Training For Mountaineering, Cancelled Expeditions, and Readjusted Goals - Interview With Ojas

​In this episode, I interview Summit Strength client Ojas about his training and preparation for mountaineering. When we first started working together, Ojas had the goal to climb Aconcagua. After months of training and hard work, his expedition was cancelled days before he flew out.

Inside, Ojas talks through his training leading to this cancelled expedition, how he reassessed and readjusted after this incredibly disappointing change of plans and his future plans and goals for his training and mountaineering.

Training For Mountaineering In Texas 

"Don't let the cancellation cancel your training."

This mountaineer had his 18-day Aconcagua expedition called off days before it started, but didn't let that setback stop his mountain ambitions.

It was great to have Ojas on the Training For Mountaineering Podcast to talk about what changed once his training became structured, and how he handled watching months of prep fall through overnight.

Inside we chat about:

• Why someone who'd already been training himself for years, carrying heavy packs and hitting the gym, still decided to bring in a coach for this expedition
  
• How he handled an 18-day expedition getting cancelled days before it began, and what he did with all that training instead of letting it go to waste
  
• What summiting Mount Whitney after 24 gruelling hours on the mountain, with zero soreness the next day, told him about the training itself.​

Episode Transcript:

Q: So to kick things off, do you want to just give us a little bit of background? Who you are, where do you live, what do you do, and what is your background in hiking and mountaineering?

Yeah. So I basically live in Texas, United States, and I basically work as a senior IT consultant. I'm mostly into the IT field, and so that's basically what I do for my living. And in terms of my background about hiking and mountaineering, I've been into hiking since my 10th grade, so I've been doing a lot of hikes and trails here and there. In terms of mountaineering, I've been to many peaks in India, Japan, France, and the United States. It's been more a part of my life, that's how I'd give my background.

Q: And then before we started working together, what was your typical approach to training when it came to these types of adventures?

Yeah, so my training was pretty straightforward, and looking back, probably a little too straightforward, I'd say. I would just carry heavy pack loads, sometimes using sandbags to simulate the weight, and I did regular gym workouts. I also play tennis, so I relied quite heavily on tennis for my cardio and general fitness. The thinking basically was that if I can get stronger and carry a heavy pack, I should be prepared for the mountains. It kind of worked reasonably well for the things I'd done before, but I wasn't really following a structured approach to building endurance, specifically for a long expedition.

Q: And then when we first started working together, what was the specific big goal that you'd set for yourself, and what was the instigator of this particular goal?

So for me, it was less about simply climbing another mountain and more about testing myself, testing my endurance, if you want to call it. Aconcagua was my goal, and it's around 7,000 meters, one of the seven summits in the world, so it was a significant step up from what I'd done previously. I wanted to do something different and really test my endurance. I also wanted to see how my body and mind would respond to an 18-day expedition, where the challenge isn't just about one hard day, but being able to perform day after day. So that's more of my instigator, just challenging myself is what I'd say.

Q: And then with this insight, what made you decide to reach out for extra help with your training? And what were the things you knew you needed a bit of help with?

Yeah, so as I told you, I'd been doing my own training for years, so I knew how to train and I knew how to push myself. But I also realized that for something like Aconcagua, I didn't want to just rely on what had worked for me in the past. I'd also been listening to your podcast while training, and I really liked the methodical way you approach training. It wasn't just train harder, there was a lot more thought behind how you build strength and endurance. I felt I needed a coach to identify the flaws in my approach, and more importantly, to keep me disciplined and consistent. In fact, my biggest requirement was that I wanted to be able to handle an 18-day expedition and still have fresh legs. I didn't want to finish one day completely destroyed and spend the next day just recovering. I wanted my body to be able to keep going on and on. So that's typically why I actually wanted to have a coach for myself.

Q: And then tell us a little bit about the training you did do and have been doing through Summit Strength. What did your program look like? What types of things went into your week? Talk us through that.

