#101 Training

Welcome to the Training #101 section. Discussed here is the general preparation for mountain sports, with a focus on non-technical sports such as hiking and running. This preparation, spanning several years, will also provide the physical condition for developing your climbing technique (see Training #102).

The case for training

Physical preparation is not strictly necessary to spend time in the mountains. If you need proof, just go look at the trails during the summer holidays: strangers, with no preparation whatsoever, manage perfectly well to follow marked routes. But if you now want to invest yourself in these mountain sports and reach the next level, training will be your best tool. Remember, not so long ago, the cyclists of the Tour de France ran on pastis and saucisson during the stages. Practices have changed a great deal since then, the Tour having become a media machine with sporting stakes to match the sponsors' investments. Training methods were modified so that cyclists could go faster, for longer. It is the same parallel we are offering you here. Training is essential to become more performant. This performance is not only useful for extending your playground. It is also useful for compensating for the lack of safety of the mountain environment. Unlike the vast majority of sports, there is no question here of giving up, taking off your shoes, having a shower and going home. You have to get back to civilization from a demanding environment. Fatigue can be deadly in the mountains, especially if you are playing at a high level. Safety and speed go hand in hand. The faster you can clear out of the front line, the faster you will be safe.

Mountain-specific training

If you intend to become comfortable on the trails and increase your performance, you will have to seriously consider structured training. Of course, nobody is forcing you to get better; that choice is yours. This point is very important, because following a training programme over the long term consumes a lot of time and resources. The upside of this preparation is becoming better, going further, more easily and without getting injured. Whatever the sport considered, training can be divided into two phases: a general one, preparing your body for what is to come, and another called specific, which develops the muscles needed for the targeted practice. The general part is, as its name suggests, general: the goal here is to develop a physical condition and musculature that will serve as a foundation for what follows. The specific phase then draws from your fitness reserve to build a body suited to your practice. This duo has every place in our case. Where the mountains set training apart is in the type of physical condition and musculature. Generalizing, a mountain athlete's performance revolves around four fundamentals:

Training will consist of working on these four points in parallel, with a greater emphasis on your weak points.

Endurance and intensities

Forget weekend-warrior strategies, CrossFit sessions and Insanity DVDs. The vast majority of mountain sports share one thing in common: they demand a great endurance capacity to perform. The work of Dr Stephen Seiler shows that elites spend about 80% of their time doing low-intensity activity, and 20% at high intensity. (Intervals, Thresholds and Slow Distance: The Role of Intensity and Endurance Training) Before going further, let us take a quick look at quantifying intensity. The intensity of a training session is the combination of a duration and a level of effort. The duration is ideally programmed ahead of the session. It is easy to measure with a stopwatch. So far, so good. On the other hand, things get trickier when it comes to determining the level of effort. The nature of mountain terrain is that it is constantly changing, making the more common quantification methods (lap times, etc.) obsolete. The simplest quantification methods are internal perception and breathing, but they require years of practice to know your body well. The most effective method is to measure the level of lactic acid in the blood, but implementing it requires blood and a measuring device. If we set aside power measurement (still in its infancy), all that remains is measuring heart rate. Heart rate is indeed correlated with the level of effort demanded of the body. This is true in the majority of cases, but not always: chronic fatigue or altitude can disturb the correlation. The method used here is to quantify the time spent in certain heart rate zones, determined according to your aerobic and anaerobic thresholds. We invite you to read the dedicated article below to understand and determine your heart rate zones.

Heart Rate Zones

At the end of that read, we assume that you know what the abbreviations AeT, AnT mean, as well as the intensity zones Z0-Z4.

Monitoring your training

Before continuing with the details of training, it is important to talk about safeguards. We are all the same, wanting to do too much, right away, and without listening to our body. To last over time and see constant progression in your fitness level, it is important to put in place tools for observing your state of fatigue. These tools must help us detect the onset of an injury or an illness, and above all, above all, keep us from tipping into overtraining. We invite you to read the dedicated article below to dig deeper into this subject.

