UKC

Hello all!

So I'm a beginner to mountain climbing and I am wondering if anyone here can help me in regards to physical fitness?!?  I'm an Aussie currently living in the UK (moving to Cornwall in a couple of weeks ), done plenty of hiking in Australia and the US (Cascades) and plenty of hill walking in the UK.  I've been going to the gym five days a week too. 

In the gym, I've been doing a minimum of 1/2 hour cardio training every day (mostly treadmill but also stair mill and occasionally rowing machine).  I also devote two days a week to walking at a moderate pace on a treadmill with a steep incline for one hour, constant pace, without a pack for now - will start doing that when it comes time to do mountains.  On the days I do half hour of cardio, I've been doing strength training - I focus on my shoulders, back, core, chest, legs and arms, trying to up the weight every week.  Basically I train each muscle group once a week for now, in pairs (arms and legs, chest and back, shoulders and core - one pair a day, three days a week, with the aforementioned treadmill days in between.).

I'm just wondering if all the above is basically the right way to do it?  My eventual goal is to climb the Seven Summits before I'm 50 (I'm 33, age is no consideration for me.).  I also plan on climbing other mountains outside of the seven (Annapurna 1, Mt Hood, Mt Erebus, possibly K2 etc., also want to hike in Canada, Russia, Alaska etc.) and I want to be in the very best shape I can be for all this.  I'm giving myself a year of solid fitness training, and I'm going to Snowdonia this summer for some training courses and then Ben Nevis for my first peak late this year, and I'm hoping to climb Kilimanjaro next year as my first of the seven.  I'm leaving Denali and Everest til last.

Sorry for the novel of a post but I wanted to supply as much info as possible any help would be fab!!!

Read Training for the New Alpinism by Steve House. Will answer all your questions.

Sounds like your doing quite a bit in. Look at training for the new alpinism and the group of a similar name on facebook for how to structure training.

Only tip i can give is dont do strength training to failure or anywhere near as it will result in musclular hypertrophy which isnt what you want for climbing. Strong yes, bulky no.

Are you sure? Surely a climber from any discipline will get stronger partly through hypertrophy, whether they train for it or not.

Cheers mate!  Will check that out now

Get out of a stuffy gym and go get some exercise in the fresh air!  Running outside in the rain, snow and ice or walking up hill with a overloaded rucksack will be far more like what you are wanting to achieve!  

Thanks mate!  I had thought that, my brother in law who's a bodybuilder said something similar

Cheers!  When I move to Cornwall there'll be plenty of hiking and outside exercise done

Main advice- get out and climb, walk and run the hills as much as possible. Training for the New Alpinism is a great book- a Bible- and for your objectives, will be of great help.

Fair play for setting yourself some significant goals. I guarantee though, once you get into climbing more and you broaden your experience, that your objectives will change and things like the seven summits will become less attractive. That's not a criticism of your plans, just a reflection on my own experience and, I'm sure, lots of other climbers.

Go outside and suffer hard.

You probably cant avoid hypertrophy completely, especially if you were in a situation where you hadnt done any real training before. But going to failure will definitely maximize hypertrophy, whicj isnt what you want.

The hypertrophy thing also has a fair bit to do with genetics, some people put on muscle bulk a lot easier than others just as some find it easier to keep weight off. Theres 3 terms used to describe broadly what category you fit into - endomorph, mesomorph and ectomorph.

But would you want to? Don't those big forearms on boulderers help to give them strong fingers? I'm sure other muscle groups would be useful for an alpinist also.

With the goals you have outlined upper body, arm and finger strength are less important that aerobic fitness.

Al

No. Finger-strength is a tendon issue, not one of muscles.

Not sure that's right. Strong tendons might stop you getting injured, but pulling harder is down to the grip muscle in your forearm surely?

Think it depends on what you mean by strength training. I've spent a session a week doing maximal hangs on a finger board (i.e. to failure, more or less) in an effort to increase my finger strength, which I was told was shite (although I have suspicions about the data this was based on - different topic). Although I think it has worked to increase my finger strength (I'll measure it soon to see), it certainly hasn't made me put on muscle. I'm guessing there has been hypotrophy of both tendons and some small, specific muscles in the forearms. But not sufficient to add any bulk.

On the other hand if you're talking about non-grip-specific strength training, i.e. doing weights, then yeah, going all-out on the low reps body-builder style ain't going to help much with climbing.

Yeah im on about the weights side of things. I think the OP mentioned training each muscle group in isolation on a weekly basis which sounds to me like classical gym strength training with weights (i think he may have mentioned weights too). I've never considered if you would gain muscle mass from things like finger strength training, id doubt it though.

