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Training for Mountaineering: Tapering and Post-Mountain Blues
12.5k Plays1 year ago
In this episode, Steve and Alyssa welcome coach Martin Zhor onto the podcast to discuss tapering and the post-mountain blues. They discuss the dos and don’ts of tapering along with advice on the duration and types of workouts athletes should be focusing on during this time period. They also touch on the effect of travel during a taper period and how to account for altitude and acclimatization. Along with tapering, the three discuss the after period of a big climb and what happens next mentally and physically regardless of the summit success. They offer their own experiences and tips to handle the let down post-trip. Join the three in a comprehensive discussion rounding out the mountaineering training series and helping athletes reach their mountain goals.
Thank you to Chase Clark for our Intro/Outro Music and Tim McClain for our sound mixing.
Please visit us at uphillathlete.com or write to us at [email protected]
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Transcript
Introduction to Hosts and Topic
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Uphill Athlete Podcast. Our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Steve Haus and I will be your host today along with Elisa Clark. Today we are discussing the final pieces of the mountaineering training journey, tapering and the post-climb blues.
Guest Martin Zohr's Expertise
00:00:22
Speaker
To help us with these topics, we have brought on uphill athlete coach Martin Zohr to share his knowledge and expedition experiences. Martin is an expert in high altitude physiology, holds a bachelor's degree in sports science, and is an incredible mountain athlete himself. His personal specialty is speed ascents, and until very recently, he was the FKT holder on Alcancagua.
Martin's Journey in Mountain Sports
00:00:44
Speaker
He has been on expeditions all over the world and has coached athletes to each of the seven summits.
00:00:57
Speaker
Martin, we're really thrilled to have you joining us today. Thanks, Steve. Hello, everybody. I'm excited to be here. We're stoked to have you, Martin. So thanks for being on. Before we dive into tapering, can you give us a bit about your background in mountain sports and what drew you to become a coach and a speedster in the mountains?
From Athlete to Coach
00:01:20
Speaker
So I'm Martin, I come from Czech Republic, but I lived for a very long time in Chamonix, France under one blank in the Alps and recently actually relocated to Ennsbruck, so the other side of the Alps. I started as a runner, so back in teenage years I was competing in middle distance.
00:01:42
Speaker
like a mile, 1500 meters, five kilometers. That's so that was my base. So after doing a couple of years of like national level competitions, I then moved more to climbing, but I always kept the running as my main sport. Um, eventually then I moved to Chamonix, started more doing more Alpine climbing. Um, then started to actually to work on a good minute, which is the high lift, um,
00:02:09
Speaker
taking you up to 3,800 meters. And so I became more familiar with altitude, what it does to your body, how people react, and eventually actually started to study more about it. So I studied sports science in Manchester University in UK, more like a distance I still lived in Chamonix during that time.
Understanding Tapering
00:02:30
Speaker
So always was really interested in sports and in the science of it.
00:02:35
Speaker
Then eventually I actually connected the dots and started to do some speed climbing. Really benefited from that acclimatization. And so that led me to some big linkups in the Alps. I did my three summits project. So that was a really big challenge for me. And eventually I went to a Concagua and broke that record. So that is my experience with the mountains so far.
00:03:05
Speaker
And I'm currently preparing for another big one. Awesome. I saw your three summits and was like, I want to ask you so many more questions, but we don't have time for that right now. So what actually brought you to uphill athlete as a coach and we kind of came on at the same time, but I'd love to hear how you were drawn to the company and how that happened.
00:03:29
Speaker
Yes. Good question. So actually after having studied that sports science degree and then doing all those projects, people started to ask me if I could go to them. So that was more like natural transfer to the professional side of things. Um, I did that for about three years and that was great. Uh, you know, starting small, but then I think I really wanted to be a part of the team, uh, for various reasons to learn more from.
00:03:58
Speaker
the others to maybe have also more options to push my knowledge and experience. And Abilat Lead has always been there, like at least in the recent years when I became familiar with this world. So I always looked up to them and then eventually picked up the courage and contacted Steve last summer and it
Tapering Strategies and Individualization
00:04:20
Speaker
kicked off straight away. So I'm really, really happy with that. Super grateful to be part of the team.
00:04:28
Speaker
Me too. Yeah, I think we were in similar spots of, all right, I just got to ask. So thanks for sharing on that. And I'm grateful to Martin, your great coach and the great addition. Martin and I are actually together in Austria right now, just sitting in different rooms for audio purposes. And we managed to get in a ski tour this morning and had some great conversations on the way up. So that's how the magic happens. It's great. It really does.
00:04:58
Speaker
Well, Steve, we made it to tapering. We got here. So let's start by, let's start by breaking down what tapering is and its purpose for mountain athletes. As I think it is often a point of confusion and concern as you've done all the training, but how do I wrap the bow up and get to the mountain? So Steve, can you lead us off and then Martin, please add in.
00:05:27
Speaker
Yeah, I'll just start off with some sort of analogies where we often talk about
00:05:34
Speaker
when you're training, you're baking a cake and there's all the different layers and so on and so forth. And so tapering is, you can think of it as like the final touches on the frosting of the cake. And there's not that much you can do to change the overall taste or consistency or size of the cake at this point. There's probably quite a bit you can do to mess it up.
00:05:59
Speaker
You know, you can you can you can decorate it really badly but I think that the reason I like this analogy is as long as you use a light touch and some good common sense that you'll probably Do pretty well in the taper period if you've built if you've baked a good cake to begin with Okay, so
00:06:21
Speaker
What actually tapering is, so basically we are reversing the training induced fatigue, and we don't want to lose all those training adaptations we acquired in all those months before. So this might seem to be controversial, but it is very important.
00:06:41
Speaker
Finally, maybe it might be one of the toughest things for the athletes to do. They don't want to back off. They want to just keep going all the way to the trace and objective. And so it's just really important to know that it's a very important part of the training process and probably to talk about why we actually do it and how long it's going to take. Definitely. And I think it's also the part, as you said,
00:07:10
Speaker
It's really where you gain the strength back. It's where you are able to use the fitness that you've built up from your training. And if you don't give yourself the time to rest, you don't get to use that fitness and all the hard work you've put in. So I think one of the most complex and confusing parts of tapering is the timing. How long should athletes be tapering? Can you taper too much?
