Multi-Sport and Seasonal Planning

Chantelle:
This idea of like balancing stuff, it’s kind of a myth. I like to think about it more like harmonizing. Just like in music, some parts are going to get louder, some parts are going to get quieter. The same thing’s going to happen. So, if you’re running, skiing, uh hiking, climbing, you can’t be doing all those. Those things can’t all be loud at the same time.

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Steve:
All of us know that athlete who trail runs 3 days a week. Maybe goes climbing gym a couple days a week and when the snow falls, he skis all winter. And maybe he has a big objective on the calendar. Maybe it’s a mountain bike race. and he’s quietly kind of like asking himself all the time if loving all these different activities is the reason he’s not really as good as he thinks he should be at all any of them. I think that you know that could describe myself at this stage and a lot of people I know and one of the things that has changed in the last you know 14 15 years since Training for the New Alpinism was published is that this trend I guess I’m going to call it this idea of training for two or more sports at once is no longer really the exception. It’s more of the the norm and the question has now become not whether or not you can do it. The question has become how to think about it so that the sports add up and the the training is additive and and moves you along further in your fitness journey instead of canceling the efforts canceling each other out as in like ways canceling them out themselves out that coming from opposite directions. So today we’re going to give you a framework that we use with our athletes and it’s the same whether you’re a do-it-all recreational weekend warrior athlete or whether you’re a super focused uh competitive high motivation athlete. The important thing is that you come away from today just not having to guess anymore about how to combine your sports. And with me today, as many of you know, is Chantelle Robitaille, our esteemed director of coaching. Welcome, Chantelle.

Chantelle:
Hello. Hello.

Steve:
So, what’s some advice that you give to people? You talk to people every day about this.

Chantelle:
So, yeah, I think a lot of times people do think that they might be the exception, but I’m finding that’s more of of a rule, particularly for people who live in mountain towns and, you know, they want to do different sports that change with the seasons quite naturally. Um maybe within a season there are multiple things that they want to do and you know they don’t maybe they have a particular goal. Let’s say their goal is to climb Rainier but they still want to mountain bike and go to yoga classes and uh go to their group uh strength training class every week and they don’t want to give anything up. And so usually what I say is like well you can have it all but maybe not all at the same time. So that you know the we have to think about always training with intention. If we just throw a bunch of random things out there, of course you’re not going to be able to get better at climbing if you’re just randomly climbing. You’re not going to get faster at hiking if you’re not practicing the right skills at the in the right amount to improve your hiking. So we want to think about training with intention. And so that’s what we’ll be sharing a little bit more about today.

Steve:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think when people take on two or three sports and they’re going at them all with sort of equal intensity throughout the year, it it unless you’re you know 18 or 16, we shouldn’t be surprised when when you know we don’t improve in any of those. And I think it’s the most common multisport mistake is thinking that we are teenagers in a way, right? Because when we are kids because of the you know what what we’re going through the growth we’re going through the human growth hormone surging through our bodies and all the other things we we actually can do that but I as children and and teens but once we become adults uh you know that that that ability like our ability to recover from workouts just changes dramatically. So we have to have to keep that in in mind. So let’s talk about something that you and I have discussed frequently. It’s kind of the difference between an athlete training for health and an athlete training for an objective.

Chantelle:
So they’re really, you know, both, you know, a lot of folks maybe think these are like I’m just training for I hear this a lot. I’m just training for this. There’s no just, you know, if you’re training, you’re training. It’s then it means that it’s important to you. And so then if it’s important to you, you want to approach it in the in the best way possible. So, if you’re training for health and fitness, if you’re training to keep up with your grandchildren, if you’re training to be able to jump into, you know, the advent different adventures that your friends are doing, but you don’t have any specific, you know, calendared thing, that’s still a goal. Training for health, that’s a goal. Um, you know, just like training to climb Mount Everest, still a goal. They’re different goals and we’re going to train for them differently, but we’re still going to train for them. We’re still going to prepare for them. Otherwise, you know, if we if you if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So, that’s why it’s important to to be clear about, you know, and and don’t diminish whatever the goal is. The goal is personal. So, even if it’s small, still counts.