So the training, I'll be very honest, was completely different from anything I'd done before. The basic philosophy was to first build strength in the right areas and then gradually increase the duration and endurance demands. It was a very slow and steady progression rather than trying to do everything at once. There were different sessions and variations that targeted different parts of the body, and the workload progressively increased over the months. There was also a coaching component beyond just the physical workouts, we talked about things like mental preparation, dealing with problems and injuries, and how to adjust your approach when things don't go according to plan. For me, the biggest lesson was really trusting the process. As you always say in your sessions, you trust the process and it will take you to where you have to be. You don't necessarily see the results every day, but if you consistently take one step at a time, eventually you realize how far you've come.

Q: And I know you said it was a little bit different, well, quite different to what you'd done previously. But I guess diving into specifics, was there anything in there that was specifically different than what you'd really done before?

I think pretty much the whole approach wasdifferent from what I had been doing. I'll be very honest, I was used to thinking if I need to climb a mountain carrying a heavy pack, I'll train by carrying a heavy pack. But the training made me understand it's not quite that simple. It was about strengthening the right muscles, building capacity gradually, and developing endurance over a long period, rather than just trying to simulate the mountain all the time. The other difference was the discipline and structure. Every session had a purpose, I couldn't just walk into the gym and decide what I felt like doing that day. You always gave a structured program week by week, day by day, which actually helped me, and I think that's honestly what changed my mindset as much as it changed my physical preparation.

Q: And then, we always say no training journey is ever linear, there are always dozens of things that come up along the way. So throughout your training journey here, were there any particular roadblocks that did come up along the way? And if so, how did you go about overcoming them?

Oh, absolutely, there were definitely hiccups, although I wouldn't necessarily call them roadblocks. There were days when work was super exhausting, days when I had social commitments and maybe partied a little harder than I should have, and there were small injuries and the normal ups and downs that come with training for a long period. The important thing was learning not to turn one bad day into a bad week. This is exactly what you keep telling me in your sessions, I learned to listen to my body, adjust when necessary, and then get back on track. The training taught me that consistency doesn't necessarily mean doing 100% every single day. Sometimes consistency also means knowing when to back off a little so that you can continue the next day.

Q: You've set yourself this big goal, you've trained yourself, you've built up, you've followed the structure, you've worked through the process bit by bit by bit. Tell us what actually happened with this adventure, this specific goal you had set for yourself in the first place.

Yeah, unfortunately, the Aconcagua expedition got cancelled. I'd say it got postponed, because I still have the permit, I can still use it for next year. There were actually three of us who had planned for the expedition. One person had a personal emergency, the second one underwent foot surgery, and there were some immigration constraints where the government changed some rules at the last minute. So despite having all of the equipment ready and everything being fully trained, the expedition just couldn't happen. I think that was probably one of the hardest parts of the whole experience, not physically, but almost mentally. It's like you spend months preparing for something, you have a clear goal in your head, and then suddenly it's gone. So that was very unfortunate, but that's what happened with the adventure for Aconcagua.

Q: And I know a lot of mountaineers listening to this have been in similar situations, because it's a story that comes up more often than not in the mountaineering community. So for you, when you went through all of this, how did you manage that period when it first got cancelled and everything was going on? How did you manage it physically and mentally?

Yeah, being a human being, the first reaction was definitely disappointment. I'd spent months training and I felt like I was ready. The equipment was ready, the planning was done, and I was mentally prepared for the expedition, so seeing the goal disappear was really disheartening. But I had a choice, I could either stop training because the goal was gone, or I could just find another goal. I decided pretty quickly that I didn't want all that training to go to waste, so I changed the objective. Instead of Aconcagua, I decided to focus on climbing 14ers in the US. That gave me something concrete to start working towards, and I think having another goal was very important mentally. The mountain had changed, but the process continued for me, so that's something that kept me going. Again, when it got cancelled, the first weeks I was talking with you in our one-on-one sessions, so I wasn't doing that good mentally, but I still continued with my training.

Q: And then with that adjustment, and having those 14ers in your sights to test out the training and keep things going, was there another new goal that you kind of set for yourself, like another big one that you put in the calendar at some stage?

