UKC

Hello!

I'm trying to pick up my fitness a bit for hill walking both in winter and summer so thought I would post on here for some advice. I did a brief search on the forums but couldn't immediately find anything too relevant. I find the amount of advice on Youtube a bit bewildering.

I've been building up over the last few years by just walking up hills and having fun but I am not able to get out as much as I would like and I'm sure there's much improvement to be had in between trips.

I am pretty unscientific in any training I do. I sporadically walk up and down a run of 15 steps wearing a pack with about 25kg for a couple/few sets of 7-10 minutes. All a bit variable. I have also tried to do low intensity cardio (zone 2?) for 10 to 20 minutes 2 or 3 times a week but haven't really stuck with it of late. And I do 'some' squats and lunges every now and then in the mornings for 15 minutes or so.

Obviously there are consistency issues that I need to improve but aside from that would you focus more on low intensity cardio than the weighted bag step stuff? Or just scale up everything? Or something else entirely? Big days out a bit more often? I really would like to be able to feel a bit less huffy and puffy when walking quickly up hill so I'm ready to put some work in. Oh and I'm 50, 6ft, 12st and live in Devon so I have access to some hills.

Any advice gratefully received. Cheers, J.

Hill walking isn't a race. I would suggest just walking a bit less quickly. Unless you're racing the weather, speed is not an issue, and indeed, may detract from the experience if you are concentrating more on speed than on simply being out and enjoying the natural environment. 

To my mind, the best training for walking in the hills is to go walking in the hills. I don't think anything else is needed.

Have you tried hillwalking?

If you can’t locally, normal walking? Or failing that, some other cardio like cycling or jogging.

If you want to get stronger leg muscles and don’t have local hills you could do squats etc but I doubt you’d need it, unless you’re looking to carry a really heavy bag on very steep terrain. But even then hillwalking is better!

What you are doing sounds ok to me, main thing with any training is a degree of consistency and progression, as that is how your cardiovascular fitness and strength improve. Target a number of minutes zone 1/2 cardio each week, and hit it (ideally increase a little bit each time). And if you are doing something more strength based, the same applies, eg hit at least the same each week as the previous, try to gradually increase how much OR how heavy. And don’t start too hard or you’ll burn out / get injured (in my experience…)

As to your focus: if you find you get too out of breath / stamina, then I’d focus on cardio. If it’s more your leg muscles get too tired, the weighted stuff will probably still help, although walking/running/cycling also will!

The steps training is good for strength if you have weak legs, however the specificity to hills is going to tail off quite quickly and you will get diminishing returns once you have a little bit of strength built up.

The low intensity for 10-20 minutes isn't particularly efficient training, unless this is pushing you physically which I suspect it isn't.

As you've hinted at, it's hard to simulate the kind of fatigue one gets walking up a steep uneven path for 5 hours in a training environment without actually doing it. Short 10-30 minutes training sessions are only going to go so far, so more big days out are going to help. 

Couple of things which I have found have helped me in the past are:
1) fitting squats/split squats/lunges etc. in throughout the day. You can get thousands of squats in over the course of a day if you either a) don't mind looking like an idiot or aren't in front of colleagues all day and you can get seriously fatigued by the end of the day even with sets of 2-5 reps. 
2) The fittest I've ever felt at the start of a winter climbing season was when I'd been doing a round trip commute of 28 miles on the bike for about 8 months. I've never felt that fit before in the mountains it was like walking on air despite not having done a lot of mountain specific training. 

I suspect this is something that is already on your mind, but the other thing I would including is some physio/stretching/injury prevention. What that means for you and your body is going to be different from everyone else but one injury can wreck a seasons training. When you're young, more training volume=more fitness (generally) and the odd injury wont rip your gains away, as you get older the benefits of pushing your training volume decrease and the amount of fitness lost due to injury (i.e. enforced inactivity) become greater. 

You make a good point. Why not just walk slower?! It is something I think about but I just find myself wanting to move a bit quicker. To progress maybe. I do agree with your last point and if I had more time to just go walking then I would definitely try and do that. But with commitments and work and life I wanted to get a bit fitter between trips.

Thanks for posting. Just hillwalking would definitely be my preferred method! Definitely need to be a bit more consistent..

Interesting to hear your take on that. I would say my training with a heavy bag has ironed out some knee issues when coming down hill but I don't know if I've noticed much improvement on the ups.

I work mostly by myself so this is do-able!

Good point. I manage my body much more conservatively these days having learnt the hard way for years. Much of the evening is spent on a foam roller quite often! Thanks for posting.

We are not all the same with building fitness. One of the late Michael Mosley's programmes looked at research (Birmingham University?) showing a that although about half the population had a certain "normal" response to exercise, there were also substantial groups that were non-responders and super-responders. 

Also variable are things like how running or cycling might or might not translate to carrying a rucksack up a big hill. Maybe works for some and not for others. 

Living beside a steep 150m high hill used to work for me with a bit of cycling thrown in but my current location doesn't work quite so well. 

If you have access to a building with at least 8 floors (25 to 30m) then the stairs are probably a bit of a training gift. (Don't run back down. Remember that most accidents happen on descents!!!) I did try to run the fire escape stairs in a 22 storey building once or twice. Hard going. 

Loads of good advice here, with one main Venn intersection: go hillwalking! You could maybe try a kind of interval training on a hilly walk: push yourself going uphill, and take it really easy on the descents.

