Scott Johnston
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Thanks for writing in with your question. As the grade steepens strength and muscular endurance begin to play larger and larger roles in propelling you upward. Ideally, you’d do a HR drift test on a steep treadmill. 800ft/mile is right at 15% grade. Most treadmills will go to 15%. 1000ft/mile is close to 20% and testing on that grade will require a special treadmill called an incline trainer, some of which will go to 40%.
You have to slow down because your aerobic capacity is too low to support the speed you’d like to be going. I would engage in a leg strengthening program using heavy weighted box step-ups for 6-8 weeks 2x/week and then shift to weighted steep uphill hiking to develop Muscular Endurance(ME). A stair master works great for this type of workout 1x/week.
I’m not sure your interpretation of the slow walking being more demanding because you spend more time on one foot is accurate. When you slow down your HR surely drops.
I do not think TP metrics include a Grade Adjusted Pace. Some Garmin (and other) watches do have that metric
Going well uphill has altogether different fitness demands than hiking or running on gentle terrain. Strength and ME play a huge part. But take the long approach using the methods I mentioned and you will see improvement even during the strength block and bigger gains during the ME block.
Scott
Thanks for writing in with your question. Steep booting (on 50-100% grades) is bio-mechanically different than running even on moderately steep trails (20-30% grade). Steep booting is like climbing a set of steep stairs except that sometimes the steps give way under your weight. Combine the steepness with the fact that you have skis on your pack and you are making a good case for getting stronger legs.
I would do a focused max strength training block of 8 weeks doing box step-ups with a heavy load. Something like 6 sets of 4 reps that start at 75% of 1RM and build to 90% of 1RM for the last 3 sets when reps drop to 2-3.
Then move to an ME phase where you use a stairmaster machine with will closely mimic the steepness of your typical boot pack. Use a weight that gives a mild burn. Hold that effort for a minimum of 30min and try to work up to 60minutes.
This will give you a much faster booting speed.
Scott
Alex:
Like Leonard suggested, running outside for 10 minutes should do the trick. Another option would be a vigorous 10 minute core routine.
Scott
Steve:
The most important thing to do when faced with a schedule like this is to not try to force training. Not only do you have the time change to contend with and the sleep disruption that brings. You may be working very long days. In an 8-9 day period, I would get that big stair climb in since that is very specific to your goal. Make sure you are rested for that workout since it is probably the priority workout for the 8-9 days. One or two max strength sessions should be doable. You can probably fit in one or two Z2 treadmill runs. Trying to pack some training into each day is likely to bring you home exhausted. The consequence of that is that you will have had a compromised 9 days of training on the trip and may need a week to recover if you pushed it too hard on that trip. You just want to do enough to not lose too much ground. Think of this as maintenance week and try to get home fairly rested so you can launch back to full training quickly.
Scott
Brandon:
Bummer that you have had this issue. But I think you’ve handled it pretty well. Sure you could have stopped earlier but this is so common that I rarely see people back off at the first indication of trouble. I’d give it a full week before you dip your toe back into training. If you are already feeling much better after just 4 days that indicates that this was just a bit of overreaching without the desired recovery block afterward. This is not over training or you would not have bounced back so fast.
Try bounding up a flight of stairs and noting how your legs feel. That’s the best test for deciding when to start training again.
Scott
Jim:
These are great questions. At 6-8 weeks out from the main goal of the training everyone, regardless of their aerobic base (ADS or not) must begin to add the kind of event-specific high-intensity training to the program. For mountaineers the most effective type of this sort of training is the uphill weighted ME you’re doing. So you must keep doing these ME sessions on the stair machine regardless of your HR getting into the 180s.
1) Pushing this higher HR does not matter, as long as your legs feel that low-grade continuous burn. Your legs are getting the desired training effect.
2) It is fine to add some more Z1-2 volume in the week as long as you can handle it from the time and energy standpoints.
3) Stair Masters allow you to climb at a nearly 100% gradient. This is very different than most outside steep hills. Once you get over about 40% outside, you will encounter limitations like balance, and feet sliding down the hill. These make it much harder to get the consistent ME work you are getting on the Machine. So the progression is not the same inside as outside.
You can progress your ME training by noting your vertical climb each workout. You should be seeing noticeable gains in vert each ME session. You can also add weight if 62lb begins to feel too easy. But I doubt that is the case.
Keep this up and you will be feeling much stronger on the hills than you ever have.
Scott
For mountaineering the stair machine will be MUCH more effective than a 15% inclined treadmill. It will do a fantastic job of building the fitness for going up mountains. How many mountains that you aim to climb have slopes of 15%? It is a pretty guess to say “zero”. Whereas the stair machine angle is in the range of 756-100% depending on the machine. But the escalator type like the Stairmaster brand are brutal taskmasters and we have seen folks like yourself who are “terrain challenged” do all their vertical on these machines and are able to develop their fitness to climb the biggest mountains. Just have some entertainment 😉.