Steve:
Yeah. And I think that conflating the difference between, you know, training for a a goal that may not seem as lofty as climbing Everest, for example, uh often kind of creates confusion and guilt in in inside people, which, you know, doesn’t really help move them forward. And it often also results in kind of bad training plans because they’re, you know, they’re they’re tepid. They’re hesitant to kind of commit to any one path. And so uh that that that sets them back further. So I think that it’s a important thing to to name. I think one of the things that I’ve brought up with people before is just uh ask you know if if missing their goal would actually change anything about their year or not. So, for a lot of people, like if I’ve got, you know, a trail race I want to do in the in the spring, but if I can’t do that, I’m I’m honestly not that upset. It doesn’t actually change anything about my fitness. Therefore, I’m more more in that kind of general health and fitness scheme as an athlete. Like, I’m more like I have kids. I want to be able to keep up with them and go on adventures with them for a long time. So, and that’s what’s actually important to me. Not that the not not that the trail race is just sort of a fun thing to do and there’s a bunch of energy and friends and or sit around drink beer afterwards or you know that’s that’s the role of sport in my life. And I think for a lot of people in in in their lives so I think that that that’s very valid. I want people to hear that.

Chantelle:
Yeah. I think the problem would be in your with that example that you just gave, Steve, if you were to say, “My goal is to keep up with my kids, you know, help them see how fun climbing can be and you know, maybe I’ll jump into this race at the end of the season with my friends.” But in the back of your mind, that maybe I’ll jump into that trail race is actually you want to go and do that trail race. So, if you’re not honest about what that goal is and what the goal means to you, you’re going to just be out doing fun, doing different things, and then you’re going to be in a position where you’re like, “Oh, shoot. That trail race is happening in a month. I haven’t run at all. I’ve just been having so much fun hiking and climbing.” And now what happens? You’re going to just start running around. You’re laughing because I know you would do this probably. you’re going to just start running around as much as you can and then you’re, you know, potentially risking yourself getting hurt and not enjoying your day and just looking forward to the darn beer at the finish line. Right? So I think the problem comes when when people are not really honest with themselves about what their goal is and they say like oh I’m just training for fun or I’m just training for life and but secretly they’re hoping for something you know during that season whether whether that’s you know beating their friend up their local hill or um you know being able to jump into uh a climb of the Grand Teton in August that they know their friends are doing but they’re not really voicing it. So, this is where I think a lot of people get frustrated when they’re not being real with themselves and they’re not being clear. So, let’s start with that, right? Like, really get serious about what your goal is and you know, what is it really going to take for you to get there? And if it’s health and fitness is is still the goal and it’s not maybe some secret little thing that you don’t want to tell your family about or your friends about, um, you know, I would encourage you to at least be honest with yourself about what it is that you want to achieve so that you can actually put some things into place to help you get there.

Steve:
Yeah. And I I was laughing because I I do do that and I get away with it and and I know that I’m getting away with it. I get away with it a little less every year, but I can get away with it because I did structured training for 23 years and it’s kind of somehow in my body still. So, but I also know I’m just getting away with it and that that you know and I constantly tell people you know you know the the better counsel to to is what what you what you did. But we all get sucked into these these these things, these interests that these excitement and and it happens, right? Like your friend is particularly motivated about rock climbing this season, so you end up going rock climbing more or whatever. Like it’s it’s fine. It’s normal, but we to your point, we need to be be honest about it. So I want to um sort of what I heard is just to reflect back is the first question isn’t really what I should train. It’s what does the goal demand and then you know the traditional way to look at this as as coaches or for sort of from the the history or the the kind of cannon of coaching knowledge is that you then walk the success m metrics aerobic fitness sports specific fitness durability technical skills strength equipment you know experience with the activity mental preparedness all of those things and then do the the gap analysis. So what how do you approach this? How do you talk to people about this when they come and they have a multisport goal?

