Train The Body In Balance

​In this episode, I discuss a fundamental principle for strength training for mountaineering. 

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking through a really, really, really simple principle when it comes to strength training for mountaineering, which is incredibly important

[0:12] for your long-term results. Now, this particular principle I'm about to talk through, it is something that is taught at the most basic levels of education for strength training. And even the newest, freshest, most basic trainers typically have a good understanding of this. But for one reason or another, the mountaineering community seems to miss it a lot. And it's something I see all the time, and I want to explore it a little bit.

[0:39] Ultimately, before I get into the principle, I will sort of say, you know, if your program doesn't explicitly follow what I'm about to cover, it isn't the end of the world. It's not like you're going to hurt yourself. It's not like your program's absolute trash. It's not like you may not see some particular results. But I'll tell you what, if you're missing this, you are leaving a lot of potential benefits on the table when it comes down to your strength training and specifically how that's going to help you on the mountain. And the principle we're talking about today is train the body in balance.

[1:10] So let me break this down and tell you a little bit more and give you a bit of background about what this is all about. Now, when it comes down to strength training for mountaineering, there are a few exercises which are probably prioritized above all others. And I want you to just take a second and just think about this. If you think about strength training for mountaineering, what are the three exercises that just spring to mind, first of all? The three exercises that you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that will definitely help me on the mountains.

[1:36] More than likely, you would have thought of lunges, step-ups, and squats in the dozens and dozens of different variations. You know, these exercises, you just see in every single training plan for mountaineering. You see them prioritized in every single workout. They're recommended in forums, on podcasts, and all of that. And they're just talked about a lot. And in all honesty, these exercises, they're great. Lunges, step-ups, squats, you know, they feel really, really, really relevant for mountaineers. They're very, very easy to learn, to figure out, and apply. And I personally will use many variations of these in all of my mountaineers programs at some stage or another. And there's nothing wrong with these exercises, and I fully encourage their use.

[2:16] But there is one important point which a lot of people kind of overlook when it comes to this type of thing.

[2:22] These three exercises, they're doing pretty much the same thing.

[2:28] In the sense that all of these exercises, lunges, step-ups, and squats, they're predominantly using the quadriceps, you know, the quadriceps in the front of the thighs, and they're predominantly working that. And, you know, they have a little bit of emphasis on the glutes as well, like the bum muscles. That's really what's mainly been working in these exercises. And yes, for mountaineering, these muscles are incredibly important. You know, when you're going uphill, when you're doing climbs, the quadriceps feel like they're doing the majority of the work, and that is absolutely true. And we definitely want to be training these things. But one mistake I see all the time is that mountaineers will really, really, really focus on these exercises. And these areas will just get a huge amount of focus over the weeks and over the months. But the other areas of the legs will get neglected. They'll get under-trained. They'll get overlooked. And this is specifically talking about the hamstrings and the glutes as a whole. Because while the quadriceps are super important, the hamstrings and glutes are still going to be doing a huge amount of work, even if you don't feel them quite as much. They're going to play a big, big, big role in helping support the knees and the hips and the back. They're going to play a big, big, big role in helping you support yourself on steep descents. They're going to play a big role when you're trying to use a little bit more speed. They're going to play a big role when you're actually going uphill, just helping support your stability. And in a dozen other situations. These areas are just as important as your quadriceps.

[3:53] And while they may not feel as necessary because they don't get quite as burny when we're actually out in the mountains, they are just as important. And the issue that I see is with a lot of strength training, people will neglect these areas and they'll end up doing four of these exercises working the quadriceps and maybe one exercise working the hamstring and the glutes, if any.

