[Steve House]

Steve House on May 14, 2018 at 4:33 pm · in reply to: Base Elevation of Race #9878

Brandon,
This would be a situation where a hypoxic tent would help you acclimate to these (relatively) moderate altitudes of your race compared to your living/training elevation. That said, you also have access to plenty of altitude right around you too.

You should do anything that requires any kind of intensity at lower elevations for quality of workout. Long duration/low intensity (such as the skis) are perfect times to go up high in the mountains around the roaring fork.

Here’s the article about the normobaric hypoxic tents

Training, Oxygen Systems, and Hypoxic Tents

good luck,
Steve

[Steve House]

Steve House on May 14, 2018 at 4:27 pm · in reply to: New Fatherhood and Training #9875

Dave,
Great question and as a long-time alpinist and relatively-new-father (My boy is 27 months as I write this) I can empathize. But let me back up.

In 2010 I had a bad accident while climbing a ‘warm-up’ route (for me at that time) in the Canadian Rockies. I fell 25 meter and barely escaped with my life. While waiting for the heli to save my bacon I had a couple of hours to reflect on my life…and those two hours change my life probably more than any other 2 hours…

I’m not saying you should go pitch yourself off a cliff. But what I am suggesting is that what you’re talking about boils down to a question of priorities. And it is feasible that you could sit down with a pad and pen–or a good friend if you’re more the talker than a writer–and a promise to yourself to ‘tell the whole truth’ and name your priorities. Write ’em down; list ’em out in black and white.

Then, once you’ve done that, imagine that you are breathing your dying breath. At that moment. Right then. What would you be proud of? What would you wish you had done more of? Less of? If that was your last day would you have actually lived your priorities. Again, write it all down. And again, no lying/fibbing/squirming/fudging. Be bold and be clear. This is your life we’re talking about. Put it in black and white. Paper and pen.

Then, once you’ve done that. Write out your “new” priorities if you were to have a second chance at life. I think for most of us–and certainly for me–those two lists would not have been the same had I been able to be totally honest with myself.

We’re talking about a process of aligning your goals with your values. Here is something I wrote about that for new year’s 2018:

Know Thyself

Going back to your original question. I find that for me, and I’ve had some great discussions with Bruno about this as well so I know I’m not alone here, that this ‘higher-level’ decision solves a lot of the lower-level dilemmas. I can simply look at my values and that gives me the answer. The trick is having a really really good idea of what my values are and understanding deeply, that these values will cast the decisions I make on a daily, hourly, momentary, level.

A big part of my realization in 2010 was that I was happy with what I’d done with climbing. I’d not accomplished everything, but I had accomplished a lot. And that if i had died that day–March 25, 2010–a day I consider to be more important than my birthday, what I would have regretted not having a family, not raising a good kid, not having able to establish/maintain a good and rewarding marital relationship, not doing something positive for my community. I don’t climb nearly as much as I used to. I completely stopped soloing. I reduced the risk I take in many ways. I still climb. But I spend more time climbing on my garage wall than I do my local mountains because that way I can be there to play in the yard with my son when he wakes up from his nap. And that’s something I definitely don’t want to die without experiencing.

One more thing: I really enjoyed Ray Dalio’s “Principles” book. If you don’t want to dive into a 500-page book, here is a clever video series that is much shorter:
https://www.principles.com/principles-for-success/

Good luck on your journey.
Steve

[Steve House]

Steve House on May 7, 2018 at 4:32 pm · in reply to: Upper body power #9717

Utilizing an advanced and difficult exercise like this will lead to injury if you don’t have the strength base to support it. I would go back to a few rounds of general and max strength workouts and come back to this exercise when you are strong enough to do it properly. I don’t mean to be over-bearing here, but this is a great way to get hurt.

[Steve House]

Steve House on May 7, 2018 at 4:23 pm · in reply to: How unfit am I? #9715

To a certain extent, one good measure of your fitness is right there in the image (attached a screenshot). Your CTL, or Chronic Training Load, or what TrainingPeaks also calls “Fitness” is 91.

here are a few reference points for what a CTL score of 91 might mean in terms of mountaineering:

Fit to Climb: Everest

Spoiler quote:
“To climb Denali you want to have a CTL of 75 for 2 months. For Everest at least 100 for 3 months. Everest without supplemental oxygen, we suggest a CTL of 125+ for 3 months. These are rough guides we’ve worked out over the last five years and they do seem to be pretty good indicators of physical preparedness.”