Yes, so the new goal was just to focus on the 14ers in the United States, particularly in Colorado, because Colorado has more than 50 plus 14ers. I know it wasn't the original goal, but I looked at it as another opportunity to test the fitness I'd built. So rather than doing one 14er as part of one trip, I decided to space out two or three 14ers over a period of one week, and just kind of test my endurance. In some ways, I think it became a test of the training itself, could I take everything I'd developed over those months and actually perform in challenging mountains? So that's basically what my new goal became.

Q: And then, as of recording this episode, you've pretty recently just come back from some adventures. So what was the recent mountain that you got out on, and how did that all go, and how did it feel, and how did you perform? Talk us through that.

Yeah, so the recent mountain, I just summited the highest peak in the lower 48 states of the United States, that's Mount Whitney, it's 14,505 feet. It kind of really went well in the sense that it took more than what I'd expected, so I was almost 24 hours on the mountain. It was grueling, but it was satisfying because I was able to summit. Thankfully the weather was great, no thunderstorms, and it kind of ended up really well. And the training simply helped me like anything, I was so fresh the next day, I had absolutely no soreness at all. If you ask me, I was absolutely prepared the next day to go out to the gym and train. So the experience was great, it was amazing.

Q: And then looking towards the future, what's the plan for the next months, the next period ahead? What have you got in your sights? What are you planning with your training? What's the plan there?

So, yeah, my training is still going on regularly now, because this is a climbing season out here in the United States until the end of September. The current immediate plan is to go to Colorado again and maybe do around four or five 14,000ers. After Colorado is done, I'm also planning the Grand Canyon rim to rim hike, which is a very grueling hike, it's almost 21 miles one side, and you have to do it in a single day, plus you're battling the heat, which is the biggest factor in the canyons. Then in the month of November I also have another grueling hike, which is the Cactus to Clouds, where you start at 700 feet and go all the way up to 10,600, it takes close to somewhere between 14 to 16 hours, again a single day hike. So all of these that I have in mind are the grueling ones, and depending on how things go, how the training goes, the next long-term goal for next year is actually Denali, in Alaska. It's a very serious mountain, so it all depends on how my training goes. But my immediate goals are the Colorado thing and the Grand Canyon, followed by the Cactus to Clouds.

Q: And so, as I said before, a lot of people listening to this podcast, either in the past or in the future, have probably found themselves in a similar situation, where a climb gets cancelled pretty much right before they start. If someone did find themselves in that situation, what advice would you give them?

I'd say don't let the cancellation cancel your training. That's probably the biggest lesson I took from this experience. It's very easy to think, well, the expedition is gone, so what's the point in continuing? But if you've spent months building yourself up, that fitness doesn't disappear just because the objective has changed. I'd say just go and find another challenge, it doesn't have to be as big as the original goal, it just needs to give you something to work towards. For me, that became the 14ers in Colorado. And I'd also say don't look at the cancellation as wasted time. The training you've done has changed you physically and mentally, even if you didn't get to use it for the original objective. Sometimes the goal changes, but the process you've taken to get there is still valuable.

Q: I feel like we've covered some really interesting stuff today, and some really interesting insights into the different approach you've taken, and the adjustment and plans as you've bounced back from that. And I will definitely have you back on the podcast further down the line to talk through the future adventures and the updated goals and how that goes over the long term. But I guess before we wrap things up today, was there anything else that we haven't had a chance to cover today that you feel like would be useful to listeners that you'd like to add?
​
Yeah, I think, just in conclusion, I'd say the biggest thing I'd add is that this experience has completely changed the way I think about training. Summit Strength has given me a very different perspective. I used to think training was primarily about working harder, carrying a heavier pack, doing more reps, running more, pushing myself more. Now I see it much more as a process, you build the right foundation, you progress gradually, you recover, you adapt, and you stay consistent. And probably the most important lesson for me was learning to trust the process. Aconcagua didn't happen when I wanted it to, but I still ended up stronger, fitter, and more capable than I was before I started. That's something I wouldn't have understood in the same way without going through the whole experience. I'd love to thank you for everything you've done for me.

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