00:07:37
Speaker
Can you start losing fitness? When do you start losing fitness? Uh, Steve lead us off and then Martin, please follow along. Okay. Well, first off, I'm going to maybe start a little broader. I always do that, right? Go back to the principles, but I will preface this by saying I want to limit these answers to mountaineering since this podcast series is specifically about training for mountaineering and
00:08:06
Speaker
I think I want to sort of pile on to what Martin said and try to reduce it even further and just say that the purpose of a taper is to allow your body to fully recover. And what does that mean? That means that you're going to maximize the super compensation balance that we talk about all the time in training. And that super compensation,
00:08:36
Speaker
is what fitness is. That's what gives you the fitness and you're recovering from, in this case, probably many months of training stress. And so there's a lot going on that you need to recover from and there's a lot that you can do to help yourself realize maximum fitness during this period.
00:09:01
Speaker
I would say that it's important maybe to go back to one of those cliches. What is training? Training is not what we do. It's what it does to our body. We don't get strong by training itself. It's really the rest and recovery period when the body has time to rebuild and react to all that training stress and training load.
00:09:21
Speaker
But then there is a fine line and we probably are all aware of that. How long can we actually rest and we don't really want to do that much. So there is a certain timing of things. And for everybody, this is going to be individual. So for some athletes, this might be several days or for some it might be two weeks. And so we need to be aware of the.
00:09:43
Speaker
one of the training principles is the reversibility which means that if you don't use it you lose it so all those training adaptations the body will not keep them if we don't keep trying and so.
00:09:57
Speaker
The funny thing about tapering is we really want to reduce the training loads to allow the body to really read up, but it doesn't actually mean the detraining, which means that the complete cessation of exercise, we keep training, but at a reduced rate and for a certain period of time. And so there comes the question for how long we should actually do it.
00:10:23
Speaker
And I think it's important to take the principle that we talk about so often that everyone is different and that you should be focusing on your training, your relationship with the coach, and not looking at other athletes for recommendations of how you taper. So I just want to acknowledge that looking at other people's tapers could be very counterproductive.
00:10:48
Speaker
If one were to look at, say, my taper, you would probably think that I was not tapering much at all. And the reason is because that works for me. And so if you, especially at this point of time where you might be itching to train more, if you look at another person's taper and go, well, they're not really tapering, or their taper looks way harder than mine, like the amount of effort, it's most likely because they're highly dialed in. They're working with a coach.
00:11:17
Speaker
They've done this multiple times. And so I think it's just important to
Managing Travel Stress
00:11:20
Speaker
make sure that you are doing what's best for you, not what someone else is doing. So just a little reminder on that part. I think it's important for people to understand the reason behind the variation, though, of
00:11:35
Speaker
how long the sappers should be. So why is it, Steve, that the amount of time it will take for that super compensation to produce your peak will vary depending on the length and intensity of your training? Also, is the quality of your recovery during that training a factor in this as well?
00:11:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think that the answer to the first question lies in the second question. The length and the nature of your taper is going to depend almost entirely on your training history individually. And so we can pull out some rules of thumb, which we'll do here in a second. But I think it's important to understand that if you've been training and recovering throughout your training really well,
00:12:25
Speaker
Your need for taper might be less, but if you're training, working 60 hours a week, have a family, only to get five, six hours of sleep a night, have a lot of stress in your life for whatever reason, your taper might need to be longer because you're going to be exhausted on multiple levels.
00:12:46
Speaker
And so if you're a professional athlete and all you do is eat, sleep, and train, and you get to sleep 9, 10 hours a night and you don't have any stress financially or whatever, that's a whole different ball of wax.
00:13:02
Speaker
Generally speaking, for most of the athletes that we work with, I try to push them for something around a two-week taper. And there's a couple of reasons for this.
00:13:19
Speaker
one of the biggest reasons is that what I said in that opening kind of analogy, there's not a whole lot I can do to with an athlete to make them a lot better at this point, but there's probably a lot I can do to mess them up. So it's, you know, I want to do everything I can to just maintain that as
00:13:45
Speaker
Martin so eloquently described it, these training adaptations without regressing into detraining, cessation of training. And I want to keep them healthy. And especially for mountaineering, this is a big issue because you're often traveling in
00:14:02
Speaker
perhaps less, you know, internationally, you could be traveling in developing countries. There could be hygiene problems. You could be eating different foods. You could be not sleeping well because you're changing time zones. There's a lot that can actually go wrong. And what I don't want is for my athlete or myself to become ill or sick. That's really something I'm super paranoid about at this stage.
00:14:32
Speaker
Absolutely. So let's get into what does the taper actually look like for most people? What kind of exercise or training is best during this period? So the general
00:14:51
Speaker
recommendations coming from scientists but also coaches has come down to we should actually maintain
Acclimatization and Altitude Challenges
00:15:00
Speaker
the intensity of the workouts.
00:15:04
Speaker
whatever you have been doing in the last specificity period, if it comes to a running race, tri-race, ultras, or mountaineering objective, so you keep that intensity. It doesn't at all mean that you should do everything slower or you should really cut down everything to a minimum. It's not the case. You should actually keep that intensity.
00:15:27
Speaker
What is actually recommended is really try to cut down the volume. And so how to do that, you can actually cut down the duration of those workouts. So instead of, let's say, one hour daily run, you bring it down to 45 minutes, but we'll come to the details later. But also, you can reduce the frequency. So how many times per week, per month you are actually exercising, but probably it's better to measure it by the weekly volume.
00:15:57
Speaker
So keep the intensity, reduce the volume. And so by how much the scientists have come down to numbers to about 90 to 60%, but it can actually go down even to 50%. And so what does that look like? The recommendation is actually to
00:16:17
Speaker
do quite a sudden change in the first day. So maybe coming from one hour to really 45 minutes, then stay a bit at that level and keep reducing slowly all the way to your race day or to your objective or the departure for expedition. So there are different kinds of strategies for tapering. One of them is the step one, which means that you all of a sudden reduce the volume to maybe 50% and you stay at that 50%. That's one of the strategies.