Monitoring your training

Testing your fitness level

In addition to having sporting objectives (clear, precise and measurable), testing your fitness level lets you build your future training plan as well as possible. While thinking about where you are going, don't forget to know where you are starting from. If it is not already the case, it is time to think of your sporting organization in seasons interspersed with breaks. Doing an between-seasons review is a formidable tool for steering your future training. This review must identify strengths and weaknesses, injuries or time off due to illness, as well as recurring discomforts. For example, if during an ultra your knees were limiting at the end of the descents, you need to integrate strength work to make them more robust. Another example: you felt very easy on the climbs — perhaps this performance is no longer a priority and time can be freed up to train other weaknesses. In addition to this review come the physical tests themselves. Building these tests is up to each individual. The goal is not to compare yourself with the neighbour, but rather to identify avenues of progress. The ideal, of course, is to repeat the same test protocol from year to year to follow your progression. You can find examples of tests with their protocol through the dedicated article below.

Testing your fitness level

Building your training plan

Once our current fitness state is known and our objectives well defined, it is time to build our training plan. Plenty of plans are available on the web, but let us not forget that they remain generic. Most plans work for most people, but this one-size-fits-all brings two problems. The first is that we may be in the case where the organization of the sessions does not work for our body. The second is that there is a strong chance the generic plan will not take advantage of our full potential. Nothing beats having a personal training plan, then. The following article gives the basics for building your own plan. If you would nevertheless like help building yours, do not hesitate to contact us.

Creating your mountain training plan

Tracking your training

You have a training plan. You have the tools to monitor your training. It is now time to set up a log of your sessions to read between the lines. The objective is to quantify progression, detect persistent fatigue, and make sure the training plan is well suited. The data we need to track are the following:

The first tool to consider is an Excel table, in which each row will represent a date and each column a tracked data point. The advantage of this solution is that you have total control over what happens, in particular backing up the document. The disadvantage is that everything has to be entered manually… To automate your tracking, it is possible to use online services that directly retrieve the data from your watch. Before naming these services, we can already write that the advantage is having an automated, backed-up year-round log, with advanced analysis functions. On the other hand, some data still has to be entered manually (weight, resting pulse…) and you are dependent on an outside provider with all the inconveniences that brings. The best-known online solution is STRAVA. Conceived as the Facebook of athletes, STRAVA connects to the platforms of the best-known watch manufacturers to retrieve the data recorded during your sessions. You then have the option of filling in more details about your session, attaching photos to it and sharing them or not with your network. STRAVA also lets you track your best times over typical distances (5K, 10K, marathon…), as well as key annual data (total distance, total elevation gain…). The platform has a free offering and a paid one, which lets you push the analysis further and gives access to segments. Segments are geolocated sections, created by the community, with a leaderboard attached. These segments thus let you measure yourself virtually against other runners on climbs, descents, portions of trails and local routes. Finally, the smartphone app lets you record your activities, with the ability to pick up the signal from heart rate straps. But let us not forget that the GPS data measured by a phone is less precise than that coming from mountain watches. Now, STRAVA is very limited for properly tracking your training. It is not possible, in particular, to follow the evolution of your weight over time. The data recorded during a hike is not counted in the annual total elevation gain, and so on. The platform remains above all a social network in its approach. Another online solution, perhaps more relevant, is TrainingPeaks. Just like STRAVA, the platform retrieves the data recorded by your watch during a session to then offer you tracking and fine analysis of these characteristics. Everything goes in: total time, time per heart rate zone, gear used, distance, elevation gain, pace, perceived effort, etc. More interesting still, TrainingPeaks retrieves the heart rate data to create an intensity indicator, called hrTSS. This indicator is then used to estimate over time your fatigue level, your fitness level as well as your performance potential. These estimates remain imperfect, but they are very interesting for seeing the effect of your training and determining whether or not you need rest. The smartphone app lets you enter other data, such as resting pulse or weight, among others (sleep, injuries…) TrainingPeaks also offers an option for sharing your outings, but that is clearly not its core business. The big drawback of TrainingPeaks is its price: $120 per year. But this solution is very relevant for athletes who want to invest seriously in their training. In any case, we recommend combining the Excel table with the online solution. That way, your data can be kept for several years without worrying about the financial health of a provider, and you have access to the advanced analysis functions.