[4:15] Generally, when it comes down to strength training in general, and strength training for mountaineering as well, a really simple general rule of thumb is we want to train the body in balance. We want to make sure everything is getting exposure. We want to make sure we're developing strength and endurance across the board. And a general rule of thumb to figure this out is for every exercise that you're doing, which may be quadricep dominant, so work in front of the legs, we probably want to balance that out with something working the back of the legs, working the hamstrings, working the hips and figuring that out. This is such a basic tenet of strength training, but it just gets overlooked in the world of mountaineering so often. So I want to explore this a little bit more. Now, right now, you might be like, okay, Ron, you know, that kind of does make sense, fair enough. But does that mean, you know, I'm not a bodybuilder, I don't really care about strength training that much. Does this mean I've got to go out and I'm going to figure out all of these different exercises which target these things, I've got to go to the gym, figure out these machines, and yada, yada, yada, yada. And no, it doesn't have to be that complicated. It's really, really, really, really simple how to figure this out, this balance. An easy way of figuring this out and sort of figuring out how to sort of structure workouts and get this balance in order is splitting up your workouts, your exercises, should you say, into what's called pushing exercises and pulling exercises. Now, a pushing exercise is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You know, it's when you're pushing up through the ground.

[5:39] Examples of this are things like lunges, step-ups, squats, leg presses, step-downs, hack squats, prisoner get-ups. There's so many other things. But anything where you're really pushing up into the ground. And this is typically going to be those quadricet-dominant exercises. Now, a pulling exercise is the opposite. You know, it's typically when we're pulling, when we're emphasizing the hamstrings and the glutes. So this would be things like deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts or good mornings or single-legged deadlifts or hamstring curls or Chinese planks.

[6:13] Also, glute bridges and hip thrusts kind of fall into this category as well. All of these will fall into that pulling exercise category. And essentially, the simplest way of looking at this is when you're looking at your strength training workouts over the week. We want to make sure there's a relatively similar distribution of the two. So typically for each pushing exercise we do, we typically want to have a pulling exercise as well. Now, this doesn't have to be exact one-to-one. You don't have to get absolutely obsessive about it, but it wants to be pretty close. We don't want to be doing three or four pushing exercises for every one pulling exercise because it's just not quite as good as it could be.

[6:53] So sit down and have a look at your workouts right now and have a think about, okay, for the last week, what did I do? And for my lower body, how many of these were pushing exercises and how many of these were pulling exercises? If your distribution was really, really, really skewed one way, you may want to consider just balancing it out a little bit more. I promise if you can do this, it will be so effective at not only helping develop those areas, not only helping protect certain areas, but it'll help you just explode the results of your strength training, of your other training, and your performance in the mountain, it all comes together and is so, so, so, so important.

[7:30] Now, we've talked about lower body stuff. So lower body pushing and lower body pulling. This is pretty much the same thing for your upper body as well. When we're looking at upper body training, we typically, again, we want to have a balance between pushing and pulling exercises. So upper body pushing exercises might be things like push-ups or chest press or bench press or overhead press or any shoulder press variations, literally when you're pushing the weight away from it. Pulling exercises will be pull-ups, chin-ups, pull-downs, rows, inverted rows, all of that type of stuff. And again, when we're looking at the distribution of our upper body training, we typically want to have a balance between push and pull. This is such a simple concept of strength training, but I promise you, if you make sure you're following this, it will greatly increase the effectiveness of your results over long term, both in your training and actually out when you're out in the mountains.

[8:27] So with that being said, sit down, have a look at your strength training, have a look what you've been doing, and over the week, make sure there is a relatively close distribution. If there's not, a few simple tweaks is all you really need to figure things out, and it can go such a long way.

[8:43] So I hope that makes sense. I hope that opens the eyes for a few people, and I really do hope it helps a few people as well.

[8:49] As I said, it's not the end of the world if you aren't doing this. It's not like you're not going to get any results or you're going to be an automatic risk of injury if you're not. But this is just a way to upgrade your training, get a little bit more out of it, and really make sure you're getting the most out of this time spent in your strength training to ultimately help you in the mountains. So with that being said, I think that's enough harping on about this topic. I really do hope that makes sense. And I hope it helps a few people. Now, last thing I will say is if you are a mountaineer and you're interested in strength training and figuring out how to apply that to best help you in the mountains, and you are looking for a bit of personalized help with this, I would love to chat with you. What I'd like you to do if you were interested in exploring what help may look like and see if and how it may be right for you, just go to summitstrength.com.au slash mountaineer. On that page, there's a video, talks through how we help mountaineers every single week, train for their goals. And you can sort of see if it's something you're interested it in. And from there, if you did want to have a chat, you can book a call with us and we can break things down and really just dive into your situation. So if you want to learn a little bit 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 today's episode and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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