While it’s great that running and hiking are both simple and do not require much gear, the shoe is a very important piece of equipment that causes trouble if not replaced often enough. Running shoes are designed to last between 200 and 500 miles. That may sound like a lot, but even the higher end of that range comes quickly with regular training. With really good form and specific strength, a runner can get by with dead shoes for a limited time. But most people quickly head down the injury road without proper footwear. When an athlete starts feeling a…

Strength training is critical for endurance and mountain sports. It is also easily misunderstood. What exercises to use, whether to push heavy weights or focus on high repetitions, how to add strength without adding bulk or mass—these are all important considerations for the mountain athlete.   WHY TRAIN STRENGTH FOR MOUNTAIN SPORTS? People can and have summited mountains, raced ultras, blazed skimo races, and sent 5.13 without lifting a single weight in the gym. But strength training—everything from pull-ups and squats to focused muscular endurance work—is fundamental to becoming a well-rounded mountain athlete with a long, injury-free career. The Uphill…

One of the most crucial components to success for endurance athletes—skiers, runners, cyclists, climbers, and more—is muscular endurance. In this free video seminar, Sam Naney explains how muscular endurance represents a cornerstone of training. It improves economy, resistance to fatigue, and durability across a range of applications.Thanks to RunWenatchee and Inner Circle Gym for generously sponsoring this event.This was recorded as a Facebook Live event. Volume, resolution, and production are not top quality—but the information is!https://www.facebook.com/uphillathlete/videos/205266677071975/

I’m always dreaming of the next trip and the next big mountain. The way I usually choose mountains to climb is by how they look in photographs. That aesthetic aspect of alpinism is evidently very important to me. If it’s a beautiful line on a beautiful mountain, I’m drawn to climbing it. But as a full-time physician and mother of two boys, I can’t always take a full month off to climb a big peak. Or if I can, then that may be the only trip I will be able to do in a year. That’s where the idea of…

Skimo racing is hands down the hardest aerobic work I’ve done in my endurance career. The full-body engagement and use of both legs and arms to propel myself uphill causes me to taste blood much quicker than in any running race I have ever participated in. I love that about the sport, and without a doubt it’s imperative to work hard on preparing your heart and lungs as best you can before your first (or 10th) skimo race season. With that said, you can have the world’s highest VO2max, but if you do not know how to do a quick…

One hundred miles. Could I even run that far? It was a mystery I wanted to solve. Starting about five years ago, when I first got hooked on trail running, I went through the usual progression of ultras: first a 50K, eventually a 50-miler, then a 100K. One by one, distances that once seemed crazy became real. But the 100-miler was still an unknown, and I felt like I couldn’t consider myself a true ultrarunner until I did one. The only problem was that my training never seemed to be enough for that benchmark distance. While it was easy for me to go out…

I’ve had an old, yellowed, hand-lettered sign posted in my gym for about 15 years. It reads, “If you train like everyone else you can expect results like everyone else.” Those words—an invitation to think outside the box—have shaped my approach to coaching for longer than that sign has hung there. Training outside the box is a philosophy that encourages curiosity and creativity, and without it there would be no Training for the New Alpinism. There would be no Uphill Athlete.I have trained for a range of endurance sports at a high level myself—swimming, cross-country skiing, alpine climbing—and I have…

My recent solo of the Great Trango Tower isn’t the biggest or most difficult thing I have done, but it is the most meaningful. I climb without a rope all the time around Colorado, and I have climbed mountains by myself, but for me soloing Great Trango Tower represents the next level: a 20,000-foot mountain in the middle of Pakistan, and I was up there by myself. I came back to base camp and came down from my high, and I realized the magnitude of what I had done. I had an alone moment on a huge mountain in the…

Historically, runners have always spoken about and compared their training in terms of “mileage.” Counting miles alone seems a rather crude way to account for the myriad and complex effects training has on the body, especially today with the ability to track heart rate, pace, and even running power. None of that withstanding, runners still largely track their training by tallying up miles run per week.The reason for this is simple: When it comes to endurance, volume trumps intensity. And this is especially true in long-distance running.* * *Every foot strike results in a shock load to the musculoskeletal system…

Ever since we began getting emails in response to Training for the New Alpinism, there is one question in particular that has come up more than any other. Mountain athletes want to know how to find a balance between conventional responsibilities such as work, family, or school and their desire to be in the mountains. Some people are constrained by location, some by energy, and others by time. Regardless of the individual situation, these inquiries tend to share one thing in common: they usually come from folks who want to cram a week’s worth of activity into one or two…