Scott
There is an in-depth discussion of the Zone system on our Yout Tube channel here
There is also a similar discussion in both our books. In TftUA you will find it on pages 83-96.
You will find all your answers and much more in both those places.
In short: Top of Z1 is 10% below Top of Z2.
Scott
Mairsile:
Thanks for writing in with your questions. Welcome to EE and I am sorry for your confusion. Both those workouts have been around for over 10 years and have gone through several revisions. You may be looking at versions that were made at different times. So there are several versions floating around and it is likely that this was a copy and paste error.
If you can send me links to where you have found these I will be sure we bring them into agreement so others are not confused. Please email me at Scott@evokeendurance.com.
But to answer your questions;
1) So which is it with exercises like that? Should I be just holding it for 10 seconds and making it harder until that’s all I can do? Should it be 5-6 seconds? Or should it just be however long I can hold it, even if that means minutes?
As the instruction says, to build strength you need to have enough resistance that you can only do 5 reps or hold for 5 seconds (there is disagreement on this for isometrics and some people will say 10 seconds). But the point is you must not be able to hold this position for “minutes” or do 20 reps or you will be building endurance. The core muscles are mainly made up of slow twitch fibers so they already have a lot of endurance. So, training them for strength is more important. And we do this with low reps and high resistance. In the 3Point description, the point I was making is the same for any of these core exercises. When your form breaks down you have achieved the strength training effect. Ideally, you will have enough load/resistance that this happens someplace around 5 reps or 5 seconds. Realize that doing exactly 5 seconds or 5 reps is not some magic number. If the load is high enough maybe you can only hold for 3 seconds. That is still going to give the desired strength training effect.
2) For the General Strength exercises: These are meant as conditioning. They are to prepare you for the heavy loads in the Max Strength phase. These are “General” in nature so they challenge the range of motion and to condition the tissues to loading that they might not otherwise be able to handle. As these are conditioning exercises, I recommend doing 10 reps and if the exercise is single leg like the box step up do 10 reps/side.
My apologies for the confusion and please do let me know where you found these documents so I can correct them.
Scott
The Selection Prep plan running is measured in hours and the SOF plan is measured in miles so they are not really comparable. I would recommend the SOF plan for the goals you have in mind.
Scott
James:
Adding ME training to your program will help your uphills and downhills. I’d start with our GYM ME progression (see the ME article). Do this 1x/week along with hill sprints 1x/week for at least 8 weeks. After 4 weeks progress to doing the hill sprints with 10% of BW added. Keep them in the plan till 2 weeks before the race.
After the 8 weeks shift the ME to long weighted uphills. Use at 10- 15% grade and use 10% BW and run as much as possible. Workouts will start 2×10 then 3X10, then 3×15. Donde 1x/week. Stop all this ME stuff 12 days before your race.
The next training cycle you should start this early and you will get more benefits.
Scott
James;
Andy is on vacation right now. So, you’re stuck with me till he gets back.
Have you tried Voodoo flossing of your calves? If not it would be a cheap and most likely effective way of treating this problem. There are tons of YouTube videos on the technique and bands are not very expensive. Look at this tutorial by Kelly Starret as he is the inventor.
Scott
James:
What I meant, whether I said it properly or not, about running more on trails vs roads is that in general, you can handle more running volume on softer surfaces. However, you will probably be running slower on trails so it will take more time to get those miles.
As such I don’t think there is an easy multiplier you can apply to your road miles. Because at the same HR you will be running slower the impact forces will be lower. The soft surface will lessen the impact. The less repetitive motion (on rougher trails) means less of the exact same foot strike on each stride. All these things mean you can handle more volume on dirt than on pavement.
I think 10% is a safe place to start.
Scott
To replace heart rate with power in any of our training plans you will need to establish your zones using power.
Wear your power meter while conducting the HR drift test to find your aerobic threshold. Using some numbers to illustrate my point. Let’s say you see a 3% upward drift in HR when starting the test at 150 bpm. It is a safe bet that the power you produce to run at a pace that elicits a 150bpm HR and its speed is your aerobic threshold power. So, for Z2 runs you will want to keep your power under that number. If you are training on very hilly terrain you should also do a drift test running or hiking steeply uphill and use the power number you find as your hill power. Flatter and steeper are very likely to give different AeT power numbers.
Similarly, you can conduct our AnT test for both flatter running and steeper hiking to find your AnT power numbers which I predict will be different.
It is not trivial to do all this but it mainly just takes time. Power SHOULD be a better way of measuring ad controlling the training effect you are seeking.
I hope this helps.
Scott
My recommendation will be to do only very light exercise during 17-20June. For 23-26 June I recommend rest and eat.
If you have been training well a bit more rest will be the best thing you can do to help with success on your climbs.
If the climb gets pushed back a few days then you can just do some more Z1-2 runs. No ME. If it is pouched back a few weeks then you should go back to training and adding more ME is a good way to maintain that most important quality.
Scott