00:16:47
Speaker
There is a linear one, which means that you're cutting your workouts by maybe 10 minutes per day, all the way to your objective. And then there is the one that is probably the most ideal one is the exponential. So again, being more sudden change at the beginning, the first two, three days, and then you ease off and you're reducing very slowly and you come up to your objective.
00:17:17
Speaker
You know, and I want to just add that for mountaineering, you know, that's going to be mostly these long, you know, we're still going to have that one to two long zone one and zone two kind of mixed workouts per week. And, you know, like as Martin said, you know, going from, you know, you might be training, let's say 16 hours a week before a trip to say Mount Rainier or Denali or something, and then, you know, you're going to
00:17:45
Speaker
drop that off really quickly, but you're still going to have workouts and you're still going to have, as Martin said, the right intensity. So with the traditional uphill athlete approach to mountaineering training, that's often going to be a
00:18:00
Speaker
weighted zone 3 Pat Carey type interval workout, but a short one. Like Martin said, that high intensity, that heavy weight is still there, but it's just much less and a long aerobic workout. The other thing that can work is a long aerobic workout
00:18:21
Speaker
paired with a shortened version of the max strength workout. These are these ways of just adding that touch of intensity, that touch of endurance, but dropping off that total time volume really quickly and keeping it shorter and shorter, making it shorter and shorter as you go closer to the expedition. Definitely.
00:18:48
Speaker
So what are actually the reasons why we do the tapering? So we have to look at the athletes or at us exercising like a holistic level, which means there is a physiological side, there is a mental side. So on the physiological
00:19:10
Speaker
side, we want certain things to happen. So when you're in the training process, especially maybe in the last stage, you're doing a lot of volume and so you're always a bit tired. The certain amount of fatigue is very important. And so that's what we're trying to reduce. I think something that is very important to remember is that this time period can also start to make you feel like you're going insane. So we have this great
00:19:40
Speaker
saying or name for it. It's called the taper crazies and it's basically where you start to feel as though you might have all these little niggles or injuries coming up. You're not used to not moving your body as little as this is. Your glycogen stores are filling
Post-Climb Emotional Impact
00:20:00
Speaker
and so you can feel heavy or more fatigued and really it's just your body is trying to repair the damage that you caused from the training.
00:20:10
Speaker
And so that often can lead you to feel as though you're training very hard. You can also be very hungry because you are trying to fill those glycogen stores and your mind has a lot more time to think about what you have coming up. It's not as preoccupied with the fatigue of the
00:20:29
Speaker
training regime that you are doing so if you are feeling like you're you're injured you're tired you're eating water these are all natural and important parts of the taper process and i promise you you're not going insane you haven't developed an injury that you've never had before you're okay
00:20:52
Speaker
I think Alyssa, those are great points. I think it's good to just try what works for you because everybody will be reacting differently to the training, but also to the recovery. Some people will just really be happy for that, just to have that extra sleep, just to have that extra rest day.
00:21:15
Speaker
But also, then there comes the other part where you're just hungry to keep training or you're just really hungry for that race. But that's also the great part. You really want to come to that start line or to the bottom of the mountain, really hungry to go. But it actually takes time to get to that point. And so you really want to give the body the time to recharge all those glycogen stores and repair the muscles.
00:21:45
Speaker
There's a lot of stuff physiologically going on, and so I just want to stress the importance of that rest and recovery and the tapering period. But again, as we were saying, it doesn't mean that you're inactive, that you just stop the training for a week or two. You're still active. You're just reducing the volume.
00:22:04
Speaker
But it is mentioned really well it can be just you just get really really tired for a couple of days but don't stress don't panic it's a part of the process and well we will be talking about some of those stories we will experience a bit later so stick to the process stick to the plan and also don't
00:22:26
Speaker
Don't go crazy. You might feel at least like with all that recharge in your body with a couple of days of resting, you just feel like, oh wow, I'm flying. I'm just so much faster than before. Well, that is also be careful there. Don't do that. Just stick to the plan, stick to the intensity you've been doing and the duration of the workouts and keep that energy for your objective.
00:22:51
Speaker
Those are all great points, Martin, and I would pile on there and just remind people that, you know, sticking to the plan and trusting the process is what got you to this point. And don't stop trusting that process now. Don't start second-guessing yourself now, which is what will happen because you're going to, as Alyssa pointed out, you're going to have more time to think and your brain's going to start, you know, that little monkey mind is going to get to work. And so, yeah.
00:23:21
Speaker
Trust the process.
00:23:23
Speaker
I also wanted to just pause for a moment and it's important to note, especially for those super keen students of training out there that we are on purpose sort of sticking to the middle of the bell curve here. We're not talking about the top, you know, one or two or 3% of athletes. We're talking about the majority of athletes that we work with because we want to keep this applicable to as many people as possible. So with that,
00:23:53
Speaker
caveat out of the way. Let's talk about travel and how we factor that into the taper period. How should an athlete factor in flying, trekking to base camp, and what are the risks?
00:24:07
Speaker
I think the most important thing to note with travel is that travel is a huge stress. I think we've all had those moments in an airport where everything feels like it's falling apart and your plane is leaving and you might not be on it. Your bags are everywhere. And so there can be tremendous stress, especially if you're flying multiple time changes, very far distance, multiple changes of planes.
00:24:37
Speaker
you should not be stacking on training stress while you are traveling. So making sure that you are giving yourself extra space during the tapering period to work in travel as a stress.
00:24:53
Speaker
Another factor is that for most Mountaineers, you may have to trek to base camp. And this trek shouldn't be a huge stress on your body. That should feel very easy and comfortable. If it is very challenging, you're already kind of starting in a hole as you are getting to base camp. So really making sure that you feel
00:25:16
Speaker
fresh and rejuvenated and that should feel very easy with the trek. And as Steve already mentioned, there are a lot of risks in this period in terms of different foods. The factor of illness because it's very easy to get sick on a plane. It's very easy to get sick in a new environment. Your sleep schedule is probably quite a bit different from the time change. And so just doing everything you can to make sure you're not adding
00:25:45
Speaker
training stress on top of it is very important. And that might mean extending your taper a little bit longer than you want to, but it's going to pay off if you get to base camp feeling great and not being taken down by any weird illness, which I think happens to a lot of people.