1.  Go for a walk.  But pack a rucksack with heavy stuff.  1,2,or 3 gallon water containers. to start with - You can always jettison the water if its gets too much or you go for longer walk than planned.
2.  Wear the heaviest boots when you go out.  If you don't have anything suitable, then buy (or make?) some comfortable ankle weights which I think you can buy cheaply and wear those as often as possible.
3.  Pick the route with the most ascent.
4.  Take up jogging or running.  With a rucksack (see 1.)5. 
5.  If you already go running or jogging - find a friend who has a bike.  Take one bike with you.  Take turns in running and biking together.  One running for a while the other cycling.  Then swap.  This is quite intense as you don't want to bike for too long as you'll likely loose contact with each other unless you live in Norfolk or Linconshire.......
6.  When you go for an ordinary walk.  Go as fast as you can - time it!!!

7.  Alternate walk & run for 20 or 50 steps/yds/meters etc  or any other number of steps.
8.  Hold your breath whilst walking or running where there's lamp posts.  Walk to one lampost, run, holding your breath to the next, then just alternate runnning/walking to the next, then hold your breath till the next and repeat.  If you are already a good enough runner, then ditch the walking bit between lamposts.  (If you are only walking and in town you might just use house entrances to alternate.

Good luck!  (I've got to 74 and can still manage those although my neighbour thinks I'm nuts).
 

There was an article in New Scientist about the optimal way to increase fitness and it said HIIT sessions. I quote the concluding paragraphs

"High-intensity interval training (HIIT) involves exercising at near maximum effort in repeated bursts of up to a minute, with short rests in between. This regime was devised in the 1990s by Izumi Tabata and his colleagues at the National Institute of Fitness and Sports in Kanoya, Japan. They showed that a 4-minute workout, with repeated cycles of 20 seconds of intense work then 10 seconds of rest, done five days a week for six weeks resulted in greater aerobic improvement than moderate, hour-long workouts done over the same time frame.

Since then, many trials have confirmed the power of HIIT. “If you want a quick increase [in fitness] over four to six weeks, purely intervals would do the job,” says Lane. The key is working as hard as you can during the intense intervals. Just six HIIT sessions over two weeks significantly improves VO2 max and endurance capacity, but, remarkably, a 2021 study found similar improvements could be achieved if these HIIT sessions were squeezed into a five-day period.

Adam Sharples at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences in Oslo says beginners should start with two to three HIIT sessions per week. You can intersperse these with longer-duration endurance activities, such as jogging or swimming, to further boost results, he says. Once you notice that your strength has plateaued with HIIT, you can add two or three full-body strength-training sessions, says Lane.

However, the best exercise is ultimately the one you will be able to stick with, not necessarily the one that leads to the quickest improvements. “We sometimes get in the weeds with what is the perfect plan, but I think for most people, we just need to get out there and get moving,” says Gray.

The trick is to continuously challenge yourself. If you do, you may be surprised to discover your own peak performance."

If you train huffing and puffing, then your heart rate is probably high. Under these conditions your body gets really good at operating with a high heart rate. Great for all out speed, not so great for a long day in the hills.

If you train, but keep your heart rate low, then your body optimises these pathways such that you improve your base aerobic fitness, meaning that you can spend all day in the hills and hopefully not get out of breath.

I used to believe that by training hard, long easier days in the hills would become easier. Sure your muscles will be stronger, but you'll still be out of breath.

Focus your training towards spending as long as possible training rather than intensity. Unless your goals demand high intensity performance.

Just make sure you walk as often as you can.  Even short walks harden the feet and strengthens the ankles. 

Thanks for all the replies everyone. Some really good (contrasting!) ideas there. My personality does seem to trend towards shortest possible time for max gains but this is based on nothing other than my desire to crack on with whatever's next, be it work or... whatever. A lot to think about for sure. Thanks again

Cycling in the gym on hill intervals etc?  I noticed after doing q a bit of cycling at one point my hill fitness improved noticably

For some more structured training, having a read of Steve House's Training for the New Alpinism could be worth a try. It's a decade old now, and a fair few elements have already been mentioned in the thread, but it still provides some rigorous detail for building an exercise plan for the hills (if that's what you want)

I find the following helps me:

Wall squats to keep the knees in shape.
Cycling for leg endurance.
Pilates for core strength and flexibility.

HIIT as previously posted should really help with uphill puffiness. I use the 77 steps up my local church tower which I do several times a week. I'm also thinking about incorporating some high intensity elements into my swimming routine.

So, thank you for some more suggestions again.

To feedback : I have done 3 HIIT sessions (running up a short hill fast) and picked up a hamstring niggle (my first aged 50 - about time maybe) so I'm rowing back on that approach for a bit. Shame really - the short length of time needed was compelling so hopefully I can get back to it in due course. In hindsight I'm not sure what I expected would happen!

The short version of my next approach is that I've ordered a 2nd hand turbo trainer which I can sit on in the evenings before dinner or whatever and clock up some (slow maybe) cardio. I did really want to give a treadmill a go but a) they cost way more and b) they're fookin huge and heavy and I'd have to go and get it.

Thank you for the book suggestion. I'm going to hold off on that for the moment as I want to keep it a bit more low key than a fully fledged training plan (a bit of a contradiction from what I was asking maybe). I'm still working out just how much I can actually get done in life and my climbing is going well at the moment and that obviously takes time and then work and family and blah... Thanks though. I hadn't heard of that book.

If you think a treadmill is a way better tool than a turbo trainer please be kind and don't tell me as it's too late! Thanks all.

I run in the hills a fair bit.  This means when I go out hill walking it's pretty easy.  So with that in mind, running is very good training for hill walking, it'll certainly get rid of the need to huff and puff.  Just go out for steady runs, nothing too hard.  Build up slowly if you don't run much (or at all) and get a decent pair of shoes.  If you're near hills of any kind, spend time running up and down the hills.  It'll make walking seem super easy in comparison.