I've totally ditched weight training in the classical style since ive gotten into climbing. I now just rely on bodyweight exercises but again refrain from going to failure with things like pullups etc.

There is a bit of discussion regarding this topic on the uphill athlete forum (run by Steve House & co. from training for the new alpinism). I'd take any advice those guys give as some of the best you could get.

https://www.uphillathlete.com/forums/topic/hypertrophy-for-sensible-trainin...

Again that comes down to strength not size. You can be strong but not incredibly bulky by structuring your training the right way. All the top alpinists are strong but arent built like a brick shithouse. Lugging useless weight up a 1000m face just makes things harder.

I used to be into my rugby and trained for it previously topping the scales at 95kg. Im down to 80kg now and pretty lean but if i could/can? id like to drop down to 70-75kg which is still quite a lump. According to the NHS BMI chart to be in the middle of my ideal weight id be 68kg. Ha, never going to happen.

If i actually got a structured training plan and stuck to it nutrition and all from the likes of say Steve House i bet i could get down to 70kg and i'd probably be stronger than i am now at 80kg.

Edit: This is what Scott Johnston has to say about it

"Hypertrophy is something to be avoided by climbers, runners, skimo and mountaineers in 99% of cases. Going to muscular failure is one of the best ways to ensure hypertrophy. That is very well understood and has been a staple of strength training for many decades. Another good way to increase muscle mass is using eccentric contractions under heavy loading.

In our general strength training we never suggest going to failure or anywhere near it for this reason. The one exception when we might suggest pushing to failure is in hand strength training for climbing.

The general strength period is a conditioning period to prepare you for the Max strength period.

The best mountain athletes are slightly muscled so that can have a high strength to weight ratio. These mountain athletes do not need exception strength levels (except rock or ice/mixed climbers) And the especially do not want to add any muscle mass Strength to weight ratio is what is important.

bear in mind that much of what comes from the strength and conditioning world is not direct at athletes and especially not at endurance athletes."

Crickey, I don't want to dull your enthusiasm and it's good to have goals but planning your climbing itinerary for the next 17 years when you've only just started seems like going a bit far!

My advice is don't worry about training just do as much climbing as you possibly can over the next year and then see where you're at.

It's strength to weight. I also think avoiding hypertrophy completely is not true. You can increase muscle bulk and get better strength to weight. Muscles do the work, and they can be too big because there is a penalty also. But that isn't what you're saying.

Check out the table in this article for advice on what type on reps, sets and intensity you want in order to gain either strength, power, hypertrophy, endurance: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strength_training#Realization_of_training_g...

From this check out Alex Barrow’s article on training and energy systems specific to rock climbing: http://alexbarrowsclimbing.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/training-for-sport-climbi...

The whole picture is not as simple as avoid getting big or just work high resistance, it’s lots of pieces of the puzzle put together over a period of time. I am a big advocate of body weight exercise in line with J Whittaker’s remarks, you can work whatever muscle groups you want you just need imagination as to what exercises to do.

Regarding hypertrophy, some muscles need to be big, but they also need to be in balance with other aspects such as finger strength and technique. I would disagree with Scott Johnson on avoiding hypertrophy, has he met Ondra, Woods or Nalle? These guys are utterly ripped, both Nalle and Woods are wider than they are tall and have climbed both cutting edge sport climbs aswell as boulders.

The Lattice BMI graphs recently published included people with high BMI still climbing very hard.

Sorry for the slight rant, this topic is a pet peeve of mine as I am very heavy (95kg, BMI 24.8) and still drag myself up hardish climbs (V11/8A and the odd thing involving a rope), the data is out there that you can be a mesomorph body type and do very well yet the train hard and starve mentally still persists.

As someone typing with a bag of peas on his elbow...

1) don't radically and dramatically increase your training load without a sensible build up plan

2) train your antagonist muscles just as hard as your pulling muscles

3) hold your stretches longer and a bit harder than you think you should

4) don't go pulling plastic in the cave of the bouldering wall while showing your mates how strong you've felt recently!!

Im only going off what well respected professionals say because i in no way have any qualification to give advice other than reiterate what has been said by people who know far more than me.

My comments have no basis other than the professional opinion of others. Id think you'd be hard pressed to question their arguments unless you were in their peer group.

Edit: I think what im considering hypertrophy is different to what others are considering it is. In reply to alx regarding ondra etc. I wouldnt call them bulky athletes, they are definitely ripped and have a muscled physique and obviously have the perfect strength to weight ratio being at the top of their game. For me when im talking about hypertrophy i think of a rugby player type physique which surely no mountain athlete would benefit from. Sure those guys are strong but if you had Ondra now vs Ondra witha rugby player physique - same skill level there would be no comparison.