00:26:04
Speaker
Yeah. And I want to just cite this famous quote that I can't place the origin of in my head right now, but it's something along the lines of an expert is someone who has made all the mistakes. And I'm speaking here as an expert. I've made all of the mistakes. And my advice to people is
00:26:26
Speaker
budget an extra day for your time so you're not stressed at the airport. Look at the other flights ahead of you. If you miss that flight, is it a week until the next flight to that country or is it the next day? Try not
Dealing with Success and Failure in Mountaineering
00:26:40
Speaker
to book the flight that leaves at five in the morning if you can help out. It's much nicer to have the flight that leaves at 4pm. Pack good snacks, bring a water bottle, take care of yourself.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, like I said, I've made all the mistakes. I could do a whole podcast on just the mistakes I've made tapering, I think. And the other piece that I've seen other people make and the other thing I want to reiterate and emphasize what Alisa said is that the traction to base camp should be easy. And again,
00:27:17
Speaker
This kind of goes back to a little bit of discipline and a little bit of self-care, where, for example, if I'm in Pakistan, where I've done 12 expeditions, I start early. And I want to be out of the sun. The sun is super strong there. And I want to be at the next camp by 11 AM and walking in the cool part of the day.
00:27:42
Speaker
I want to make sure that I have really good snacks. I have really good food. I'm not going to be sitting there glycogen depleted, waiting for somebody to just show up and start cooking rice. No, I'm going to have a ton of snacks with me. I'm going to be able to be totally self-sufficient, and I'm going to get to that next camp, and I'm going to find a shady spot, and I'm going to roll out my inslite foam pad, and I'm going to try to just lay down and chill out.
00:28:06
Speaker
I carry a water filter oftentimes or some sort of water purifier so I can always find some water and stay hydrated, all those things. I'm thinking like an athlete even though I'm trekking to base camp.
00:28:18
Speaker
I would like to maybe add here just a note about all the stress. So when we are talking about stress, we often think just about the training one. So the stress we put our bodies through so that they can get stronger through that process. But there are the other stresses, right? So it's the work, life, emotional stress, the stress from the travels, the anticipation before the expedition and all those things. So when they actually pile up during that last
00:28:48
Speaker
period of training, we need to account for all of that because it's still a big stress. So thinking of that, we also want to really think about reducing the training because we don't want to get overwhelmed. We don't want to get sick or injured just before the expedition. So that's one point I wanted to make.
00:29:08
Speaker
Another thing when we were actually talking specifically about mountaineering. So often I can see in the training peaks in the platform we were using for planning the workouts and training. So we put the date for the objective or the departure date. But that is a bit misleading because you actually want to perform maybe two, three, or four or five weeks later when you're actually going for the summit.
00:29:35
Speaker
If you're going forever, that can take you like four weeks, five weeks to actually get there. First, you need to fly to Kathmandu, go all those acclimatization tracking, track the routes, and then actually getting to the base camp and doing all those rotations on the mountain. And then eventually, somewhere along the line, along those weeks, you want to climb the Everest. So you also want to think about that. So I think what is important to make it like long-term plan
00:30:05
Speaker
And so that you know, okay, like this is okay. I can still be tired here. This is the travel part. And, but my fitness, I wanted to peak here a couple of weeks down the line. And I guess that leads to another question that we have because mountains don't often lend themselves to the timeframe that we set.
00:30:27
Speaker
or expect. So how do we prolong our tapering period and deal with stagnation of performance as we are sitting and waiting for a weather window? This is both a psychological challenge and a physical challenge, right? So I think that the first thing I would say is what Martin said earlier is trust the process.
00:30:52
Speaker
Don't stress yourself. You can only do what you can do. And I've literally been on expeditions where I never put my harness on the entire time because the weather was so bad. And I've been on expeditions where we had almost all sunny days.
00:31:10
Speaker
I think what I mean to say by that is that if you take up this mountaineering lifestyle, you need to accept that there will be expeditions, there will be trips where you won't climb much. And there will be trips where you climb a lot.
00:31:28
Speaker
and that's just part of the process. So keep that in mind psychologically. In terms of physically, I think it's important to, again, sort of think like an athlete. You know by now these sort of rules of thumb and guidelines, and you know that you should be resting but not detraining. You know that you need to be getting out at least probably a couple of times a week. You need to be acclimatizing. Most of the time,
00:31:58
Speaker
You know for high altitude for I'm talking about expeditionary climbing now It's not that much of a problem because you need to be acclimating. So you're you're making various little sorties out to some whether it's an easier route or climbing a neighboring peak or whatever to start to build some acclimatization and That you can do that. You can pace that in a way that
00:32:26
Speaker
kind of adheres to these principles that we use in training in terms of training stress, recovery, super compensation. So I think that that's an important thing to keep in mind. One of the things I'm hearing people say as they listen to this is like, well, what about in the mountains? I can't dictate that. It's like, well, I actually choose my mountains and my roots with this in mind. So if I go to, when we went to Naga Parbat,
00:32:56
Speaker
I knew exactly where we were going to acclimatize, and I knew we could do that in pretty much any weather. And that was the assumption. It's been much harder. I've been on expeditions, like when Vince and I went to Kuniang-Chi in 2007, which was an unclimbed 7,800-meter peak. 2006, excuse me. Nobody had really
Final Reflections on Mountaineering
00:33:20
Speaker
climbed in that area, and we had no idea where to acclimatize and what we thought
00:33:24
Speaker
from the map looked like good peaks to acclimatize on were far either too difficult or too dangerous or whatever. And we really struggled to acclimate. And that messed up our whole thing, our whole trip. So all of these things need to be thought through and prepared for. You need to have a plan. And ideally, you need to have a weatherproof plan.
