FITNESS
Conditioning
The most important piece of equipment you have is your own body.
With proper training, your body will increase its capacity to handle the load placed on it. This is the basis for physical conditioning and when preparing to venture out into the backcountry, must be done, or you can create a potential and considerable hazard for you or your team.
Good physical conditioning is the best safeguard against emergencies. It allows you to recognize your limits and you are less likely to make fatigue-induced errors.
Conditioning for mountaineering consists mainly of improving your aerobic fitness. Adding strength and balance exercises can be helpful and are recommended. If you are in good condition you can reduce the likelihood of developing injuries, lack of balance, or mental decline during your activity. In general, it greatly increases your enjoyment of any outdoor activity.
Aerobic Fitness
Aerobic fitness is crucial to an activity like alpine scrambling and forms the foundation of any alpine conditioning program.
The goal of aerobic conditioning is to increase the amount of work you can perform without severe depletion of energy.
Where do we get our energy for endurance? When we have enough oxygen, we can get a lot of our energy from the fat inside our body, which can provide an endless amount of energy supply for our activity. However, this must be trained. To train for this, we want to exercise in Heart Zone 2 - at a level where we can speak more than a few words at a time - and we want to sustain this level for 45-60 minutes or more. This not only trains our cardiovascular, respiratory and muscular systems, but it also trains our energy producing systems, increasing their capacity to create the energy we need when we need it. HIIT training does not build aerobic fitness, it actually hurts it. HIIT is fine to add into your conditioning program, but no more than 1-2 sessions a week, and it must be balanced with endurance training.
Finally, aerobic training should be done in a fed state - training while fasting does not improve your level fitness in the same way that training fed does.
Specific training activities for scrambling include step aerobics classes, stair climbing, using treadmills, walking, jogging, and hiking. The goal of your aerobic program would be to achieve a distance and elevation gain within 60-75% of those expected to be experienced on an activity. It is important to remember that you need to work up to this level gradually. The activity should be prolonged enough to warm the muscles, produce a sweat, and induce mild breathlessness. To be of aerobic value, exercise should be a minimum of 30 to 45 minutes in duration three to five times per week. Increase the length of your workout each week by 10 percent. Remember, the best way to keep yourself in condition for any activity is by doing that activity.
Strength Training
Strength training is also an important part of your conditioning program for alpine scrambling.
Specific target areas should include leg strength, arm and shoulder strength, and abdominal and core strength. Squats, one-legged squats, calf raises, pull-ups, rows, pushups, curls, and shoulder raises are all great lifting exercises. Planks, situps, and other core-strengthening exercises are very helpful for strengthening your abdomen.
2-3 days a week of full-body strength training is all that's needed.
Stretching
Stretching is an important part of any physically demanding sport. Proper stretching not only reduces the chance of injury, but also improves performance by increasing flexibility. Flexibility training helps increase both circulation and range of motion in joints. A flexible joint can move farther with less energy, which is a definite benefit when hiking.
The first step is to make stretching a regular part of your conditioning program. Second and just as important is to include some stretching in your trips. Early morning stretching can be difficult because your muscles have not had a chance to warm up. Special care should be taken when stretching stiff or cold muscles. Some people prefer to do a little stretching after they have been hiking 10 to 15 minutes or during their first break when their muscles have had a chance to loosen up. A little stretching before, during, and after a strenuous trip can greatly reduce muscle stiffness. During your trips try to hold each stretch for at least 10 seconds. In training sessions, increase it to 60 seconds for each stretch. The main thing to remember when stretching is that it should never be painful and one should never bounce.
Balance
Your fitness program should include exercises to improve balance and agility. These exercises should be started within 4-6 weeks of your outdoor activity. They can be done as part of your strength-training program, with or without a pack, at least two times a week lasting 5-10 min.
Exercising In The Cold
Proper Warm-up - In cold weather it is more difficult to warm up the muscles. Therefore, it is essential to begin each outing with simple calisthenics or walking and stretching. Once begun, continue the warm up activity until the outing begins.
Wear Appropriate Clothing - Select clothing that will maintain comfort during the activity. There is a tendency to over dress, which can lead to sweat accumulation in clothing and loss of body heat. Be sure to stop 10 - 15 minutes into the activity to adjust your clothing layers. Hint: Start Cold!
Avoid Rapid Cooling - Add clothing when taking rest breaks or completing the outing to avoid post-exercise hypothermia.
Lactic Acidosis
During any intense exercise, like sprinting or lifting heavy weights, your body requires more energy than normal to keep the muscles functioning. In this case, the body metabolizes glucose to deliver energy to the muscles.
The metabolized glucose, called pyruvate, is converted into lactate. When lactate accumulates at high levels in the blood and muscles, it creates acidity called lactic acidosis, which causes muscle fatigue and at high levels can interfere with muscle recovery. The accumulation of lactic acid can cause burning sensations that can disturb your athletic activities.
While the most common symptom of lactic acid buildup is fatigue and a feeling of tiredness, there are a few harmful symptoms that can occur as a result of lactic acidosis.
General weakness
Yellowing of the skin and/or eyes
Experiencing shallow or rapid breathing
Fast heartbeat
Muscle cramps
Abdominal pain and discomfort
Headaches
Appetite problems
Diarrhea, nausea, and/or vomiting
There is a solution to almost everything and lactic acid buildup can be tackled easily. Here are some precautions you can take to reduce the buildup of lactic acid.
Drink water or an electrolyte-replacement drink, which can play a vital role in preventing buildup of water-soluble lactic acid. Don’t wait until you feel thirsty. By then, you’re likely already dehydrated.