Chantelle:
So this is going to be different for every person, right? So if we think about think about someone who’s like just training for health and for fun and then so that that could look different for that person compared to maybe someone that does uh skimo in the winter, competes in skimo in the winter and does trail races in the summer. And then we could have someone else that could be like someone that has a long technical alpine route that they’re preparing for, but in the meantime, they’re going to do a summer 50k and they’ve got some backcountry hunting that they want to do in the fall. So, three different kinds of people. Um, but what I what I want what we want to get across today is that regardless of where you’re at, the the steps are the same. So, the the first thing is, you know, first what are the goals? Clearly outline those. put them on a calendar so that you see when they happen. And if there if there is more than one thing that you want to achieve within that time frame, you have to pick a priority. And I don’t say priorities, I don’t ask people what their priorities are. So, if we think about, you know, if we’re looking at one year and we’re looking at different goals across a year, you could have two A priorities in that one year if they’re in two different seasons, but you couldn’t have two A races in, you know, July and August. You’re going to have to pick one, right? So, um, same goes with all of these. If you have two two key things you want to achieve in one season, which one is most important for you? So then we have this process of kind of you know thinking about what does it take to be successful in those different things that you want to do in that time frame. So as you mentioned Steve it could be it’s technical skill aerobic fitness strength muscular endurance mental preparedness uh let’s say fueling right all those different things. So think about all those things you have to be you have to get ready for and then do an honest assessment of out of all those things that I need to be successful over this next season. How do you rank yourself? So if you are you feel like your aerobic fitness is in a good place but your technical skills are kind of rusty then you know you’re going to have to put some specific emphasis on your technical skills. If your goal is, you know, over the summer you want to just be active and and um enjoy what you’re doing, but you’d kind of like to get better at mountain biking because you feel it never really improves, then you’re going to have to put some particular emphasis on improving the technical mountain biking skills. So then you know where what are those things that are going to take need a little bit more of your time and what are going to need a little bit less. And then you can do this sort of zoom out thing and zoom back in. So, we’re going to zoom out looking at all these things that we want to achieve. We think about what are the things that are going to take the most of our time. What are the things that that we already have a good strong handle on? And then we want to think about planning the training accordingly because again, this idea of like balancing stuff, it’s kind of a myth. I like to think about it more like harmonizing. Just like in music, some parts are going to get louder, some parts are going to get quieter. The same thing’s going to happen. So, if you’re running, skiing, uh, hiking, climbing, you can’t be doing all those. Those things can’t all be loud at the same time. You can’t do a high volume of them all at the same time. So, which ones need to get louder? Which ones need to get softer at the same time to keep you in a good in good harmony with yourself and with your goals? And then you think about, you know, planning things to be the least specific to most specific the closer you get to your goal. Um, and that’s that’s the way we approach any kind of training problem regardless of how many different elements that we want to consider.

Steve:
Yeah. And I think this is a great kind of example of, you know, for years we’ve been taking unconventional activities, whether it’s, you know, rock climbing or or alpine climbing, and just applying first principles thinking to how do we get better? And that’s what you just did, right? like you and you’re walking people through how to take your activities as you said and and look at how they harmonize throughout the year and then sort of bring that down first principles like what is going to support the other things? What is what is go what of which of these things all support aerobic base for example? Which of these things all support you know strength? I think that um one of the worries that people have is they worry that their running is going to steal from their climbing or their lifting is going to slow down their running. Basically, am I sab sabotaging one sport by loving another? And science and coaching has a name for this. It’s called the interference effect. It’s also sometimes called concurrent training. Uh triathletes are experts at this. They do a type of workouts called bricks where they purposely do multiple types of training in the same workout. Like they’ll swim and ride a bike basically back to back in the same work. The idea that endurance and strength or power adaptations can can kind of blunt each other is is only partially true. So you want to talk to us about the interference effect and what that what that means for people and how they should think about it?