00:33:46
Speaker
Great points. I would like to maybe just add listening to Steve. I think that specifically to mountaineering, we can control only as much, right? There's some things we can and some many things we cannot. And it's also part of
00:34:04
Speaker
why mountain ring is so beautiful i think that's what why we go there as well to face it and face ourselves in those conditions. And so what can we control the train right like the all the work the long term planning. All those months and years of consistency and.
00:34:27
Speaker
That's certainly what we can control to a large extent and get there knowing that, okay, things will probably go very differently than we planned or a little different than we planned at least. We will lose the fitness along the way. It will not be perfect. It will not be 100%.
00:34:45
Speaker
but still try to follow that process, try to respect your body, listen to it, and go with the tapering as we are today discussing, and knowing that, okay, even if we have to stop for a week or two, even if we get sick, even with that little detraining, we still will be at a good solid fitness level and make the climb. I think a lot of people talk about
00:35:13
Speaker
contingencies and for me that's a very important thing to build into the
00:35:19
Speaker
plan is a contingency. And I'm talking about a time contingency. So I think it's great and ideal if you can have a 20% time contingency. If everything goes according to what I hope, it's going to take whatever, 14 days. But I want to have at least three or four more that are going to be able to account for the flat tire on the Jeep on the way in, or whatever it is that happens, it's unexpected.
00:35:48
Speaker
And that is going to really reduce your stress in the long run. And as Mart said, there's just a lot we cannot control, but what we can control is showing up. And that's what training is, is showing up for yourself and what going on expeditions is, is showing up for yourself and for your own experience and your own development. And I really
00:36:12
Speaker
kind of cringe sometimes when I hear people plan trips on really tight timelines because I think, you know, that could work. But, you know, you got to keep in mind, like, what are you doing this for? And are you doing this just to tick the objective as quickly as possible? Are you doing this to experience yourself firsthand with your own mind and body and
00:36:38
Speaker
life and time, what climbing that mountain is going to be like. And I think if that's your answer, then it's worth trying to add in at least 10, if not 20, 25% of a time contingency whenever possible.
00:36:56
Speaker
I think it's also a good reminder because I think that people who are often drawn to these types of expeditions or goals are type A people, people who want to control variables. And truly the mountain does not care and the mountain does not work on our time schedule. And so I think that being able to let go of a lot of these factors that we think we can control when truly we cannot.
00:37:25
Speaker
is a very good reminder of our humility and our relationship with the mountains. And so I think that that's an aspect of tapering that you just have to kind of laugh and smile and say, oh, this is this is just not meant to work. And that's okay. And that's, as you, Steve, always say, it's part of that journey. It's not about standing on the summit.
00:37:50
Speaker
Well, Martin, I think we're about to get into the fun part for you. How do we manage tapering with altitude? How do we adjust for high levels of increased altitude and the stress that comes? What advice do you have for athletes dealing with this? And what do you advise for your clients? It's a lot of questions, but I believe you can get this done.
00:38:16
Speaker
Yes, indeed. So there is a lot to talk about here, but hopefully I'm not going to go very deep into it with myself. And I am very passionate about this topic. I think maybe starting with acclimatization and the altitude,
00:38:33
Speaker
It brings another stress to the body, but it's important. We are going to high altitudes if we want to climb those mountains, right? But as we spoke about it, all those stresses that you're going through, you're hunting another one. So when I'm planning the training for
00:38:52
Speaker
clients that are aiming for some of those clients. I'm always looking at the individual athlete and then the objectives. How much time do we have? What kind of training can we manage between now and then the actual expedition? And so I need to also account for that time that needs to be done for acclimatizing.
00:39:16
Speaker
Depends obviously on the mountains, how high is the mountain. If it's something in the 3000, 4000, maybe even 5000 meter range, we need maybe a reduced amount of time. By the way, when it comes to the mountains higher than that, you really need to plan for it.
00:39:35
Speaker
Having said all of that and what we just spoke about, about tapering and the specific place right before. Sometimes people just cannot leave earlier just to spend that extra week or two to acclimatize properly before the actual climb.
00:39:56
Speaker
And so there are actually tools nowadays that you can actually use at your home, which are altitude tents, masks and...
00:40:08
Speaker
Some things that actually help you to simulate the altitude and help you pre acclimatize actually and then all again brings another stress. Usually it means you really have to sleep in the tent in your room actually and that's not the most convenient thing you can do. I can assure you so.
00:40:29
Speaker
Again as we spoke about the tapering reducing all that training load then you're adding actually another stress like using that altitude exposure so I need to really balance all things out and usually to just make it simple I use you look at it as a from the perspective of cost and benefit like how much does it cost
00:40:51
Speaker
and how much do we benefit so sometimes it's necessary sometimes we just skip that part entirely and just kind of go for it and see how that client will react on the mountain and most of the time it works out but there is so much to talk about here.
00:41:10
Speaker
And maybe just important part of the acclimatization, it just takes time and those first probably two weeks, two weeks of the acclimatization process is the most stressful on the body. It really, you just need to go through that process and it's not very comfortable. Your sleep is
00:41:30
Speaker
is worse, which means your recovery is worse. Then if you actually go to those regions like Nepal, for example, Kathmandu and Steve already mentioned this, you have to really be careful about what you're eating there and what you're touching, the hygiene levels and all this. You really want to avoid getting sick because that's another stressor.
00:41:55
Speaker
all those things you need to plan for. And so how do you prepare for that? How do you fit the training into this two or three weeks time range where your body is actually acclimatizing? That's a real challenge. Yeah. And one potential variable that we haven't mentioned yet that I want to touch on because people will ask us about it is that
00:42:21
Speaker
people may be using normal baric hypoxic exposure aka hypoxico tense and I just wanted to sort of put a pin in that here and note that we will be doing a future
00:42:35
Speaker
series on that and that would also kind of change some of these calculations. But again, as Martin has said multiple times now, it's a big, big topic and we need to be kind of careful to keep to the nuts and bolts of what most athletes and most climbers are going to encounter. Yeah, I would like to just finish that thought that
00:42:59
Speaker
The fitness will always be your biggest asset. And so having those tools like those altitude tents, the normal barric hypoxia allows you who go out for those mountain objectives to actually stay home longer and spend the time to do quality training, to do the quality tapering, the quality sleep, and then actually spend less time on the mountain risking getting sick and just losing that fitness.
