Training For Mountaineering In 2025

​In this episode I explore 4 areas of training which I believe EVERY mountaineer should be incorporating into their week. 

Episode Transcript: ​

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode,

[0:03] we are talking about training for mountaineering in 2025. And we're going to be doing a bit of an overview around the four different areas of training that I advocate for for every single mountaineer, and which I firmly believe if you cover in your week and in your month, it will really give you a very well-rounded approach to mountaineering.

[0:25] Now, I wanted to cover this right off the bat as we're re-engaging this podcast. And before we actually start diving into deeper subjects and getting into the nitty-gritty of different workouts and different theories and different philosophies, I just wanted to give a good overview around these areas of training. Because number one, it's been a while since I've been on this podcast, and maybe some people haven't listened in a while. But also number two, over the years, I've been training many, many mountaineers for a load of different situations and different adventures. And for the majority of mountaineers that I talk to, you know, their training tends to be a little bit hit and miss. And they may be really, really good in some areas, but probably 90% of mountaineers I talk to tend to miss certain elements in their training. So I just wanted to give a quick overview around these areas of training, just so you can have a little ask of yourself, hey, am I actually doing this? So essentially, when it comes down to training for mountaineering, the way that I like to approach things and the way that I work with all my mountaineers is I center my training around four big areas. And we're going to explore each of these areas in detail in future podcasts, but I want to give you an overview today.

[1:37] Now, area number one is strength training, which I'm sure, given the name of Summit Strength, my business, you're probably aware I'm a big fan of. Now, strength training is an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly beneficial thing for any mountaineer out there. A lot of people may be a little bit hesitant to use this type of training, and a lot of mountaineers out there, you know, I would say the application of this training leaves a little bit to be desired, but I'll tell you right now, strength training is just so useful if you can apply it right.

[2:11] Now, there are a bunch of different benefits when it comes down to structured and specific strength training for mountaineering. But just to give you a few of the big ones, number one, strength training is one of the most significant things a mountaineer can do to prevent the risk of pain and injury, both in their training and actually when they're out in the mountains. And essentially building up the supporting muscles, the supporting structures of the body can go such a long way. And considering mountaineers have an absolute plague of different injuries in the community, things like plantar fasciitis, shin splints, knee pain on descents hip pain back pain shoulder pain all of these different things strength training can make a big big difference here Now, on top of this, strength training can obviously catch you stronger and it can play a massive role in helping you with steep ascents and descents. It can play a massive role in pack carrying or sled dragging. It can play a massive role in helping you with your actual climbing and preventing fatigue and improving performance there. And it's so, so, so beneficial. And on top of that, strength training can play a big role in improving your movement speed, which may not be relevant for all mountaineers, but some mountaineers, depending on where you're in in the world, you know, be able to make certain weather windows is pretty crucial. So all in all, structured and specific strength training is a must for every mountaineer out there.

[3:31] Now, number two, and the second inclusion in regards to every mountaineers program that I work with is what I call mountaineering specific conditioning. Now, ultimately, this is just a fancy way of saying specific cardio sessions, which are honed into the particular demands of mountaineering. So as opposed to you just lumping all cardio together and just saying, hey, I'm going to go out for a run. Hey, I'm going to go for a swim. I'm going for a cycle or whatever may be. These things may be good, but this mountaineering specific conditioning is a little bit more honed in. So you can have a think about, okay, you know what? I'm actually got a climb coming up and I'm aware that I'm going to be setting a quick pace. I'm going to maybe going up to high attitude, I'm a little bit worried about maintaining my breathing on steeper sense, it tends to get a bit away from me and I don't want that to happen. Then you can use this mountaineering specific conditioning to hone in on particular interval type of training or a particular type of training in your week, which can make a bit of a difference here. Maybe doing particular breathing drills or intervals or whatever it is.

[4:32] Or the example of carrying a pack or pulling a sled. If that's a particular thing you need to improve on, this mountaineering specific conditioning, you can say, look, I'm going to do some certain sessions, which are going to help improve this, or whether you want to improve going up and down hills or improve certain things with your climbing or improve on whatever it is. But the idea behind this mountaineering specific conditioning is looking at particular aspects of fitness that you need to improve and then reverse engineering that with your cardio, which can be so, so, so, so effective. Now, the beauty of these conditioning sessions is these tend to be a little bit shorter than the longer sessions you do, which I'm about to go in a minute. And as opposed to you doing this for two hours or three hours or four hours or whatever may be, these ones tend to be 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes. They're a little bit shorter, a little bit sweeter, a little bit easier to fit into a regular week, but they can go a long way.