Here is more about how CTL is calculated and some of the other metrics:

Explanation and Tour of TrainingPeaks’ Performance Management Chart

And, more subjectively, I coach a number of people and they currently have CTLs between 29 and 129. The 29 just started training four weeks ago. The one with 129 is mid-expedition and attempting to climb Nuptse, Lhotse, and Everest on the same expedition, and I think he has a good shot at doing all three. Note that his peak CTL was 145 and he has not dropped below 120 for the past 8 months.

So 91 is pretty fit. You can do a lot of work, recover from that work, and do more work. Probably for a at least 3 consecutive weeks before your base starts to erode to the point that you need to go build more base fitness.

One last thing. Drop the negative. Next time write in: How Fit Am I? 🙂

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[Steve House]

Steve House on May 7, 2018 at 4:10 pm · in reply to: Switch Days One Time on 16 Wk. Beg/Int SkiMo Racing Plan? #9714

@Hafjell,
Yes there is some methodology to the order of the workouts, particularly the spacing between strength workouts and the harder aerobic workouts. But, life is life and as Scott said, it’s normal to have to rearrange workouts. Sometimes it is worth remembering the old adage: The best workout is the one that you do.

[Steve House]

Steve House on May 7, 2018 at 4:06 pm · in reply to: Home Training Wall #9713

For my health in that I can walk 15 meters and be in a gym basically any time I want, 24/7. Without that I had to drive 10-15 min to the next town and use the public gym, which wasn’t always the best experience and did not include a climbing wall. I’m fitter and healthier because I’m more consistent and I credit that to the garage-gym. As you know, having a infant-toddler makes these things more difficult.

[Steve House]

Steve House on May 2, 2018 at 1:58 pm · in reply to: Home Training Wall #9624

I have a moonboard and a treadwall and it’s a great combination. I would highly recommend a moonboard in that space. and using the rest of the floor space as a strength/core area. 12′ is enough height (I have 11’10”) to get the 40 degree angle and another angle, probably about 30 deg overhanging on the moonboard. I recommend you order at least 3 sets of holds (the original set is the hardest, so you might skip that set) and the LED lights are an absolute must.

Once you get into the app and have it set up I highly recommend sticking to ‘benchmark’ problems.

Building a home gym in my garage was the best thing I ever did for my health and my climbing.

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 16, 2018 at 11:33 am · in reply to: Ultrarunning a detriment or asset to training for alpinism? #9391

I do use my monitor every day these days. The problem is that, my (and everyone’s) Aerobic Threshold changes every day. Today I ran, after having to wake up with an upset toddler at 4:30am, and I was wearing my monitor realizing my AeT–according to my perception–was about 140 this morning. 140 felt kind of hard on the little uphills of my local 10k morning loop. Normally it’s 155-ish. Mark one up to fatigue.

I think it’s useful for the reason above, continuing to learn about our bodies. And I like to keep everything recorded in trainingpeaks so that I have that data and can keep track of my fitness level in an objective way (using CTL and the performance management chart.)

Lastly, it really does help me with consistency. I hate to see blank days on my training calendar. And I really hate 2-3 blank days in a week. So wearing the watch/monitor and recording my data is part of my motivation when I’m not just out climbing/skiing to keep up with my consistency–which is probably the most important feature of any training.

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 16, 2018 at 11:21 am · in reply to: Variations on the lunge #9390

I like pairing lunges (any type, though the Reverse Negative Lunges sound a bit too geeky for me, I’ll leave those to Scott Semple) and split-squats with 1-legged dead-lifts in the same workout, not back-to-back mind you. Try it and tell me what you think.

From the 20,000-foot-view, I think of them this way: bi-pedal lifts are ‘general strength period’ exercises except when we need to dip into a max-strength maintenance workout. Specific period strength is all one-legged work, hill-sprints, etc.

KIS

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 16, 2018 at 7:40 am · in reply to: Training Watch Recomendation #9385

RPM,
Last month I lost my trusty Garmin Fenix3 with the sapphire glass (crucial feature for a clutz). I was pretty bummed because I liked that watch a lot. I was inclined to get a Fenix5 after giving up the search, but one of our coached athletes offered to set me up with a great deal on Suunto, and I thought I would try something else. My last suunto was an Ambit3 which was my watch prior to the Fenix3.

