[Neil]

I am about to embark on a 26 week training program for a 3-month winter hiking project in the Adirondacks. I will start the aerobic base and max strength next week. Based on Hill Sprints as per p.230 of the book I was thinking of using sled pushes as one of my 4 max strength exercises. I was thinking of doing several series of four-10 second sprints with a loaded sled. Make sense?

Two of my other exercises will be box steps and cable pulldowns (for maxing out hiking pole usage), which I’ve been doing for the past couple of months with gradual load increases (3 series of 12 reps, 3x/week).

Still haven’t decided upon the 4th exercise. (lunges? single leg squat-deadlift hybrid? )

Topic

[Anonymous]

Anonymous on June 20, 2017 at 9:45 pm #5238

Neil:

Welcome and nice to see you on the forum. I’d suggest focusing on single legged exercises so you work the stabilizer muscles specific to climbing steeply (it is the Dacks after all).

Lunges will be great but don’t forget step downs. What goes up must come down ofter all. Also use cable tricep extensions for using the poles for support as you descend.

Good luck.
Scott

[Neil]

Neil on June 21, 2017 at 4:00 pm #5254

Well, I decided to include sled pushes for one of my 3 lower body exercises. (Also included single-leg half squats along with box steps) I’m worried about too much stress on my pat-fem from the knee-dominant resistant exercises. For the box steps I used a 50lb. pack and 2 30-pouind kettle bells (no swinging as per the video!)

On another note I decided to do each exercise 4 times in a row with a 2 min. break in between each series of four reps. Then I took 4 mins. of rest prior to starting in on the next one exercise. This is different from what I did 2 years ago where I alternated thus: 4 reps each of of: first lower body exercise-upper body exercise-2nd lower body exercise- one core exercise etc. with 30 secs between exercise and 3 mins between circuits. (total of 4 circuits).
I just re-read though that the inter-exercise breaks should have been more like 3-5 minutes.