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Andrew Bollard
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@LCB:
Thanks for sharing this, I’d never heard of this podcast before! Some interesting food for thought. Can you give more details on what terrain you have access to locally and how high are your local mountains (if any)? Hard to answer your questions without more details.
I think it would be beneficial to summarise and contextualise some of the pertinent info below for the benefit of anyone who joins this discussion later.
At 22:02 Scott says:
One of the things that I have striven for with athletes I’ve coached, who I know are fit enough, is to go from 14 to the summit and back down in a day. I believve that that’s the most… the safest way to climb that mountain, honestly.
He goes on to explain that most commercial guiding companies establish a camp at 17,000′ (5,182m) because the fitness of the party usually isn’t high enough to make a one-day push from 14,000′ (4,267m) to the summit (20,309’/6,190m) and back down in a day. So, if I understand correctly, the one-day push is not the normal way that the West Buttress route is climbed, and only very fit mountaineers are capable of this.
Scott states that in his example of his one-day push with Colin Haley, they took 4-5 hours to summit from 14,000′. That would equate to a rate of ascent of 400-500m/hour above 4,267m in altitude. For Europeans like me, it’s very roughly analogous to reaching the summit of Mont Blanc from the Tête Rousse hut in 3 hours (this usually takes 6-7 hours for context). He further elaborates that he’s climbed Denali this way several times, including with people who had very little mountaineering experience (albeit cross-country skiers, so still very fit people). Also note that in TftNA, when recounting this story, Scott says that they were going at a conversational pace and chatting the whole way up and down. So, this rate of ascent was within their AeT.
Plotting at the route on Outdooractive, the average gradient for this route appears to be 27%:
So, not a super steep route by any means. With sufficient aerobic capacity and muscular endurance, it certainly seems achievable, although it’d still require a lot of training to reach that level of fitness and it wouldn’t happen in just a few months.
@AdamasPR You should retest your AeT ASAP. If your training has been going well then you may well find that your AeT is within 10% of your AnT. Otherwise, you’re just guessing whether you should build up more aerobic base or not.
Can you put some numbers on your strength? Also, what are your objecctives: how many days will they take and what is the technical difficulty of them?
@alpinewithb Completely understand about the time cost of going to a gym. Doesn’t sound like it’s worth it in your case because strength isn’t your limitation. Rings would be a cheap and effective way to create more of a max strength stimulus for your upper body. And attaching those dumbbells to yourself for pullups would work well too.
Re: Easy Strength, you may not have access to enough resistance to do lower body movements; lunges with both dumbbells sounds like the best you could do with your current setup. I wouldn’t see this as a problem though, because leg strength is presumably not an issue for you.
@Ryan G Your question is kind of unanswerable, since none of the Evoke coaches wrote the above plan. It’s very hard for one coach to comment on the how and why of another coach’s plan, since they don’t know what the training philosophy behind it is. Dan John gets questions like these a lot on his podcast, usually about kettlebell programs like Pavel Tsatsouline’s ones, and it generally bugs the shit out of him because he’s not the author of those plans and therefore not best placed to advise on them.
If the trainer is well known, surely they have a website or some other material where they explain what their training philosophy is?
@josh No worries, I did a lot of kettlebelling and built up a solid amount of muscle before I got serious about training endurance, so the ME topic really interests me.
You sound like you’re approaching the limit of useful max strength for your bodyweight; TftNA (I think) doesn’t recommend going beyond e.g. deadlifting x2 bodyweight as the law of diminishing returns kicks in and the additional muscle needed to support that strength starts to become a detriment to mountain performance. So you can definitely go for a 6 week block as you’re already strong enough for a mountain athlete. In fact, I wonder if you could get away with a 4 week block just to maintain your gains and focus more on building aerobic capacity. Your tire drag sprints will be excellent here, as you already have a high level of general strength and sprints would be the perfect way to convert that into more sport-specific strength.
It’s probably not advisable to rely on a test you did several years ago, even one as accurate as a gas exchange test. You should do an AeT and AnT test to confirm where you’re currently at; you may be pleasantly surprised and find out that you’re very close to or even within 10%, meaning you can start ME work sooner.
@alpinewithb Thanks for adding context, your question makes a lot more sense now. I’m in the same situation as you; before I started cutting weight and doing structured endurance training, I was 200lbs on a 5’10” frame, way too heavy and muscular to enjoy mountain sports without getting gassed on every uphill section. Folks like us can definitely get away with reduced strength training and instead focus on adding more aerobic capacity training.
You could definitely get away with not following the 3×4 protool to the letter; however, I personally wouldn’t replace it with a high-rep calisthenics protocol. For a former gym bro, that kind of work will probably have a muscular endurance effect, which would explain why you’re getting pretty sore. You could do a lower intensity maintenance program just to keep up your strength without wrecking yourself through high rep work, so that when you go to do an ME block you’ll still have plenty of max strength capacity to draw upon. Something like Dan John’s Easy Strength could be perfect, although I appreciate that you want to avoid gymming or buying more equipment. What equipment do you currently have access to?
You mention that you’re just finishing your transition period and that your objective is in September, so there’s really no rush to either 1) add ME or 2) add a load-bearing aerobic activity on the same day as ME. You still have all of May, June, July, and August to work with. Trail running has a very high impact on the legs, so if you’ve had a lot of DOMS from ME in the past then programming trail running on the same day as ME sounds like it could leave you really beat up in the following days. In any case, you’re just finishing the transition period and starting the base period, so ME should be further down the pipeline.