00:43:28
Speaker
This is great, Martin. And I can already say that I am excited because we have a couple of really excellent altitude experts on our team. And I know that that series is going to be amazing. So Steve and Martin, any last tips, travel, food, sleep, et cetera, that you've learned from experience that you would like to share before we switch to post mountain blues?
00:43:56
Speaker
I think we've kind of run the gamut here from staying healthy, getting up sleep, eating well, de-stressing your travel and your itinerary as much as possible. And a lot of this is just practical common sense and our audience doesn't need special instruction in that. They're already very smart.
00:44:20
Speaker
and reflective people. So I think that that's all good there. And I'd really love to perhaps just kind of hear maybe an anecdote from Martin. Maybe he's made a mistake or maybe he's had a success that he can share from his personal vault of experience.
00:44:41
Speaker
Yes, I agree. So there's so much to talk about. And I think I would say just train hard and then go and enjoy the experience, whatever that is. And for me, it might sound strange, but it's not really about reaching that summit. It's really whatever happens out there. I know that I will give it my all, but
00:45:04
Speaker
Sometimes it just doesn't work out or doesn't really work out the way I wanted to. So I had some good ones and I had some bad experiences as well. And it's always a big learning experience, I guess. And maybe what actually happens, what actually isn't
00:45:27
Speaker
interesting is what happens afterwards when you come after those after those climbs and you trying to reflect what actually happened. What I can do better next time. Yeah, I'll give you a tip and a story.
00:45:43
Speaker
First, the story. In 1999, I went to try to climb Gashribombe 4. And one of the things that happened that I realized not too shortly afterwards, it was a mistake, is that one of the guys on the team, and we were all guys, decided to say, hey, we're climbers. We have to carry our climbing gear to base camp. So it became this sort of like,
00:46:11
Speaker
macho shaming kind of thing. Of course, everyone had to then be in a competition basically about how much weight they were actually going to carry on the track. And I ended up with a climbing rope and a rack. And this was a huge mistake because we had to go to a base camp that was over 5,000 meters, over 18,000 feet, and it's a 10-day track. And we could have hired someone
00:46:41
Speaker
you know, which is what we did with most of our equipment to get to base camp to carry that weight and it would have been much cheaper. And all it did was drive us all into fatigue. It made us crabby.
00:46:54
Speaker
it eroded the group dynamic. There was like sort of bickering around this topic. And, you know, it could just been completely avoided in the beginning. So if you feel like this is happening in a group dynamic, and especially I would say in my experience, I've seen this happen in a lot of mixed gender groups, you know, just speak up and just
00:47:19
Speaker
in a non-confrontational way to redirect a conversation and say something like, hey, what do you guys think? Would there be another way to accomplish this without fatiguing ourselves? Or I don't know, just try to flip the script. The tip, really short, best tip ever.
00:47:46
Speaker
When you get to Kathmandu or Islamabad or wherever and you're in one of these places, buy the biggest umbrella you can. It's the ultimate trekking tip because it's waterproof, breathable rain gear and it's a sun shade.
00:48:01
Speaker
I always trek with a huge umbrella. And if it's beating down sun, I'm using that to keep myself cool and to keep myself from getting sunburned, keep myself from getting dehydrated. And if it's raining, I can wear like a normal shirt and I have this huge rain shadow and it keeps my pack dry too. Essential gear for every expedition.
00:48:24
Speaker
I love it. I think another just quick point to make, Steve and I have often talked about keeping a calm mind while you're climbing. Well, start keeping a calm mind while you're traveling. I can tell you when travel has gone poorly for me and I have reacted badly to it by getting even more stressed or thinking this is the sign that everything's going to fall apart.
00:48:48
Speaker
I do not race well. It carries directly into the event itself. And when I have kind of a duck mentality of just letting things slick off of me and laughing about things going wrong or things not going as expected and having a really positive attitude about the trials and tribulations that come up in the travel, I nail the event that I'm going to. So it's never too early to use the mental calmness
00:49:17
Speaker
in your travel. That's great. In our current mountaineering training group, our mascot is the little rubber ducky emoji. I love that. It's for this exact mindset of, as you said, let stuff slide off of you. When you're out training every day, it's the same thing that happens. It's bad weather or it's muddy or it's snowed or all the things. It's great. I love it.
00:49:43
Speaker
We are definitely not going to do this full justice, but I think it's very important because so often the training plan ends, the training group ends, and we don't have an after. We don't have that support or that practice as we've done in building up to the event for the post event. So we often call this the post race blues and running. I'm calling it the post mountain or the post climb in mountaineering.
00:50:12
Speaker
But how do you two deal with the come down after a big expedition? How do you fit back into society and adjust to normal life? Because it is very, very different and can be really hard. I think it's hard for most people. Yes.
00:50:32
Speaker
Maybe I can mention my three summits projects. So the link up of Monteroza, Mont Blanc, and Grand Paradiso, I did in 29 hours, I believe that was in 2019. But, well, I've been training all my life, but really specifically for that project. I did a really big two year block of training, 2018 and 19. And so actually I first tried the project in 2018, I think in September.
00:50:59
Speaker
I was trying to be as ready as possible. I did some, well, I wouldn't call it a training. It was just muscle-ism in some ways. And I thought I was ready, but that day and everything went wrong. My lower back started to hurt straight away. Yeah, just didn't happen. I still made it up and down those two mountains, Grand parties on Mont Blanc. So it was still a big day out. I was disappointed. I thought I would make it.
