Simple Strength Training Guidelines For Mountaineers

​In this podcast, we explore some simple guidelines a mountaineer should follow to ensure their strength training is well-rounded, efficient and effective. 

Strength Training Tips For Mountaineering

Chapters
​
0:15 
Introduction to Strength Guidelines
0:48 
Full Body Strength Sessions
2:43 
Balancing Push and Pull Exercises
4:02 
Double and Single Leg Training
5:25 
Pain-Free Strength Training
6:11 
Training to Failure: When Not To
8:19 
Importance of Adequate Rest
9:23 
Separating Cardio and Strength
10:06 
Integrating Core Training
11:03 
Routine vs. New Workouts
12:16 
Conclusion and Checklist Reminder

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Right. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking through some simple strength guidelines for mountaineers and just some really, really, really simple,

[0:11] recommendations to help a mountaineer get the most out of their strength training. Now, all of these things I've talked about on the podcast before, none of it is new, none of it's too complicated or out of the ordinary or anything like that. But I thought it was about time just to run through these things, do a quick recap. Just if you have been listening for this for a while and you haven't heard these things for a little while, it kind of brings it to top of mind. So you can reference your own training and see where you're on track. So I'm going to be sharing nine simple strength guidelines, which I really do think are very, very, very useful for mountaineers. So guideline number one.

[0:48] Train full body strength sessions. In 99% of situations, mountaineers are going to be best served when they're looking at their strength training, just doing full body sessions, doing sessions which work the lower body, the upper body, the core, the lower limbs, maybe a bit of mobility, maybe a bit of balance, whatever may be. I know a lot of people out there do still follow the bodybuilding approach where they have a chest day and an arm day and a leg day and a back day. In all honesty, it's not a very effective approach for mountaineers. Even looking at an upper body and a lower body day, you can do it, but I don't think it's really a great use of your time. 99% of the time, I would recommend mountaineers for time efficiency's sake, just do a full body routine. As long as you do the right exercises, work at the right intensity, follow the right progressions, you can get incredibly, incredibly, incredibly strong through full body workouts even if you're only doing one or two lower body exercises per workout, that may sound a little bit crazy to people who do five or six or seven or eight.

[1:54] Exercises on the lower body and the same thing for the upper body per workout but it can definitely work the only situation that i would ever really lean towards doing the whole upper upper body lower body thing is if in a mountaineers in a situation where they're like look i just want to fitting huge amount of training into my week, but I really, really find my legs are struggling to bounce back. And maybe I'm doing six days in a week where I'm doing sessions, strength and cardio and all of that. And I have one rest day, but my legs are just cooked through the week. And in that situation, maybe you might do lower body strength training and upper body strength training to give your legs two days break in the week. But again.

[2:34] I would sort of say there's better ways of going about it. You can adjust your total volume for the week, adjust intensity to other sessions, whatever it may be. But that may be an argument for it. So that's number one.

[2:44] Strength guideline number two. When you are looking at your strength training over the week, make sure you're balancing out pushing and pulling exercises. One of the most common mistakes I see from mountaineers is just doing too much work on the same movement patterns. Squats, step-ups, lunges, split squats, leg press, whatever it may be. All of these are really, really, really popular for mountaineers, and they're great exercises, but they all work the quads. And so many mountaineers just overload that area and neglect the hamstrings and the glutes. So a really simple way of looking at your training week is for every pushing exercise you do with your lower body. Every exercise where you're pushing into the ground, like a squat, a step-up, a lunge, a split squat, a hack squat, a leg press, anything like that, make sure you're getting another exercise in the week where you're doing a pulling movement. So something like a glute bridge, a deadlift, a single leg deadlift, a hip thrust, a hamstring curl, a good morning, whatever may be. Looking at your week, a really, really, really simple way of doing it. Same thing with your upper body. For every pushing upper body you do in the week, do something pulling. You don't have to have a huge amount of knowledge to figure that out, but it's a really, really simple guideline which can make sure you're getting a good balance of exercises.