Chantelle:
Yeah, I think it usually happens when people are are not um not harmonizing correctly. So, they’re trying to do a high volume of endurance training and a high volume of strength training. So, you another thing that’s kind of come up is like hybrid athletes. I think I don’t really I don’t personally agree with the idea of a hybrid athlete. If you’re if you’re strength training and you’re doing endurance work, you’re just an athlete. You know, you’re a well-rounded athlete. So strength and endurance work very well together. They complement each other and they help each other. But again, you always want to think about, you know, if you’re doing you can’t do all the things all at once. So you always want to think about balancing it out. So in the early part of your season, uh may that’s when you can maybe do some heavier uh heavier strength training. Maybe you’re doing you’re working more for power, you’re working more for strength, and you’re doing maybe three to four sessions a week. But as your endurance volume grows, then the volume of strength training needs to come down. So typically speaking, you know, if you think about endurance athletes at the whether it’s athletes I’m coaching who are at the highest level or athletes who are recreational, they’re, you know, the closer they’re getting to their big goal or a big goal, whether it’s an A or sort of a B goal, then the running has to take precedence because they’re not lifting their way to the finish line, right? they’re running their way to the finish line. So, as the as the running volume grows, the strength training comes down. We still keep it in, but maybe instead of three to four times a week, we’re doing it one to two times a week. Same goes with someone who loves their spin bike. They’re in love with their Peloton bike and they want to climb right Mount Rainier. You’re not spinning your way up the mountain, friend. You’re going to be climbing your way up the mountain. So, can you keep the Peloton in? Sure. But you’re not going to be on your Peloton four days a week. You need to be out on your feet. You need to be either, you know, you’re going to be uh spending a lot of time doing boring, unsexy stuff like uh weighted climbs in a stairwell or step-ups on a box, strength training. Those things you have to make room for the most important things. And the things that are fun, like your spin bike, you can keep those in, but the closer you get to your goal, that’s going to shrink. And usually the stuff that you are drawn to is not the stuff you need to spend more time on. It’s usually the stuff that [clears throat] you find yourself resisting, right? You’re resisting the strength training. You’re resisting the mobility. You’re resisting going to bed at a reasonable hour. You’re resisting the idea of fueling yourself properly. So maybe look for that resistance is probably where you need to spend some time.

Steve:
I feel so called out right now, Chantelle. [laughter]

So I think this is an important reframe for people to understand is is instead of thinking about whether sports conflict, think about what is each sport for. And I’ll give an example of this. Like uh rock climbing and trail running are two things that a lot of people combine and do together. If if you’re going through your winter season, that’s your season to you probably can’t run that much for most locations. It’s probably snowy. So in that case, your winter is a little light running and a lot of rock climbing specific training. You’re doing your rock climbing training. Then as spring comes around now, you’re in your like peak, you know, you’re I’m oversimplifying this, but then you’re going to be in your, you know, going to have 4 to eight weeks where you’re going to want to sort of peak in your rock climbing. And as and remember when we’re in our kind of competitive peak, the actual volume of the climbing goes way down, right? like um we have a few big days maybe but they’re but the overall volume goes down and that’s when when the running just starts to like trend up a little bit and then as your as your rock climbing season is coming to an end and then June is coming around then your trail running volume is coming up your rock climbing in the summer is going to a maintenance but your trail running volume is continuing to increase you do your event in the fall and you know so the year goes it kind of cycles around more or less like that I think that that’s a good Okay. Uh, another good way to kind of think about these just in terms of like how they work can work together as as different sports and you’re going back to first principles too like the principle of specificity. You know, that’s like what we talk about all day for the last every day for the last 15 years that we start with very general type training that doesn’t really look like the sport that we’re going to end up doing. But as we get closer and closer to the event, it needs to look more and more like the event or actually sort of simulating parts of the event and so on. But you got, as you said, you don’t lift your way to the finish line, you run your way to the finish line. So running has to have a big role in those left in in most of the plan, but it’s not as important in the beginning.

