8 Week Advanced Alpinist Training – How to Maintain

Dave:
It depends some on what your next goals are. If this just one big end of summer climb 4 weeks after the Waddington trip then I’d say drop back into the program in the week that would give you the number of weeks of training till you head to the next objective. You can never have too much base. If you plan to do several smaller or weekend climbs without one major goal then all you’ll be able to do is some maintenance of the systems between these climbs if these climbs really push you. If you want to keep building the way you have the past weeks an ideal combo of training with weekend climbs (longer alpine routes-big days) would be something like this:
Monday rest, Tuesday light aerobic recovery run, Wed Longer run with a hard hang board or bouldering session, Thursday, another run, Friday, light aerobic or off, Sat/Sun do long approach and long climb that is comfortably within your on sight grade (2-3 letter grades). This will allow you to continue to acquire fitness and skill. If you have open weekends get out for long run/hikes in the mountains. As you have probably figured out by now: The gains you’re seeing have come from a focus on building capacity. The more of that you do the better off you will be when the day comes when you need to utilize that capacity. Building and Utilizing at the same time, which is the old school approach, will not get you as far as fast even though our method requires some delayed gratification.
Good luck,
Scott