Hi – first time poster here, from New Zealand.
I recently purchased Training for the New Alpinism, and found the Up Hill Athlete (both excellent resources!)
I’m reasonably fit (relatively speaking), but a bit ‘skinny fat’. I aspire to progress to a disciplined, structured training regime along the lines of UA. From your perspective, would it be better to focus on losing the excess ~15ibs that I am carrying before turning attention to weight/strength training, or just get on with the full regime and trust the weight will come off?
W/o looking to give my life story, I got pretty overweight and unfit before making very large changes about 18 months ago. I’m 37, grew up in CO and knocked off all the 14ers in college, and then got too into my career and that ceased.
I lost about 75 pounds, and thing that helped me train was getting in shape so I could walk up things, whether that was hiking, hills, or increasingly more now amateur mountaineering. That has grown and grown and I’m not pretty fit – I can gain 1,000 vertical metres, hiking at a comfortable clip, in about 1hr 15. I don’t trail run (yet) but I’m confident I could do it in an hour. I do weight hill climbs, hiking, cross trainer, stair master, and basic weights…in addition to now some mountaineering in NZ.
Last peak was Mount Aspiring – about 2600 metres verticle gain up and down, in 3.5 days, with long approach. Getting into rock climbing etc.
I’m keen to see where this goes – just to be the fittest in my life even at a late stage – maybe climb Mt Cook and Mt Tasman here in NZ. No desire for high altitude the peaks here are challenging enough for me.
I’m still 15 pounds more than I’d like to be, but don’t want to start a hard out resistance programme to build strength if I’m not fueling my body right and training to lose weight.
Ooops looks like you got my life story. Thanks if you made it this far!!!