Chantelle:
Yeah, absolutely. And and it’s and I think it’s healthy to, you know, it’s it’s fun to move with the seasons and do different things. It’s fun to try a new sport. Um it’s good for our bodies to move in different ways. I think especially as we get older, you know, we’re both north of 50. Um it’s important that we vary our movement patterns. It’s important that we continue strength training. Even more important probably, you know, we could get away with a lot of dumb stuff when we were in our 20s and arguably 30s, but once we get into 40s, we need to start preparing for the bigger changes that start happening in the 50s and 60s. So, think about how you know a lot of these different sports that you’re doing, you know, sometimes the it’s really what we’re talking about is the timing and the volume of them that can be conflicts. It’s not the it’s not the activities themselves because a lot of times, you know, think about even think about my example of the the Peloton lover, you know, that aerobic work supports almost everything. So, it’s not a bad thing to be doing, you know, it’s it’s just when you’re doing it and how much you’re doing it and is it is it complimenting or taking away from the stuff that you should be doing. cross-country skiing, Nordic skiing. That’s the arguably the very best aerobic uh aerobic capacity building exercise we could ever choose. So, if you decide this next winter you want to try something new and you want to jump into a sport, new sport, it’s going to be a frustrating one to learn, but man alive is it great for anything else that you’re going to do. And it’s a low impact sport. So, it’s a really great one for people to to learn and bring into their arsenal of tricks, and it’s going to help almost any other thing that you’re going to want to do. Climbing, it’s awesome. It builds upper body and core strength. It’s incredible for mental training, and it also, I think, is good for helping people with fear, risk assessment, all of those things that are going to help you in so many other sports. So when you’re thinking about that gap analysis and you know what are the different skills that you need for to be successful at the different things you want to do, think about how these different sports bring different elements to each other where they complement. And really the only problem where you know you can get into trouble is when you have a mismatch with the um the volume and maybe the intensity of the things that you’re doing and that you’re not you know you’re not recovering enough between the different things that you’re doing to properly come into each new workout feeling good and able to complete it the way that you need to. And that comes back to intention.

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Steve:
Why why don’t you talk a little bit about how to layer into sports through on kind of a weekly basis?

Chantelle:
Well, again, this is going to really u depend on it’s the annoying coach answer, right? It depends depends where you are in your training schedule, depends what your goals are, depends how close you are to your main event. So if you’re if you’re let’s say you’re uh let’s give the example of the uh summer ultrarunner winters winter skimo person in the springtime that person is going to find that they’re you know their their skiing is going to start to decrease and they’re going to start ramping up their running. So maybe their skiing still one to two days a week. This is when they want to get into their longer spring tours, right? that’s when the conditions are best for that. So, the longer uh the longer outings are probably going to be on skis. Maybe that’s one or to two times a week. And then during the week, they’re going to maybe have some shorter runs, getting used to that kind of movement. Again, um strength training is going to always stick around. We always want to do strength training, but if we think about like the the sports specific stuff, that’s what it’s going to look like. Once we cross over into the summer, skiing now goes completely to the side. Now we’re fully committed to running. So running is is taking probably five to six days a week. Strength training probably three times a week. And then any extra stuff that you might be bringing in is you’re starting to think about when you’re going to layer that and how you’re going to layer that. So are you going to do some heat training? Are you going to be practicing some new nutrition habits? um you know, you’re going to bring that stuff in, but really you’re focused on running and all of the extra things that you’re bringing in, those have to support the running at this point in time. Can you go for a bike ride? Absolutely. But, um you know, if you’re going for a 5-h hour mountain bike ride and then you have a 4-hour trail run the next day, that might not be the best use of your time. But early summer, if you have a fall running goal, that could fit. Um, but again, you want to think about is it serving the main goal if you’re going to bring something else in as you get into the fall and let’s say now you you have a a fall race that’s happening. Once the fall race happens, the running volume is going to start to drop and now you’re starting to think about um transitioning what your strength training looks like. It’s going to be a little bit more ski specific rather than running specific. Um, and you’re going to start thinking about checking in with your body. What’s going on? What uh what might have changed over the summer months from the running volume? Are there some things that you need to work on mobility wise to get ready for skiing? Um, that’s what you’re doing now. You’re sort of getting into, you know, recovering from the the run season and making sure that your body and your mind is in a good place to start with ski season. And then as we get into the early part of winter, then your ski training kind of leads. Running can certainly stay in there. If you’re in a place where you can still run or you maybe you enjoy running on a treadmill, that’s also great. You can still keep that in there, but that is going to be more to complement your skiing and to support your skiing rather than being a dominant feature. So that’s just one example of someone balancing two sports, but these are two sports that are kind of season specific.