[4:02] Guideline number three, during your training week, mountaineers should probably be training both double and single-legged exercises. So, in your week, somewhere, you're doing some squats, or a leg press, or a wall sit, or something, two legs at a time, working those quadriceps, and probably somewhere in the week, you're doing a lunge, or a step up, or a step down, or a pistol squat, and getting both double and single. The same thing for the other, for the pulling movements. Now, why double and single? Well, single leg exercises are great for challenging single leg stability, building up, learning how to produce force when we're slightly unstable on one leg at a time, a bunch of other benefits, and most mountaineers will tend to lean towards that. But the double-legged stuff is really, really useful because it's a little bit more stable and you can push it a little bit more. So if you're doing heavier stuff, you can load it up with more weight. Or if you're doing lighter endurance stuff, you don't have to think about wobbling around and you can just rep out and get a burn. Typically for my mountaineers in a week, I will usually try to get a double and a single legged exposure for both pushing and pulling lower body stuff somewhere. And that's a really, really simple way of looking at things. There are some situations, maybe you want to minimize single leg. There are some situations, maybe you won't do a huge amount of double leg, but for the most part, you want exposure to both.

[5:26] Guideline number four strength training shouldn't cause you pain it's common sense but i can't tell you the amount of mountaineers that i speak to who do sessions and like i really like this exercise is always painful for me but they keep on doing it or after every session oh my knees are so sore but they just keep on doing it strength training shouldn't be causing you pain yes there will be discomfort because you are training you're pushing yourself the muscles will get tired but if that is genuine pain, if your joints are taking the brunt, you need to change something. Change your exercises, change the range of motion, change the angle, use less weight, whatever. There's a million and one ways you can go about that, but you should not be getting into pain from these workouts.

[6:11] Guideline number five, mountaineers don't always need to train to failure. Now, a lot of people, when they approach their strength training, They get an exercise, and they're like, cool, I'm going to do eight repetitions of this. So they choose a weight where one, two, three, four, five, they're like kind of okay. Six is hard. Seven is really hard. Eight, they just get to the absolute limit, and they can't do anymore. This is known as training the failure. This is a perfectly legitimate way of training. And you can do this in small doses, but it's not something a mountaineer wants to do all the time.

[6:46] And it's not something what a mountaineer kind of even needs to do at all. The tricky thing with this is these last reps where you're really, really, really, really pushing them out. Yes, they can be good for muscle development. Yes, they can be good for maximal strength development. But they also, these last reps, they tend to be the reps where things kind of go wrong, where people pick up an ache or a tweak or something like that. On top of that, when we're pushing this really, really, really high intensity, this is high intensity training, meaning if you do a bunch of it, it will impact your recovery. And as a mountaineer, strength training is never going to be the number one priority. We don't want these sessions impacting our other stuff too much.

[7:26] Instead, what I typically recommend is a mountaineer work at what we call two reps in reserve. This is what I get most of my mountaineers doing for the majority of their strength training. Two reps in reserve means choosing a weight where you always have two reps in your back pocket. So what this means is using that eight rep example, you choose a weight where if you absolutely push to your limit, you could actually do 10 repetitions if you push the limit, but instead you just finish at eight. You have two reps in reserve. The idea behind this is it's still enough of a stimulus to give you good strength development, but it gives us that wiggle room in regards to not hitting that failure point and reducing the risk of things going wrong, and also not hitting that maximal intensity where it's going to cook out the muscles a little bit. You don't need to train to fail it. Every once in a while, you can do it. That's fine, but not all the time.

[8:20] Guideline number six get adequate rest do not forget this when you're doing your strength training if you are doing heavier strength work if you're doing four five six seven eight even up to 10 repetitions you want to be making sure in between each set of exercise you do or each set of work on the certain muscles you get at least two minutes of rest so many people tend to just do 60 seconds of rest then do another set or 90 seconds of rest and do another set and yes you can improve your strength that way, it is not going to be as effective. Two minutes rest minimum.