Differentiating where the muscle bulk is and what the composition of the muscle is as you put it key.  Top wads main muscle mass will be upper body dominant, helping to move the center of gravity further up the body improving the lever.

Furthermore any muscle will be optimised around the demands of the sport (fast twitch = explosive output etc) which is in contrast to your body builder whom just wants to look buff whilst wearing a canary hammock.

Yeah theres that whole fast twitch slow twitch fibre thing (again i have no expertise) but i know one of the types of fibres is much bigger than the other. So there is another reason you can have two people who are very strong in their own right but with a completely different body composition.

Which is why its so important to structure your training in the correct way to get the right outcome for your goals.

Well using one well understood term to mean something else is obviously going to confused any issue isn't it? Nobody is talking about rugby player physique apart from you. Many training plans for climbing have hypertrophy phases. Doesn't that tell you something?

Whatever dude. I can see you're a better climber than me but ill stick to House and Johnstone for my advice. I certainly dont need any more muscle mass personally.

What's that got to do with anything? I only challenged what you said because I think it's wrong, nothing to do with how hard you climb.

If House and Johnstone are saying all those elite climbers with well developed grip muscles are doing it wrong, then I'd seriously look elsewhere for advise.

Need is hard to define, depends on your goals surely, and other personal factors? And how does talking about muscle mass generally help? For climbing some muscles are very important, some not so much. How would you go about getting stronger fingers to climb harder boulders? And do you think that would eventually necessitate some hypertrophy?

OP said his goal is to climb 7 summits. Not boulder V15. For a start.

Secondly - i have huge scope for improving my finger strength but if my forearms get any bigger than they are i will look like popeye so im pretty sure hypertrophy wouldnt happen. It would more be physiological changes in the muscles, such as more capillaries forming etc. Also how much is finger strength dependent on muscles? I always thought the reason you had to go so slowly with things like fingerboarding was because its strengthening tendons and ligaments etc not so much muscles.

Thats why it takes years of training to get strong, conditioned fingers whereas you can go from no training to built like a brick shithouse in a year because its training muscle which adapts and repairs itself faster.

A glance at me would disabuse anyone of the notion that finger-strength is a hypertrophy

Perhaps l am wrong, but I thought crimping ability was isostatic, and based on slowly developed tendon strength. Pinch strength is perhaps more active, and requires actual muscle, but essentially you can climb pretty well with no beef  (just got to avoid tufas and slopers!).

pretty much what i thought.

Surely not!

I've always imagined tendons to be like static rope. Sure they need to have a breaking strain that is greater than that of the muscle at the end of them but they themselves have no part in actually generating a force, they are purely a transfer mechanism from forearm muscle to finger tip. When a crimp or any other grip fails it's because the muscle wasn't big enough/strong enough to generate the force being asked of it or the energy systems powering the contraction weren't fit enough to last out for the required duration.

Of course I too may be talking b0ll0cks and am happy to be corrected.

Go run marathons or 80mile cycles when you can't get to the mountains.

In the gym, do step-ups with heavy weights.

Some advice on this podcast...

https://www.trainingbeta.com/media/zahan-billimoria/?portfolioCats=72

CHeers for that mate!  No worries at all, I plan to add other peaks to my list as well as the seven.  Training for the New Alpinism is great too

Like your advice, cheers!

First up, are you by chance Aussie?  Haven't heard the word crikey since I left haha cheers for your advice mate, I'm heading to Snowdon and Ben Nevis this year, then Kilimanjaro next year, possibly Marrakesh too, so we'll see where I'm at

Wow, cheers for this!  Much appreciated

That's so you don't get injured. This is getting repetative so I'll leave it. Perhaps go back and read what I first challenged, nothing to do with what you're on about now, and have been for some time.

Hah, not Aussie by a long shot!

Sounds like you've got some good plans, enjoy yourself that's the most important thing!

Cheers mate!

Where abouts in Cornwall? We haven't got any mountains, but the coast path, particularly in North Cornwall has plenty of uphill.

I think you should train both indoors but mostly oudoors to reach your goals. For indoor training I would suggest a crossfit gym, it will build your strenght a lot.

Good luck

I think you might of just started a whole new debate with the cross fit reference

In training you are definitely looking for a state of myofibrillar hypertrophy. This doesn't dictate how large someone will become. It's merely the process the body uses to develop through increasing it's potential to handle training stimulus (put simply). I agree with the observation on training to failure, however you would be well beyond the start of hypertrophy at this point.