Steve:
Yeah. And for those athletes that may be doing double workouts in a day, uh, often ask how they should separate those. And the rule of thumb I always give people is to do the easy aerobic work first and the strength later. Um, the you don’t want to crush your legs in a hard strength workout right before a key endurance session. And the sometimes and well, you want to talk about that?

Chantelle:
Yeah, I would say sometimes that’s the best option, but sometimes it can actually be really helpful to do a, you know, um, if you think about the principle of keeping your e hard days hard and your easy days easy, for certain athletes, it can actually be beneficial to do a strength workout first and then do a shorter moderate intensity workout right after. So that helps in a lot of you for a lot of people sometimes that is helpful for them because the muscles now are activated you know you’ve worked on activating everything and then if you go out and run sometimes you can feel quite good and get quite a good moderate intensity session out of that. Um so that can be quite helpful sometimes. Um other times think about when we’re looking at um like uh trail runners who are looking to improve durability. It can be really hard for people to do for some people in their schedule, it’s really hard to do two long runs back to back. Maybe that’s hard for them to manage with their family schedule or whatnot. So, sometimes it’s a good way to get some good practice um on durability to do a strength workout and then go and do kind of a moderate duration run. So, you’re kind of running on tired legs. You understand how that feels. You understand what’s happening to your posture. And so sometimes that’s a way to bring that element into training without having to, you know, when you don’t have the time to do two long backto-back runs. So sometimes there’s a call for these things. We always have to think about like what’s the overall goal? What is the overall capacity of the person, you know, doing the work? Um, and you know, what’s going to make the most sense for the individual.

Steve:
Yeah. And for most people that we work with, I mean a beginner is going to start around like two and two in terms of and do four workouts in the week and then you know work up to three aerobic sessions and three strength or sport specific sessions uh per week as they progress. And you know then of course as people get fitter they have to add more training sessions to become fitter because they have to stress the their baseline is so fit they have to have to embarrass the the body a little bit and show that it can’t quite do what they’re asking it to do and that’s how adaptation happens. So the the question of how many days a week should I train is also very individualized and training two sports without overtraining requires a lot of self-awareness and it requires a lot of knowledge about how to structure a training work when to do what and why and what the signs of overtraining are and and and being able to monitor that. making sure that you know you’re you’re getting good recovery, good nutrition, all of those things. So, this is not for the um I would say inexperienced uh athletes. It takes a lot of attention and and knowledge to to pull it off, but it’s entirely possible. And one of the things we we’ve talked about here is just sort of the classic periodized approach of like starting general and moving more specific as the goal approaches. And you know, you’ve talked about as you know, you near the goal, you the the balance or the harmony of the different activities kind of uh changes and the secondary sport, you know, drops down and the the primary sport for that season kind of increases and we’ve talked given some some great examples. So, what about setting a one of the sports just completely aside for a block? How do you think about that? Or when do you when do you really like say to people like, “Hey, I think that you know maybe you ought to stop climbing or stop running for a certain amount of time.”

Chantelle:
Yeah, I think that might depend on the on the person too, right? Like what what is their experience in sport A, what’s their experience level in sport B? So, let’s say they are I can give I can give you a a real true example for myself. I’m currently training for an 8-day uh mountain bike adventure. I started mountain biking just a couple years ago. I was a very casual mountain biker and then I decided like I would like to spend a little more time on this because it’s it’s nice for me to learn a new sport that’s not so jarring on my body like running is. Um, so to prepare for this, I started my, you know, I transitioned from skiing. I started my spring season. You know, winter time, I ski and I run. Uh, springtime, I was still running, um, preparing for a 50k. But once the 50k time passed, then I had to get a little bit more specific to biking. So, my strength training changed to accommodate that and my training changed to accommodate that. Now, I can’t do the the mountain biking, you know, it’s it’s really difficult to get um zone one and zone two work on a mountain bike. So, I thought like I could just run, but that’s not very specific. So, it’s better for me to be on a road bike or a gravel bike. So, I’m currently not running at all. I’m on a gravel bike and I’m on a road bike. And sometimes I find the the the gravel bike kind of boring. I can run for hours with no music and and not get bored, but four hours on a gravel bike by myself, the time seems really slow, but it’s what I need to do for now because it’s allowing me to be more specific. And that was a conscious choice because, you know, the the mountain biking is not something I’ve done for a long time. So to build to build the strength and to build the technical skills that I need and to build the um durability that I need on a bike, I need more time on a bike and then you know then I’ll come back to to running again. So, in the case like me where you’re you’re trying to you’re trying to prepare for something that is not something you’ve done for a long time, it’s not something you’re accustomed to and it’s something that takes each session takes more out of you than your let’s say primary sport, then it’s better for you to probably focus on that thing to actually get better. Is the only way to get better is to get more time doing that thing. Or if I think about like something we say even in in power sports, you need seed time, you know. So whatever it is, you want to get better at climbing, you need to climb. You want to get ready at running, you got to run. And so maybe that means giving up some things for a time if you really truly want to improve in a particular sport.