[5:24] Now, number three, and the other important thing, and I'm sure every single mountaineer is already aware of this, but this is definitely crucial, is longer cardio. Now, depending on what type of expedition or what type of climbing you're doing will depend on the extent of this, but every single mountaineer does need to be developing their aerobic capacity, their aerobic fitness, which is best developed through long duration, low intensity training. So this may involve hiking. This may involve running. It may involve cycling, depending on what you prefer. And this is essentially

[5:56] just involves building up time and accumulating time of this lower intensity stuff. It's not the most exciting stuff in the world but it's absolutely crucial and then the fourth area of training which i really really really think everything single mountaineer should be doing is what i call recovery and mobility work so essentially this is just doing some small things during your week just to help the body kind of calm down relax and bounce back in between sessions so it may involve just doing some simple stretching sessions or some self-massage if you're doing big big training weeks this may involve going in a pool and doing some swimming or some pool walking or maybe doing some yoga or whatever it may be. This type of stuff, it doesn't have to take a huge amount of time, but even doing small amounts of this consistently in your weeks can go a long, long, long way.

[6:44] And ultimately, when it comes down to training for mountaineering, this is the structure that I use for all of my clients. Every single mountaineer, whether they're a first-time mountaineer stepping up into their first adventure, all the way up to the mountaineers I'm working with for the 8,000-meter-plus mountains, and everything in between. They're following these four areas. Every single person is doing strength training to one extent or another. Every single person are using those mountaineering specific conditionings to one extent or another. Every single person is doing longer cardio and every single person is doing some type of recovery mobility. I firmly believe that if you can tick off each of these boxes and in future episodes of this podcast, we'll dive into what each of these look like and how you can make these out and how you can get the best out of these types of things. But ultimately, as an overarching thing, if you can tick off each of these areas, be consistent with these areas, dial them in and make sure it's right for you and your needs, This can give you a really, really holistic view, and it can be much, much more manageable than the approach of just going out and doing hours and hours and hours of running and hiking, which is a pretty common approach for a lot of mountaineers.

[7:53] So with that being said, hopefully that just gives you a little bit of an overview around, I guess, what we're going to be basing the rest of this podcast off. Because over the future episodes, I'm going to be diving into each of these areas. I'm going to be talking a lot about strength training, how mountaineers can structure it out, how mountaineers can get the most out of things, strategies that can help with there. I'm going to be talking a lot about that mountaineering-specific conditioning, different workouts, different approaches, different ways you can tune that. I'm going to talk a lot about just longer cardio. And as much as a mountaineer that gets talked about to death in the mountaineering community, there will be some good stuff in there. And also explore recovery mobility, plus diving into other areas like mental strength and mindset, nutrition, and a bunch of other things to kind of round that out.

[8:36] So ultimately, in the episodes moving forward, hopefully you'll come out the other end just having a good understanding of how you can apply these different things to your training and seeing the best results on the mountain. So with that being said, I want to say welcome, welcome, welcome back to the show. I really hope you've enjoyed this little refresher, a little overview episode. And last thing I will say before I wrap things up, if you are a mountaineer starting off 2025 and you're like, you know what? What you've laid out there already, that is sounding pretty good to me. What you're laying out there, and that sounds like I'm pretty interested in. But realistically right now, I don't have the patience to wait for weeks and weeks and months and months for these episodes to come out. I just want help now. If you're interested in finding out a little bit about the training we do for Mountaineers, what you can do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash Mountaineer. Now on that page, there's a nice video which explains our training and our programs in a little bit more detail. And if it sounds like something you want to explore further, you can book a link with our team. We can hop on a call, have a bit of a chat, and ultimately see if and how we may be able to help you, your training, and your mountaineering. So with that being said, thank you so much for listening. I really hope you've enjoyed it. I'm really excited to get back in this podcast and bring on the episodes ahead. Have a lovely day. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.

​Want to
get fit, strong and resilient
for your
mountaineering adventures?

Check Out
The Online Summit Program