Gym-based ME is still ME, so it works best when you’ve maxed out your aerobic capacity and max strength for a given training block. Ideally, you would get your AeT to within 10% of your AnT before contemplating an ME program for best results. You could program a 6-week block of max strength instead of 8 weeks, which is still long enough to see gains. Can you put some numbers on your current strength? E.g. are you deadlifting 2 times your bodyweight, squatting 1.5 times and benching bodyweight. My understanding of mountain hunting is that there can be a significant strength requirement depending on the size of the animal being hunted and carried out of there.
When you do eventually start ME and you want to incorporate some aerobic activity on the same day, could you program something lower impact like unweighted hiking, or even swimming or cycling? That’ll leave your legs fresher for the ME session, which is the “money workout”. I’m 4 weeks into an ME block myself, and I’ve incorporated 30 min cycles on most weekdays as I find them great active recovery. See this screenshot as an example:
By programming ME mid-week and incorporating lots of active recovery, I can still do 3 aerobic capacity sessions, including long ones at the weekend, so that I maintain my aerobic base. The usual caveats apply that we all need to individualise our training to suit our circumstances, so don’t look at the above and take it as a rule to be followed. It’s just a practical example of what programming something the same day as ME could look like.
High/max rep pushups, in my experience, carry a huge global fatigue cost. It’s not just your tris, pecs and delts that are being worked through the horizontal pressing motion; you’re also maintaining full body tension through your legs, core and back. So you’ll have more DOMS than with a 3×4 protocol, which could impact your aerobic capacity training if you’re too sore to train.
Max rep calisthenics like this have either a hypertrophy or muscular endurance effect, depending on how strong/muscular/experienced you are. They definitely don’t have a maximal strength effect, which is what a 3×4 protocol usually is. Hypertrophy is generally to be avoided for mountain sports unless you’re extremely frail and undermuscled, as unnecessary muscle weight is just as bad as unecessary fat weight. Muscular endurance is desirable, but only after having maximised maximal strength and aerobic capacity for a given training block. It shouldn’t be mixed with a max strength phase and/or an aerobic capacity building phase, so mixing high rep pushups with other low rep, heavy weight, long rest period movements is a big no-no.
So, to answer your question: yes, there is a disadvantage in that you’ll be creating a completely different training stimulus.
Not that simple. Quoting from the Evoke article on Muscular Endurance, regarding gym-based ME:
This Muscular Endurance workout is appropriate for Mountaineers, Mountain Runners and Ski Mountaineers. Anyone who needs to go steeply uphill faster for longer will see gains from this workout.
Further down:
While I generally encourage the use of weighted carries for mountaineers, I’ve used this a base period preparation block before moving to the weighted carries with a number of high level mountaineers and alpinists with great results.
So, it seems to me that the gym-based ME can be used either as a standalone ME program for people living in places where steep hills can’t be reliably accessed, or as a preparation for outdoor ME work. I fall into first camp; I would have to drive at least 2 hours to access a steep enough slope to do uphill weighted carries, and that just isn’t practical for me, so I do gym-based ME at home instead. That way, I can program it for a Wednesday, leaving Thursday and Friday for active recovery/Z1 sessions, and still have the whole weekend to do long hikes/runs/climbs.
In general, training recommendations are hardly ever black and white, this one vs that one, outdoor vs gym-based. You always have to modify it to suit your circumstances and what you can realistically commit to doing on a consistent basis. It sounds like you have the best of both worlds available, so you could potentially do a gym-based ME progression first to prime yourself for outdoor ME.
Silpa, is your objective in Nepal in March a mountaineering one? It’s a bit confusing because you mention speed work which makes me think of running. If it is mountaineering, then you definitely need to add ME work to optimise your preparation.
I can relate somewhat to your situation; I focussed on building base from the end of July last year right up to the start of April, and such an extended base period can be very tedious and make you feel decidedly slow and unathletic with the constant low-level fatigue (even though that’s normal). I’m 4 weeks into my ME block now and it’s given me a new enthusiasm for training, and by the sounds of it you would almost certainly get the same effect.
It’s hard to say without knowing more about your training background, current weekly volume and objectives you’re training for, how much experience you have with ME and how your body responds etc. If you know from past experience that you can do an AM Z1-Z2 session and recover well enough to do a PM ME session and it suits your schedule then I’d say go for it, assuming you’re already modulating the volume and intensity of your aerobic capacity work as best you can. If you provide more details, then hopefully someone more knowledegable than me will be able to provide a more concrete answer.
If your heart rate is getting elevated above your aerobic threshold for the majority of that 60 mins, it strikes me that that is an anaerobic training stimulus that should be tracked and counted as a Z3/Z4 effort (although I’ll defer to any of the coaches on this). Is it HIIT/Crossfit/circuit training-style stuff that you’re doing?
What are your current training goals? If you’re aerobically deficient and are looking to build aerobic base, then you shouldn’t be doing any moderate/high intensity running anyway.
Hi Yvonne, I was in this exact situation 6 months ago when I started training using TftNA/TftUA principles. It’s worth pointing out that very few people can run uphill and stay below their AeT because it’s so muscularly demanding, so there’s absolutely nothing wrong with walking the uphill sections of a run. Many people who are aerobically deficient also struggle to hike uphill and stay below AeT when they start this kind of training, so it’s also perfectly normal to take short pauses as you hike uphill when your heart rate goes above AeT in order to keep it under control.