Steve:
Yeah. And in my case where I’m more of the health and fitness athlete, that is much gentler. And the way I approach that is I I put my strength training along a typical periodized strength training and to go through that once takes me about five months and I just go through it a couple times a year and then the rest of the year I’m more following the conditions and what I happen to be enjoying that time and I don’t have to worry about like uh tapering off one activity to to accommodate another because as long as I’m getting a certain amount of aerobic work every week then and it’s you know and I have easy medium hard weeks and you know can kind of generally judge that for myself then then I can that I can continue to to improve albeit gradually. Um, that’s one of the one of the things that I don’t think that people need to understand. They they don’t have to give up progress. But the less you pay attention to it, the more you will uh abdicate the progress to just the randomness of what you’re doing and and and truly progressing, especially as we get older, gets a little harder. And uh we have to we’d like to just relax more and do more just what we feel like or at least that’s how my approach to it is. But I I’m very much plateaued and I’m not it’s very you know it’s like oh yeah if I want to improve now I actually have to just do that thing and like follow the structured training um and be committed to that. Um, so that’s the thing I’m balancing, right? Like how much uh do I care about improving over a year or or just maintaining and those are different things.

Chantelle:
So yeah, and again that’s completely that’s completely valid, right? And I think that’s where a lot of people say like, well, I don’t really know if I if I deserve to work with a coach because I’m just training for health. Like I’m not training for any particular thing. But I do think sometimes it’s, you know, you have the experience of training for a long time. you have a long history of training. So, it’s pretty easy for you to find what works for you in terms of maintaining a certain level of fitness and you also know what you need to do if you want to make a change, right? You want to make a little jump in that, you know what to do. But a lot of folks don’t. So, I think that’s where, you know, when we think about, you know, how do you do that? I think regardless of whether you are training for health or you’re training for something big, a non-negotiable should be strength training. that should always be there and think about getting at least three aerobic sessions per week. Three, start there, you know. So, for most people, if you’re not following any kind of plan, if you can follow that, you’re going to be in a pretty pretty good place um for general health and fitness. And that goes, you know, think about the the ACSM guidelines for um for health is 150 hour 150 minutes a week of activity. That’s pretty great. That’s not too hard to get. So, if you want to go move beyond that, then you’re going to have to do a little bit more. And then what that little bit more looks like maybe depends again on your goals, your interests, your experience with that thing. So, for someone, let’s say, who’s learning who’s never done strength training before and they decide that they’re going to start strength training, that’s those strength training workouts are going to take a lot more out of you than someone like me who’s been strength training consistently for over 30 years. Right? So, I could do a strength training workout and go then go run or go ride my bike and feel great. But for someone else, they might need actually two days of recovery in between. So, this is where we have to think about balance, you know, managing all of these things. You should, you know, how much should you train per week and how much should you rest? It really depends on you. So, you have to learn what works for you and how much recovery time each of these different activity takes. If you’ve been climbing your whole life, climbing does not take uh any recovery time for you. You could go to the climbing gym and you could you could you could play around there on the wall with your with your with your climbing buddies. You could be there in the gym for 4 hours and then the next day still go crush what you’re going to do. If you’re new to climbing, you might not be able to brush your hair the next morning, you know? So you have to think about, you know, your experience level with these different types of things that you’re doing, what it’s going to take out of you. Give yourself the time so that you can recover and so that each thing, each activity that you set out to do, that you can understand the intention of that workout and you can approach it and be able to crush each workout every time. whether it’s a recovery workout or it’s a it’s a highintensity workout, you want to be able to show up ready to crush each time.

