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Andrew Bollard
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Hi Seth,
Thanks for the reply. Interestingly, I think that’s the same survey that I was prompted to take despite not being a coach… more TP clunkiness I guess. I do something similar; an old Strength Builder session to record duration and TSS, and a new one to record sets and reps.
On an unrelated note, I wanted to thank you again for the advice you gave me in April-May as I was getting ready for Chamonix in June. Unfortunately, as you may have heard there was still a ton of snow down to 2000m in June, so I got a grand total of 2 routes done over 10 days. Probably a more informative and beneficial experience in the long run though, than going out and getting a week straight of perfect weather without facing any hard decision-making.
Andrew
Hi Seth,
Apologies for taking so long to get back to you! Thanks for the advice, I’ve been implementing the 1-2 week mini-block idea and so far I’ve had good results. There’s definitely scope for an full article about this subject! For the simulation workouts, I interpret that as long multi pitch routes with a heavy pack and alpine boots (I don’t have access to snow and ice in my country so next best thing). I also don’t have easy access to granite; my local crags where I climb midweek are limestone. However I can mitigate this somewhat by getting onto granite in the weekends leading up to the trip.
Andrew
When you say it took you several seasons to get really good at carrying a heavy pack uphill, what does this mean exactly?
A strong base is key, but that should involve a mix of both long slow distance runs and strength (via a weighted pack), correct?
If you’re talking about doing aerobic hikes with a weighted pack, please have a read of this topic where I responded to a similar question, and this post in the Military section of the website, which does a much better job of explaining the same concept than my post.
When you say it took you several seasons to get really good at carrying a heavy pack uphill, what does this mean exactly?
A strong base is key, but that should involve a mix of both long slow distance runs and strength (via a weighted pack), correct?
If you’re talking about doing aerobic hikes with a weighted pack, please have a read of this topic where I responded to a similar question, and this post in the Military section of the website, which does a much better job of explaining the same concept than my post.
When you say it took you several seasons to get good at carrying a pack uphill, what does this mean exactly? Are you referring to ME training, or are you talking about doing aerobic hikes with a weighted pack in your base period? If it’s the latter, please have a read of this topic where I recently responded to a similar question. This post in the Military section of the website is a good reference too, and does a better job than me of explaining the correlation between unweighted running performance and rucking (i.e. heavy pack carries in the mountaineering context) performance.
I guess the first question woiuld be: what are your training goals? You sound like you’re just generally trying to improve your aerobic endurance at the moment, but given that most folks are here for mountain sports training advice please correct me if I’m wrong. This will inform the training modalities that are best suited to your goals.
How did the lactate/heart rate figures correspond to your breathing? Did you feel like you were at a conversational, nose-breathing pace throughout, or was your breathing laboured and “mouthy” at e.g. 135 BPM?
The way to cure ADS is to spend a lot of time training at your Aerobic Threshold, slowly building up your weekly volume over several months to whatever is the most you can sustain. Although this will be frustratingly slow in the beginning and it’ll be a long time before you can run or hike and keep your heart rate below your AeT, the good news is that you can make very appreciable gains in the next 6 months if you’re consistent. The higher the weekly volume, the better; 10 hours a week training at AeT will yield much faster results than 4, but of course this is subject to how much free time you have to train.
It’s probably advisable to do a heart rate drift test to give yourself another baseline to work from in addition to lactate testing. I’m not clear from your post if you’ve seen Scott’s latest articles on this site discussing ADS; if not, have a look this article for reference on how to do a heart rate drift test. This article explains what the different heart rate zones are, and this article specifically deals with ADS and how to know when you’ve been “cured”.
Hope this is helpful and fire away with more questions if you have them.
@Josh Gray:
Nice work! You’ve given a perfect real life example of how ME training can and should work.