I got a Spartan Ultra w/HR strap. I’ve used it only 2 days so far. I have to admit I like the User Interface a LOT better than the Garmin UI. The processor speed is clearly WAY faster than my F3 was. The screen is better, color, and most of all the menus are a lot easier to navigate. I also noticed that it connects to the HR strap and my iphone really fast, my Garmin seemed to sometimes struggled with this. My one complaint is that I have not yet figured out how to have a custom screen. I like to see watch-time, HR, and altitude. Garmin let me create that screen easily. I haven’t figured out how to do that in Suunto yet, but honestly i’ve only spent 5 minutes trying.

All that said, DCRainMaker, who I also go to for reviews, doesn’t have much good to say about Suunto. His last review on the Spartan Ultra was pretty negative. Negative enough that I would not have paid full price. So it does sound like it will be important to keep pushing software updates to the watch whenever they become available. I also noticed that the Suuntos do go on sale a fair bit, but the Garmins never seem to. Hope that helps.
Steve

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 8, 2018 at 1:38 pm · in reply to: Ultrarunning a detriment or asset to training for alpinism? #9176

I’m just back from a little mountain run! One of the best tools in our toolbox. (though as I like to be alone I never entered races)

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 8, 2018 at 9:38 am · in reply to: Ways to build a climbing base without a rope #9174

Colin-That’s tragically funny, I guess people do read these training articles! Bummer about the 2-lap max.

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 3, 2018 at 9:52 am · in reply to: Local Muscular Endurance for Upper Body #9063

Let’s talk about Muscular Endurance Training (ME Training) as it apples to Rock Climbing, and all the same could be applied for ice climbing as well:

The basic concept of Muscular Endurance is to do the sport specific work in ‘more difficult conditions’ (to quote the god-father of ME training, Verkoshensky’s, definition). You simply overload the working muscles beyond what you’d ask them to do in the ‘race’ or ‘event’. I first witnessed ME training in Rock Climbing way back when…(early 90’s, I’m not sure exactly) watching (slack-jawed) Scott Franklin doing laps on Churning in the Wake, a 5.13a wearing a weight vest. Soon after that Scott Franklin became the first American to establish a 5.14a.

ME Training works, but it has to come on top of solid fitness and health. I’ve heard Scott J tell a story about a very strong British climber that used to do laps on the traverses around boulder wearing a diver’s weight belt though most climbers struggled to finish the same traverses unencumbered. I’ve seen a lot of other good rock climbers (5.13+ climbers) doing this at Smith Rock over the last two decades.

Climbers have to be careful that they do this at an easy-enough grade relative to their maximum grade to make sure they don’t hurt their fingers. They also need to be smart about applying this type of training at the right time in the training, it has to come on top of a regular diet of high-volumes of climbing

I myself have done this workout on my Treadwall, using finger friendly holds. We’ve also had a lot of people doing this type of climbing with a little weight in the backpack (it doesn’t take that much weight!) I know that Josh Wharton who also does this type of ME training on his Treadwall.

A bit off topic. Scott Johnston reminded me of this: Eric Horst, author of Training for climbing, uses extra weight for his ‘max strength’ type training with a systems wall. He uses a max strength protocol (few reps, lots of rest) but keep in mind that this is very different than a ME workout. An ME workout would need to be have ‘on times’ close to the length of the event, so climbing 30 meters, then resting a shorter period, then climbing 30 meters again would be a sample ME protocol.

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 3, 2018 at 9:16 am · in reply to: Mobility, myofacial release, imbalances / restrictions / injury #9060

Reed-
I discovered Jason Crandall on YogaGlo, it has a lot of his courses (I don’t know if they’re all there or not). Yogaglo is a paid subscription service but works well and I always have a class in my pocket. I suppose you can do the same via his website, but I haven’t looked into it.

The only problem I find with Yogaglo app is that it only allows me to view classes I’ve viewed before on a computer. I find this strange, but have adapted and now have my little play list of the classes I use the most. He has many classes specific to areas of the body, like Thorasic and Shoulders. I often use these as they are also my problem areas. He also has a selection of recovery classes targeting to different sports from skiers to runners. I find myself going to the runner’s recovery most often. The library of classes Crandall has produced is very impressive and he spends a lot of useful time explaining why he’s doing what he’s doing. Enjoy.

[Steve House]

Steve House on April 3, 2018 at 9:04 am · in reply to: Training breakthroughs #9059

Slightly off topic, but I think this excellent post by coach Steve Magness speaks volumes about sticking to fundamentals, which is where we see 99.9% of all gains.