Steve:
So, to recap a little bit, I think one of the first things to do is know what kind of athlete you are, define the goals, and define your priority, as Chantelle rightly pointed out, the one priority. Run an honest gap analysis, which of course a coach or your training friends can can help you with. And then when you look at the sports that you want to do, try to figure out how they relate to each other and how they’re going to earn their place um in balance with each other. H how the strength training is going to relate that to that and then how the how you’re going to periodize that across not just the weeks but across the seasons and and the year. Does that sound about right to you?

Chantelle:
Yeah, that sounds great. I think the the biggest thing for people to understand is that, you know, if you manage it well, these different sports really can help each other and help you be a more diversified um stronger, more agile athlete.

Steve:
Yeah. And we’ve often been asked like why we don’t have training plans for multiport athletes like this. And my answer is really that it’s not that I haven’t tried to create a plan like this, but it’s actually kind of hard to to do. It’s hard to balance all of these things. And if you yourself and me and myself, like we have enough, we know enough to be able to do that. But for a lot of people, this is a this is a place where they can really use some some work with a coach to help understand how to structure this cuz like it can really um can really go sideways uh if you’re not balancing all these factors right, you know. Well, I mean, you you said it so many times in the last 45 minutes like it depends and it depends on a lot of things. I know it depends on the individual. It depends on the sport. It depends on your your age. It depends on, you know, how much of the of this kind of training you’ve done before, how much the quality of the training you’re able to get done, the quality of the rest and the recovery you’re able to accomplish. And yeah, sometimes it’s just more than one person can keep in their head, especially if they’re new to this kind of uh thinking.

Chantelle:
Yeah, I think that’s true. And I think that’s why a lot of people end up getting frustrated, right? like I’m doing all these things. I’m so active, but my skiing’s not getting any better. My running’s not getting any faster. And I’m still the, you know, I’m still the last one up the hill in my group. And they’re getting frustrated because they’re working really hard. This is really similar to someone that’s saying, you know, like, I’m running I’m running six days a week and I’m not getting any faster. And they’re not running at the right intensity. Right? So, it’s it’s just it’s not that you can’t get better at these things. is just maybe you need to take uh a different look at how you’re training. Take a different look at what is truly important to you and then think about organizing what you do in a little bit of a different way so that you have the opportunity to improve in the areas that you need to or in the areas that are important to you. and then you know with some seasonality come back to the next things and little by little these things will start to get better individually and as you get better in one sport or area it’s probably going to improve your performance in another area too.

Steve:
Yeah. The other thing I would really say is you know doing the strength training if nothing else it will keep you from getting injured. Like you know all my ski buddies have had I don’t know how many knee surgeries. Knock on wood, I have no injuries to my lower extremities from a lifetime of skiing. And I think it’s because I’ve been strength training since I was 11 years old. And I think that the strength in in the integrity of the joints, especially the compound joints like hips and shoulders, is is an incredible way to ensure that you can continue to do these things for a long time.

Chantelle:
Yeah, absolutely. It’s not it’s not the most fun Instagrammable thing, but it is one of the things that makes the most difference.

Steve:
Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. If you aren’t already, please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast wherever you listen to them. And we will see you next time. My name is Steve House, founder of Uphill Athlete. And we’ve been joined today by Chantelle Robitaille. And together with all of you, we are Uphill Athlete.

Uphill Athlete:
I spent a lot of years in the mountains learning what it actually takes to reach really hard goals. And one of the biggest things I learned is that you don’t have to figure it out alone. Having a coach changes the way you train, but more than that, it changes the way you think about what’s possible for you. That’s what uphill athlete coaching is built around. Not just building fitness, but building the belief that your objective is within reach and giving you the specific science-backed path to get there. Our coaches have guided athletes from their very first alpine roots to the top of the world and at every level in between. If there’s something you want to do in the mountains, go to uphillathlete.com/believe and let’s figure out what you are capable of.