I’ve been reflecting on your question more. One of the principles in TftNA is that, if you’re recovering well from the current training load, you should be reasonably enthusiastic about training and feel energised after each session. Aerobic capacity work, specifically Z1 training that has a low neuromuscular impact, has a recovery effect and should be a sufficiently low-intensity activity that it can be done day in, day out. Max strength training done right should have a similar energising effect if recovered from properly and should not leave you feeling sore. Training these two qualities independently therefore should have complimentary recovery effects on each other, in theory enabling a higher overall volume of training. This should allow for more capacity to be utilised in the ME period, leading to bigger overall gains.
If you train on a steady diet of aerobic hikes with heavy weight, the neuromuscular stimulus from the weight is probably going to be too high to effectively recover from between sessions and continue doing quality aerobic work. On the flip side, this stimulus will be too low to elicit a max strength response, hence the analogy of trying to kill two birds with one stone and missing both in the process.
As for how people can better train for Aconcagua, it’s impossible to say why people fall apart with heavy pack carries without knowing their training history. As you say, a million factors come into play here. It could well be that people who appear to arrive in good shape are in fact lacking the specific qualities necessary for success in high-altitude mountaineering, despite appearances. The best advice you could give them is probably to read Scott’s article on mountaineering training 9 months in advance and train accordingly, to be honest!
The answer is no for the same reasons I outlined above. If you also did heavily weighted aerobic hikes during an ME phase on top of steep weighted carries with a heavy pack, you would run the risk of these hikes essentially being extra Z3 sessions and you would be completely wrecked very soon. While I haven’t done an ME phase with steep weighted carries due to being a flatlander, I have done the gym-based ME progression, and I can safely say that if you’re doing ME right (regardless of modality) then it’s quite unlikely you’d be able to handle heavily weighted aerobic hikes on top of this training. Given that the same muscles used to carry a heavy pack with be heavily fatigued from ME work, how do you expect to be able to throw on a 20+kg pack in the days after an ME session and go do a hike?
Most of us will have to do Z1-only sessions during an ME phase as aerobic base maintenance, because we’ll just be too tired to do Z2. This is purely because of the high neuromuscular load imposed during this period. Even if we are metabolically capable of running or hiking with a heavy pack in Z2 and maintaining a conversational, nose-breathing pace below AeT, the stress imposed on our muscles and joints by the high impact forces of these modalities done in Z2 (assuming you don’t have ADS and the top of your Z2 isn’t quite slow) will be too much to recover from when stacked on top of the high recovery cost of ME work. Your intensity distribution during this period will be polarised something like this: fun-hard, low level burning in the working muscles during an ME session that will take 2-3 days to fully recover from, and super easy, can-do-the-shopping-list-in-my-head-at-the-same-time pace during aerobic capacity sessions.
@Carlos Morandi:
I just wrote a response to another post about the cons of using heavily weighted hikes as a Z2 session: https://evokeendurance.com/forums/topic/aerobic-training-with-weighted-pack/
I’m in no position to comment on something as serious as fatherhood, and I can only imagine how hard it is to train with a young kid, so I’m reluctant to say whether your approach is a good idea or not in the circumstances. Hopefully someone older and wiser than me will come along to help out with this response, but in the meantime all I’ll say is well done on continuing your training as a new dad and keep up the good work!
The reason heavily weight hikes are not recommended outside of an ME phase is because it risks turns a Z1-2 session into a Z3 session. 20+kg is an enormous pack weight to be hiking with for a Z1-2 session and, unless you’re enormously strong, is probably going to fatigue the legs and back in a way more reminiscent of a Z3/ME session.
Remember that, in a base period, the goal is to concurrently build as much aerobic capacity and maximal strength as possible independently of each other and then convert that general aerobic and strength capacity into a sport specific capacity using ME training. We always start our training in a given cycle very generally to build as much capacity as possible in the systems we will rely on for our event, and then sharpen that into more sport-specific fitness so that we can utilise our capacities to succeed in our event/race/goal. These qualities need to be developed independently of each other to maximise them, as they require different biological adaptations that cannot be optimally trained in the same session. They can be trained concurrently in a given training cycle, but not in the very same training session.