00:51:30
Speaker
looking at it now is different than the experience when obviously I was right there. And I remember that was probably the biggest burnout I've experienced in my life. It took me probably a couple of months to recover from that. I was just lost and disappointed, didn't really know what to do and what to focus on until I actually realized eventually
00:51:57
Speaker
that it's okay and it's even better, I can just go back to it and I will know better, I will be stronger. So I trained for one more year and eventually made it. And so I think that was actually the most important lesson for me there. But something related to the tapering, which we were discussing here today,
00:52:18
Speaker
So in September 2019, I finalized the project and physically I was actually fine. After I think two weeks, I ran a trail race, I think about 50 kilometers. Nothing spectacular, just I was really not broken as I thought I would be because it was really big day out. I think it was about a hundred kilometers and 10,000 meters elevation. And for me, that's big. I mean, you know, going up and down 4,000 meter peaks.
00:52:47
Speaker
But what happened actually a couple of months later, I went to Akon Kagwa, where I managed to break the speed record. But what I want to bring up here, it felt easy. Not the actual day, not the last thousand meters on the Akon Kagwa. That felt super hard. But just that I've really felt like flowing. And that made me think, until now, and to keep thinking about it, that
00:53:14
Speaker
Maybe all that training all the way to September was really big volumes, but then I actually reduced all that volume to maybe even 50% for October, November until December when I actually left for Argentina and climbed the Concagua and speed climbed it.
00:53:34
Speaker
I, my body felt great. I was flowing. I was, uh, I thought I would just, I felt, felt so powerful. And so maybe that's something to think of that. Maybe we just don't allow our, allow ourselves enough, enough of that recovery or that reduced volume period. And we don't know what could happen if we actually did that. Yeah, I think that's a great story, Martin. I love that.
00:54:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think that it's important to kind of bring this subject up as you have, Alisa, because this is the norm that people come back from a project and something is missing essentially from their lives. Like, you know, whether it was like
00:54:28
Speaker
one of these big projects as Martin was talking about or maybe it was going to climb Mount Rainier or whatever your goal is and then something will happen there on that mountain and you'll either have a great day or you'll have a horrible day or most of the time it will be somewhere in between those two extremes but then you're done like and especially if you've climbed it you're really done like you're not going back again most people at least not immediately
00:54:55
Speaker
And so it sort of leaves this little hole in your life, like everything, you know, especially when you're really stretching your capabilities and building new capacities in order to achieve a goal that you've set out for yourself, you know, and then that goal is gone because you did it. And let's not be surprised when that you really miss that presence of that
00:55:24
Speaker
great magnetic thing that you had in your mind all the time. I know people who will get a photo of the mountain that they're going to go climb, they'll tape it next to their bedside so they see it right last thing they see every night before they go to bed, every first thing every morning. Now all of a sudden, what do you do? You take that down off the wall. Maybe you put another one up or maybe you don't do anything. Most people don't.
00:55:50
Speaker
have an answer for that. They have not prepared for that. So it's important to prepare ourselves for that just psychologically and understand that that's the norm and also the people around us. Let your family and your friends know that this is part of that process. And for me, I would often be very depressed after big trips and it often didn't matter whether I climbed the thing or not. It was just that it was over and
00:56:17
Speaker
Yeah, it was great to just eat as many hamburgers as I want and drink an extra beer or whatever. Just give myself permission to do it. I mean, I was super strict with myself. I didn't drink alcohol. I didn't drink coffee. And then afterward, I could be permissive with myself in that way and eat what I wanted, drink what I wanted, sample it if I wanted, all of those things.
00:56:46
Speaker
that's sort of nice, but that doesn't replace the goal. And we need that. I'm always, you know, there was this great scene and I'm forgetting the name of the movie. It was one of the movies about Iraq.
00:57:05
Speaker
And the soldier came back from the war and was asked by his wife, who had all this chaos going on at home with kids and so on, and said, hey, we didn't have anything for breakfast. Go to the store and buy some cereal. And he walks into this grocery store, and he's in the cereal aisle. Just a couple days ago, he'd been in combat.
00:57:27
Speaker
And I felt that too, like as a climber, like been up on this mountain, been in these extreme environments, fighting for my life, all these things. And then I'm back in this environment. I'm like in the cereal aisle and all of a sudden there's like 700 choices of breakfast cereal and it's completely disorienting.
00:57:45
Speaker
And I think that it's good to be gentle with ourselves and realize this is part of the process. This is actually what we sign up for and that what we're doing is engaging in something that is actually
00:58:00
Speaker
physically and mentally transformative for us as individuals and for our families and friends as well, even if they don't go along with us. And this is what we signed up for. You are having to get to know a new you each time you come back from this. And Martin didn't know he was that powerful before he ran up Aconcagua in four hours or whatever it was.
00:58:28
Speaker
But afterwards, he had to come to terms with that. That's a new part of him that he didn't know that he possessed. That's a new him. That's a new person. That's a new layer. And isn't that fascinating, right? And that's what this is all really about for me. And I think this transcends mountain athletes across all disciplines. This isn't limited to climbers and it's not limited to runners. It's part of the process of spending your life
00:58:57
Speaker
training and I use that in the loosest sense of the word, like preparing yourself, going off and doing things and having experiences and finding out who you really are. That's what this is all about. So don't be surprised if it's a little bit of a shock when you come back home and you yourself are different and you don't know who that is yet and it feels funny, feels strange and it takes some time.
00:59:27
Speaker
Yeah, I always feel a little bit like an alien when I'm coming back.
00:59:33
Speaker
I actually think that one of the most fun days is the day afterwards. I love the day after you've accomplished a huge goal because you can just it's probably one of the few times in my life where I feel content because I don't feel content most of my life. It's both a blessing and a curse. And there's just for that one day is when I am most content. I think the other part of it though, and I have struggled with a lot is that
01:00:02
Speaker
while becoming that new person, it also doesn't mean that the only thing I am is that event or that moment. And it's actually in doing that event or that moment that makes me realize I'm so much more than just winning a race or summoning a mountain because you can only hold on to that for so long without it consuming your identity and consuming who you are because you're holding on to something that happened, not what's happening.
01:00:32
Speaker
And that's part of the whole journey of this experience. And it's something that I've had to realize over the years is that I would do a race and I'd be like, how long can I hold on to the fact that this race went well or it went badly? Or I did this mountain. And when I found that I felt like the only thing I was was that accomplishment or non-accomplishment
01:00:55
Speaker
I realized that I had to look a lot more outside of those moments, those races to figure out who I was.
