on the treadmill at the gym and then just concentrate on challenging yourself in other areas. So challenge yourself on pack weight, challenge yourself on other things. Or it may completely involve you just swapping out hiking for a period. That happens and just doing snowshoeing or cross-country skiing or whatever may be. But either way, as long as you identify this and you're aware, okay, this is what I need to be aware of. This is part of my long-term planning. That's the main thing. So when it comes down to it like this approach, obviously it isn't perfect.

[16:43] This is going to be certain situations where you do need to adjust this and tweak this from person to person, from your personal situation, what you have access to, what you have coming up. Obviously, when we start to incorporate trail running or cycling into these longer sessions, you're going to get a little bit more complicated than this. But in all honesty, I like this process because it's simple.

[17:03] And it just gives you some insight into the larger picture, which is going to be so, so powerful. And on top of that, it's just flexible in a way that it can fit around different levels of energy, motivation, different scheduling, different seasons, and a bunch of other things. Okay.

[17:17] So if you do have a big expedition in your sights and you haven't really sat down and done any longer term planning with your longer sessions, your hiking, your running, whatever it may be, I strongly urge you to sit down and figure this out. It will definitely change through the process. It's not set in stone, but I promise you it can be so, so, so valuable for so many mountaineers out there. So with that being said, I think that's enough on this particular topic. Hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully that helps. And hopefully that makes a little bit of a difference for, yeah, a few mountaineers out there. Now, I will sort of say, obviously, figuring this out sometimes can be a little bit tricky doing this on your own. As I said, I do this every single day, and it still takes me a little bit of time to figure this out and get the right balance. Not only that, but obviously incorporating all the other sessions into the week,

[18:04] finding how to fill those things out. So, if you were a mountaineer who was in a position who did need a bit of help with this, and they're like, you know what? I like what you're talking about, Rowan. I want some help with my training. What can I do? what I'd like you to do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer now on that page there's a video which kind of talks a little bit about how we help mountaineers throughout online personal training and talks through how we go about our sessions how we go about training and if it does sound like something you want to get involved with there's a link where you can book a call with our team and have a bit of a chat about it all so if you were interested in getting a little bit extra help with things go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer and we can go from there, So that being said, I think that's enough from me today. Thank you so much for listening and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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