Aerobic hikes with a 20+kg pack will almost certainly violate the principles of general vs specific training and capacity vs utilisation training as you would be blending the stimuli for adaptations to aerobic capacity and strength capacity, which have competing demands. It might seem intuitive to try and train both these capacities at the same time, but in trying to kill two birds with one stone, you would end up missing both. It’s much better to focus on building up a high volume of running and/or lightly weighted hiking while simultaneously but separately building max strength in semi-sport specific movements such as the box step-up and single leg deadlift, Dedicating specific sessions to each capacity will lead to better gains in both, which will eventually leave you in a better position to convert them into something more specific to mountaineering like hiking with a 20+kg pack. You don’t need to spend 6 months hiking with such heavy pack weights to be optimally prepared to carry them; a targeted ME period of 8-12 weeks after a long and productive base period is in fact a better way to prepare.
@alpinewithb Thanks for the reply. I’m doing my own programming, but I’ve seen some samples of the 6 month mountaineering plan and the strength sessions certainly do look long at times.
For further context, I work from home and have a range of weights at home up to a pair of 32kg and a single 36kg kettlebell, so time efficiency and equipment are not an issue because I also train at home.
For the split, I’ll still only end up doing each movement twice a week (Mon-Thur or Tue-Fri), but you’re right that it could lead to extra soreness so I’ll have to monitor that. It just seems to be a better schedule for my needs. I think the novelty factor is important too; I’ve done a lot of strength training in the last 3 years (before I started structured endurance training for mountaineering) and I found the twice a week split hard to adhere to in my last base period because I’ve done so much of it, so I’m keen to try out different ways of programming strength that could be easier to adhere to. I’m less concerned about going hard in the transition period because I’m really just focusing on getting back into a consistent strength training routine. I’ve mentioned before that I’m in the fortunate position of being near the point where the law of diminishing returns will kick in if I try and build more strength, which also makes going hard less of a concern at the moment.
Really I was just curious to hear if anyone else had tried a similar split and had good/bad results from it.
@LCB Lucky you! Where I live is fairly flat, so I’d have to drive 3.5 hours to reach the nearest mountains where I could attempt to test this 1000m/hour thing. I happen to be heading there in 2 weeks, so I think I’m going to give it a go out of curiousity. Not that Denali is on the cards anytime soon, but 1000m/hour unweighted is an excellent standard to aim for regardless of the objective.
@pia_mia Cycling is not recommended for making up the majority of your aerobic capacity training because it’s non-impact; it doesn’t condition your joints for the impact of hiking steeply downhill with a pack on (i.e. descending off a mountaineering objective). What are your goals?
Thanks for joining in Scott. I guess the $64,000 question here is “How strong is too strong?” Myself, @alpinewithb, and @josh (if I recall correctly from another topic) all seem to be in the same boat where strength isn’t our limitation for our chosen goals. So for folks like us, it can be hard to judge how beneficial max strength training would be vs devoting more time to aerobic capacity work, which is where our limitations usually lie.
To put some context on my own situation, at a bodyweight of 81kg and a height of 1.78m (178lbs and 5’10” in American) I can do a 2RM of 101kg total load in the box step up on each leg, 5×5 in the single leg deadlift with 2x32kg kettlebells, push press 2x32kg kettlebells overhead for 4 reps, 5×5 windmills with a 32kg kettlebell, currently swinging a 36kg bell for the gym-based ME program… You get the picture. I’m pretty confident that my strength is sufficient for my mountaineering goals, which at the moment only consist of a 7 day Mont Blanc itinerary in June.
Another factor for me when I started structured training for Mont Blanc last July was a kind of burnout; I had been consistently lifting weights for nearly two years at that stage, and I was getting bored to be honest. I found it quite hard to motivate myself for strength training, whereas with aerobic capacity I knew I had a lot of low-hanging fruit to pick and so I was much more motivated to consistently run and hike. I’d be curious to hear if anyone else has ever experienced this too.