[8:59] Now, not many people want to sit around on their phone for two minutes. Some people love it, but use that time to do something else. Work other muscle groups, do an upper body exercise, do a core exercise, do a mobility exercise, do a calf exercise, do a balance exercise, whatever. Fill that time in with other stuff, but just in between each set on each set of muscles, you're giving a decent rest.

[9:23] Guideline number seven, don't mix cardio into your strength work. Don't try to get huffed and puffed through your strength sessions. Don't obsess about getting a heart rate up. Don't obsess about getting a really, really, really good cardiovascular stimulus. Do your strength separately. Strength training is about building up strength and building up endurance. If you are huffing and puffing and jacking up your heart rate the entire time, you're going to be limiting your strength. If you want to do cardio and mix it into a workout, because you're like, hey, I just have time for one long workout in the week, that's fine. Do your cardio after your strength training. Do 40 minutes of strength, 20 minutes of cardio at the end. But don't mix them in or turn it into a circuit session or something like that. It's just not very effective.

[10:07] Guideline number eight incorporate your core training into your strength workouts i know a lot of mountaineers out there love to do separate core workouts where they'll do like eight or ten exercises of just core work and they'll do this a couple of times a week or they'll do it on certain days or whatever in all honesty i don't think that's a very effective way of training your core a lot of people love it it's enjoyable but i much prefer getting small doses of properly loaded core exercises and progressing that over time, as opposed to just spending all this time on this. Typically, what I recommend is just incorporating your core exercises into your strength workouts. When you're doing your strength work, choose one, two, maybe three core exercises, slip them in, add them into those rest periods, add them into your warmup, add them as a quick finisher, but incorporate it into those workouts so it doesn't end up ballooning into your week and getting in the way of other times.

[11:03] And then guideline number nine, don't do a new workout every day. In the sense, there's this habit or tendency in the fitness industry where people get bored. They want to be entertained. So they'll walk into a gym, they'll work with a trainer or whatever it may be. And every single session they do, it's a new workout. That is fine if you just generally want to be fit. If you just want to feel good, get in, get some calories burnt, whatever it may be. But if you are actively trying to improve your sport, if you are actively trying to improve your mountaineering, this isn't a good approach. You want to be following a routine, which you know.

[11:37] So week by week by week, you know what's coming up. You learn the movements, you master the movements, you can push and progress the weight and get a little bit better each week. Not doing something brand new every single week where you're just figuring things out half the time or figuring out what weights you're doing or whatever may be. It's not super effective. Now, that's not to say you have to do a workout indefinitely. I would typically recommend changing your workouts every three to six to eight weeks depending on how much change you're doing and depending on what you how much you know what you're doing but don't do a new workout every single time you're doing it.

[12:11] It really, really holds you back. So without being said, I think I'm going to wrap things up there.

[12:17] Nine simple guidelines, every single one of those I have talked about before on the podcast. But I want you to use this as a bit of a checklist just to look at your strength training, what you're doing, and see if it's falling into this. Are you balancing out your push and pull? Are you getting your double and single leg? Are you in pain? Are you working at a good intensity? Are you getting rest? Are you slipping in cardio? Whatever it may be, just go through this checklist because this may be a very simple way just to identify ways you can tweak and tune your workouts to maybe be a bit more effective, a little bit more time efficient, a little bit more whatever. So have a look at your strength training at the moment. See if it lines up. If it does, great, fantastic. If it doesn't, maybe there's some room for improvement.

[12:56] Now, last thing I'll sort of say before I wrap things up, if you were a mountaineer and you needed some help with your strength training, you wanted to make sure it's effective, it's specific, it's safe for you, and really making the best use of your time, as well as complementing all the other training that you're doing in the week, I would love to chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit more about our online personal training for mountaineers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a big video, talks a bit about our training, and if it sounds like something you want to learn a little bit more about, there's a link where you can book a free call with our team, we can have a chat, learn about you, your mountaineering, your training, and see if we might be able to help you out. So if you want to learn more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer, and we can take it from there. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening. Hope you've enjoyed it. Hope you got a little bit out of it and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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