The key to healthy and beneficial exercise is maintaining consistent activity. If you want to be physically fit, you need to exercise frequently. This will make your body adaptive to additional energy production and you will require less glucose to burn for energy, which eventually means less lactic acid buildup.
While it is true that keeping yourself motivated to exercise on a daily basis is the key to a healthy lifestyle, forcing your muscles beyond their capacity can produce negative results. Excessive workouts every day without any routine or cycle can cause severe muscle soreness. Make sure to stay challenged, but don’t increase intensity too fast or all at once. Add weight, repetitions, minutes or miles gradually over a set period of time to maintain healthy levels of lactic acid.
Although there is an emphasis on consistent workouts and keeping yourself motivated enough to bring out desired results, you must know when to back off. As you start to feel your muscles burn or you struggle to breathe, slow down until you catch your breath, so your body can deliver more oxygen to the muscles. Moreover, alternate periods of activity with periods of active and inactive rest as appropriate.
Stretch immediately after your workout. Stretching after a workout helps release lactic acid and gives an immediate relief to your muscles preventing them from lactic acid buildup and muscle soreness. Lactic acid can take around 30 minutes to an hour to disperse post-workout, so make sure to cool down appropriately and stretch right after.
Apart from above-mentioned steps, including certain foods into your daily diet can help control lactic acid buildup to avoid lactic acidosis. Foods and vegetables with magnesium, fatty acids, and B vitamins are recommended. Foods rich in Vitamin B are leafy green vegetables, cereals, peas and beans, fish, beef, poultry, eggs and dairy products. Vegetables such as Spinach, collard greens, turnip greens, navy beans, kidney beans and seeds such as pumpkin, sesame and sunflower seeds are great sources of magnesium.
Guiding Principles for Fitness Training
Continuity - Training must be consistent in order to be effective.
Gradualness – increase your intensity and difficulty gradually.
Your body has a limited ability to adapt to training stimulus and can only improve at a gradual pace.
A gradual progression of consistent training loads is a necessity for best training outcomes.
Modulation – You don’t want to end up on a plateau where your training falls flat and you stop improvement.
Adaptation to training occurs in three- to six- week cycles
After three or six weeks, if you feel you have adapted to that training load, then start to change it up by increasing your distance and/or your speed.
Specificity of Training for Scrambling
Only those muscle systems that you stress in training will see improvement.
Beginners will see good gains with ANY prolonged endurance activity.
As your fitness advances, the training should become more specific to your activity. Typically, this is after 12 weeks or longer of a foundational training program.
Specificity for backpacking or mountain climbing would include weight bearing activities such as running hills, hiking, running or walking stairs, and actual backpacking or climbing.
Example of a non-specific training modality is swimming. Swimming would not be specific to backpacking or climbing since it is not a weight-bearing activity and will train different muscle systems than you need for backpacking or climbing.
It is important to note that when you are training for an event that is over three to four hours in length (which backpacking and climbing typically are), than your basic aerobic training is both the event-specific training and the base training rolled into one.
Intensity of Your Training and Why It Is Important to Understand It
The intensity of your training determines which energy pathways and which muscles fibers you are training/strengthening.
Your performance when backpacking or climbing will be determined and limited by your aerobic metabolic pathway and recruitment of slow twitch muscle fibers. Focusing on lower intensity aerobic exercise of longer duration will maximize both of these.
High intensity training, if done too often (more than 2 times a week), will have a negative impact on your aerobic fitness and capabilities, so you will need to limit how often you are doing high intensity training.
We need to be able to accurately gauge our intensity during training in order to train properly.
Common, but less accurate, methods are:
Perceived effort – can we have a conversation or breathe through our nose?
How fast we are going.
The most accurate method is with the use of a chest-strap Heart Rate monitor. We will go over Heart Rate monitoring during the lecture.
Fatigue and Recovery Strategies
Key concepts to remember:
Training makes you weaker. Yes, you read that correctly
It is the recovery that makes you stronger
Fatigue is your body’s feedback to you about your training. Proper training will always produce some level of muscle fatigue. Too much fatigue, soreness, or stiffness after a workout is your body telling you that you overdid it.
Your recovery strategy is the process of actively aiding your body’s ability to restore balance and adapt to the training load you just put it through. Some ways you can aid this process:
Diet. (We will cover this in the nutrition section)
REM sleep. (You should be getting a MINIMUM of 7 hours of sleep while training)
Massage
Recovery workouts - very light exercise such as walking or yoga.
Avoid Overtraining
It is better to be a little undertrained than overtrained.
Common signs of overtraining, and when you know you need to back off of your training:
Repeated shortcomings in performance level
Feeling of flatness or low energy during your activity or training
Lack of motivation to train after a good warm-up
A common response to some of the above signs is to think that we need to workout more or add something else. DON’T. Overtraining will lead to overuse injuries.
So, what is normal, so can tell the difference between too much or too little?
Feeling a little tired after a workout is fine and expected, just not severely so
You should feel good the next day, not too sore or beat (tired)
If you feel severely tired after a workout, or too sore after a workout – you will need to incorporate a longer recovery period (an extra day or two), and back-off slightly on your training load to avoid this in the future.
If you are not feeling any fatigue after a workout than you can step up your intensity and duration.
What Is “Ideal” Fitness for the Alpine Athlete?
High aerobic capacity. This is the metabolic ability of the body to move (climb) at a given power output.
Speed. In the practical sense of mountain climbing, speed is strength. The quickness with which you push down into your boot determines your forward velocity.
Muscular endurance. The ability of the legs to do a lot of work over long durations in a predominantly aerobic state — this is another form of strength.
Form/technique. This is the mountaineer’s proficiency at moving over the terrain. In-experienced and inefficient climbers will need a lot more aerobic capacity, speed, and muscular endurance to make up for lack of good technique.