If the internet is to be believed, the best way to build endurance is to train hard, collapse in a pool of sweat, and really feel like you’ve given your all. Ultimately, this must be "real" training, right? Putting it all out there every time? Not exactly. When we reference the 100-plus-year history of endurance training, we see a different story. The use of high intensity exercise is actually rather limited in a properly structured endurance training plan. So when (and how) do wise coaches and smart athletes add high-intensity training to their programs?High-intensity aerobic training (Zone 3 and above)…
Author: Uphill Athlete
Have you seen a lightning storm form underneath you? Have you seen satellites at night, not above you but at eye level? Have you seen the sun rise on the vast landscape on your left, but total darkness on your right as that part of the world sleeps away? Have you seen the curve of the earth because you are so high up? I have, from the summits of Everest and Lhotse. I like to set bold physical goals for myself. I feel that a person should create a worthy goal for him- or herself every year, something to keep…
Do you have a trip planned in the middle of an upcoming training block? In the following video tutorial, Uphill Athlete co-founder Steve House takes you through how to find places to train while you’re traveling. His go-to tools include Gaia GPS and Strava’s Global Heatmap. Enjoy exploring your new surroundings! You Might Also Be Interested In: No Gear Strength Workout High-Altitude Climbing: 14 Tips for a Successful Expedition
Perhaps you’ve read our articles on fat adaptation—Train to Burn Fat , Burn Fat to Go Fast, and What Enables Endurance—or the “Getting Tested” series (Part 1, Getting Tested and Part 2, Interpreting Your Results). If so, you may feel inspired to take the plunge with a lab test of your own. It’d be a great way to start a new training block—by getting some actual personalized data showing your metabolic response to exercise. But where do you go? How do you choose which metabolic testing lab to visit? Besides an internet search of available places, what information should you arm…
LAB GUIDELINES FOR AEROBIC THRESHOLD TESTING By Uphill Athlete co-founders Steve House and Scott Johnston You’ve decided to get tested! Great. This can provide useful, actionable information about your metabolism and helps set a baseline which if you choose to re-test in the future will demonstrate the effectiveness of the training work you’ll do. We ask that you send this letter the clinician conducting the test prior to your arriving for your test. This text explains what we want to learn from these tests and why. Aerobic Threshold. We are primarily interested in determining your aerobic threshold first (AeT), and…
In January 2017, Jessica Flint, a 35-year-old New York–based magazine editor, climbed Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. It was her first attempt at summiting anything, not to mention her first time camping. To prepare for the trek, she mostly participated in twice-weekly 45-minute, high-intensity treadmill classes at Manhattan’s Mile High Running Club, and ran three other times per week. Her training appeared to pay off: While the rest of her seven-person team had to dig deep to reach 19,341 feet, Jessica later told her guide from Summits Africa, Ake Lindstrom, that she felt like the effort she put in on…
The journey—it’s made of successes and failures and reflections and strengths and weaknesses. The journey, as opposed to the objective, is always a big source of discussion for climbers: What do you get when you’ve completed the objective? I’m not going to be the one to answer that difficult question, but I ask it and I feel it.I started climbing seriously in 2013, when I joined the Italian Alpine Club. I live in Turin in the western Alps, and my aspiration is to be the best all-around technical alpinist I can be—proficient on as many terrains as possible, with a…
Mike Foote cranked up his final lap—his 60th—with 15 friends in tow. It was nearing 9 a.m. on March 18, 2018, almost a full day after he first started skinning up and skiing down the 1,020-foot Ed’s Run at Whitefish Mountain Resort in Montana. During the previous lap, he’d eclipsed the world record for vertical ascended and descended in 24 hours on ski-mountaineering gear. This last push was a celebration. “It was really emotional and really special, and I was surrounded by people that I love,” he says. “It was an amazing thing.” It was also his second-fastest lap of…
TrainingPeaks.com is an incredibly powerful tool for planning and monitoring your training. We’ve been using it since 2012 and the longer we use it, the more impressed we have become. At this point we simply can’t imagine training without this tool. It is simply light-years better than using a spreadsheet-as-training-plan. TrainingPeaks was originally developed by professional cyclists and their coaches who needed to analyze not only the effect of each workout, but the cumulative effect of days, weeks, and months of workouts. Even with the simple basic (and free) version of TrainingPeaks, this monitoring is possible. In this video, Steve…
Back when I was doing a lot of shorter trips to Patagonia, really fast down and back, having success, I coined the term “Daddy style.” It’s alpine style but for a family man with two kids, like myself: show up super fit, crush something, and then head home. Make the most of your pre-trip training so that you can make the most of your climbing. It’s a tactic I’ve always deployed for alpine climbing, and in the past two years I’ve applied it to harder rock climbs—to mastering the 5.13 grade. -by Whit Magro I’ve been climbing since I was…