Training, whatever the conditions

Last section of Training 101: it is time to talk about weather conditions. Mountain training being generally outdoors, we are necessarily subject to the goodwill of Mother Nature when it comes to the weather during our sports sessions. In addition to favouring low-intensity sessions when the weather is poor, we give you a few recommendations below.

Heat

We have to get used to it: climate change brings its share of heat waves, even scorching spells, more and more frequently. The picture, although very dark, is not totally black for the athletes we are. Recent studies conducted with the help of professional cyclists have shown that training in high temperatures has the same physiological impacts as altitude. Indeed, after long training sessions in hot conditions, the body adapts to cope in the same way as if it were exposed to a deficit of atmospheric pressure. The fastest change is the increase in the volume of plasma in the blood. This increase allows better thermal regulation, reduces the metabolism's consumption and increases the cells' thermal tolerance. The second change is the volume of platelets, in parallel increasing the level of haemoglobin in the blood. More haemoglobin means it is easier to supply the cells with oxygen, synonymous with increased performance. The benefits are therefore:

Nevertheless, you have to take into consideration that the yield of "hot" sessions is low. For one hour of training per day, five days a week, over five weeks, the maximum performance gain did not exceed 10%. The integration of these sessions should be considered as a complement to your initial training plan, which itself should be done in cooler conditions. You will then have to consider getting up early to take advantage of fresh, clean air for training. The integration of hot sessions must be done little by little, until reaching one hour per day, five to six days a week, over several weeks. These sessions must be modelled on aerobic development sessions, that is to say hiking or running at an intensity strictly below Z2. Studies have also proven the beneficial effects of 20 to 30 minutes of sauna, hot jacuzzi or, at worst, reading in an attic at the height of summer. Be careful, however, to properly prepare your body for this extra effort. The increase in blood volume demands very good hydration and a sufficient iron level for the creation of platelets. There could be differences between men and women in this adaptation, the studies having been conducted mostly on men. And since you are going to drink more often to stay hydrated, also take care not to develop hyponatremia by consuming electrolytes, especially sodium.

Cold

Sessions in cold temperatures are excellent for defining your thermal layers in anticipation of your mountain outings. Just like heat, cold sessions are said to have an impact on haemoglobin levels, but to a lesser degree. The gains are rather to be found in your ability to cope. Cold is more insidious than heat. It numbs the muscles and the brain and slows the flow of thoughts. Breathing in cold air can damage the airways. When the air is really cold, it is useful to place a mask or a scarf over the mouth and nose so that the air can warm up a little before entering the lungs. If the airways become painful during the effort, stop the session immediately. Cold air is generally drier than ambient air. Remember to hydrate well during the session.

Wind, rain and snow

Once again, these weather components will let you refine your gear strategy in anticipation of your next mountain objectives. Doing a session in wind, rain and/or snow also develops your resilience, your ability to cope and your capacity to make decisions in degraded conditions. Now, these conditions will disturb your balance, your foot placements and your visibility. Although it is recommended to get out and train in degraded conditions, you have to adapt the planned session according to the weather. For example, it may not be the moment to do intervals into a headwind, to work on your ridge progression technique in the rain or to do hill accelerations in the snow. On the other hand, it is the right moment to develop your aerobic capacity by running in the rain with your face to the wind, as well as to develop your ability to break trail on snowshoes with a pack loaded to 25 kg in the powder.

Exercising when it's hot