01:01:03
Speaker
And by being proud of that moment, but also saying, but here's all these other things that I'm good at. Here's, okay, I can invest even more into my clients after this. I can invest more into my relationships because I don't have that stress. That really helped and has helped me grow beyond just being the results that I most recently put up.
01:01:27
Speaker
And I haven't perfected it. My husband still always prepares himself because I am grumpy when I get back because I just don't really know how to exist. It's also helped me to realize that I am not just one success or one mountain that I've climbed. All of those pieces are parts of who I am, but I'm also a lot of other things too. And I also enjoy a lot of other things. So that's kind of what I've learned a little bit.
01:01:58
Speaker
Thanks for sharing. I just wanted to add here that I think it helps us to become better, even though it's easy to say and definitely harder to process all of these, but I think
01:02:13
Speaker
It's a bit of love and hate relationship with this, whatever that is and that obsession. But I also think that without that obsession, you wouldn't maybe be able to achieve all those things, but it comes at a price, right? And so I think this is important that it's not all we are who we are. It's a, it's a part of us, but I'm still trying to
01:02:40
Speaker
have a relationship with that because, again, it comes at a price and it's a very powerful feeling. It's beautiful, but at the same time, it's hard to be around people or for people, it's hard to be around me, I think.
01:02:57
Speaker
There's two threads I'd like to pick up on here, and this is a rich topic. I can tell we are all excited about sharing, but the two threads, one is that I think it's really important to be careful what narrative you tell yourself in this time period after a trip, especially when the trip doesn't go well. It's really tempting yet
01:03:23
Speaker
unproductive and potentially destructive and hurtful to yourself and your own personal well-being and personal mental health to start down the rabbit hole of blame and excuses and all of that. We need to be better and I need to be better at accepting that sometimes a group or a partnership doesn't
01:03:49
Speaker
magically gel and sometimes the weather isn't good and sometimes blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And just accept that for what it was, accept that as one of the experiences expected.
01:04:01
Speaker
accept that as one little piece of your story and learn what you can from it and look forward. Same thing if it's a success. You don't make yourself into that success. The bigger the success, the harder that is to do, especially in today's world of awards and praise and all of that. It's
01:04:26
Speaker
you got to be kind of careful about that. And then the other thread I wanted to pick up on is what I heard and maybe I'm projecting, likely I am. I think we need to be really careful of the inner critic. The inner critic is something that lives in all of us, lives in everyone, and that's that little voice that's going to be telling you
01:04:53
Speaker
what you did wrong and why you weren't good enough or why you weren't a little faster or why you didn't pass this person, that person on that kick turn when you should have. Um, it can say all kinds of things. And I think it's really important to put boundaries up with the inner critic and you know, acknowledge it. That's, that is there. And that's a part of you. It's a part of everyone, as I said, but say, okay,
01:05:21
Speaker
you're going to be over there and you're going to be kind of taking your pot shots at you, at me, but like, I'm not, that doesn't mean anything. I'm going to connect to these other sources of information and to connect to these other sources of my experience. I'm going to connect to my other partners in that experience. I'm going to connect to looking at those photos and feeling that reliving the awe I felt on that summit.
01:05:46
Speaker
Those are the things that you need to focus on and don't pay too much attention. And a lot of us have that do these sports. I know for sure for mountaineering, I think this is true in mount running and ultra running. It's a lot of people with very strong inner critic in our heads. And we have to be respectful and set some good boundaries with that little voice. That's a great point.
01:06:12
Speaker
To wrap this up, and I really don't want to because I would love to keep going on this, but we're running out of time. If you could give one piece of advice or something that you have done after a big mountain or a big achievement. What has it been and I'm happy to go first.
01:06:31
Speaker
I'll just say, so I always try to arrange something fun, whether it's a friend gathering, or oftentimes, if you know, I have one prize money or something like that, I'll take my husband out to a really nice dinner, just as a celebration of whatever happened. And also, it gives me something to look forward to, on the other side, where I'm not just
01:06:57
Speaker
consumed by the actual event. So like a nice event is kind of something that I'll always try to plan. Yeah, I got one that's similar, but a bit of a variation. You know, I, I would always try to write out before at the beginning of the expedition, traditionally, for me, it was on the plane, spend as long as I need to really write out what
01:07:24
Speaker
my expectations and hopes were for that journey. And then I do the same on the way back. And really just stream of consciousness, just go full beatnik style, let it all out. And not because of anything magical that happens in that moment, but
01:07:47
Speaker
That is such an incredible record for years later to look back on and see who you were. It's such a wild experience. I have journals like that that are 20 years old, and I can open those up. If I want to go back to that time, I read a few words, and I'm fully back into that person I was 20 years ago. And I don't know anything else that has that ability to transport me through time the way my journals do. So that's my tip, my recommendation.
01:08:19
Speaker
I will say that right now I'm preparing for an expedition on a pretty big project. I'm actually having a bit of anxiety about what comes afterwards. I'm still dealing with that, I have to say. But I know it will be okay. I just don't have...
01:08:37
Speaker
I don't know the answers yet, but it's a good point, Steve. I will actually try it out maybe. I think this is very powerful to have those notes from before and what happens after. But I think it will come to really just being with what I'm experiencing and relax and go to see the family.
01:09:01
Speaker
go be with the kids of my brother, which I just love because they are just in the moment. They just don't care about some mountains or whatever that means and just be there and maybe those answers will come later. I like that. I'm glad that
01:09:21
Speaker
you know, we come on as having experience and you have a lot of experience. And I think it's lovely that you can say, I don't know, because I think that's a very valid and honest part of this journey for us, for all of us. So following up, is there anything else you two would like to touch on before we wrap? That was a great discussion and I really enjoyed it. Thank you both.
01:09:50
Speaker
Thank you. It was fun. I think so too. Well, thank you for listening to the uphill athlete podcast. If you can rate, review and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, that really helps us. And we really appreciate you taking the time to listen and join in on this conversation. It's not just one, but a community together. We are uphill athlete. Thanks for listening.