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Training for Mountaineering: Foundations
21.7k Plays2 years ago
Episode 2 of the Winter 22-23 Season
This is the first in a multi-part series where we are kicking off a major seeason of educational material on the podcast. Our goal is to discuss the steps of training for a mountaineering objective and give you actionable items to take with you on your training. In this first episode, we will focus on Aerobic Training Fundamentals and how you can set yourself up for success from the first step.
Plus we have a big introduction to make today, Chantelle Robitaille is our new director of coach training and athlete success. Chantelle is a coach, an ultra-runner, holds an advanced degree in High Altitude Physiology, and is coming to Uphill Athlete from this same position at CTS, Carmichael Training Systems, the world's largest endurance-coaching company.
Listen in, learn, and get to know Chantelle as she, Coach Alyssa Clark, and Steve House unpack the fundamentals of training for mountaineering.
Please rate, review and subscribe to our podcast on all podcast platforms. If you'd like more information on coaching, one of our training plans, our training groups or to connect, please visit www.uphillathlete.com, @uphill_athlete on instagram or email us at coach@uphillathlete.com
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction and New Team Member
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the uphill athlete podcast, where our mission is to elevate and inspire all mountain athletes through education and celebration. My name is Steve House, and I will be a host today along with Alisa Clark. We're thrilled to have our newest member of the uphill athlete team joining us today.
00:00:19
Speaker
someone who will be taking the lead on coach training and continuing education, athlete placement and success, and also serve as the technical editor for the website and other training specific content.
Chantel Robitai's Background and Motivation
00:00:32
Speaker
Chantel Robitai, thanks for being with us here today. We are so stoked to have you and introduce
00:00:49
Speaker
Woo hoo! Thanks, Steve. I'm super stoked to be here. Yeah, I'm so happy to be able to finally kind of introduce you to the public as this has...
00:01:02
Speaker
been something that we've been talking about for a few, a few over the last number of weeks. And, you know, for me, you kind of represent an ideal fit for the Appalachian community and our coaching staff. And I'm really excited for them to get to know you. Likewise, we've spent a lot of time talking and planning and I'm excited to finally make it official and finally have the chance to work with the team in an official way.
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah. I have to say I'm just excited to know your name now because you've been a unknown coaching lead for a long time. So it's fun to put a face to the name and well, the unknown name, um, and have you on board and from your background, we're just really, really stoked to have you be, um, a part of it. Um, so with that, Steve, what did you see in, um, Chantel that made her the perfect fit for a pull athlete?
00:02:02
Speaker
Well, I think that we'll spend a bit of time going into that and we'll let most of that reveal itself over time. But, um, you know, Chantel comes, uh, from, uh, CTS train, right.
Introduction to Aerobic Training Fundamentals
00:02:16
Speaker
And as their head of coaching development and has been working in this exact sort of role for the last couple of years. And she's got lots of.
00:02:30
Speaker
coaching experience, which has a really impressive educational background. But more than that, I think that as I've been working to rebuild the coaching team, as you both know, I've often used this word that we want to rebuild very deliberately and with people that are entirely aligned in terms of our values and what our mission is.
00:02:58
Speaker
And that's the piece where I felt like Chantal most of all fit really well with who a philosophy is, what we do, and how we do it. Definitely. And Chantal, actually to go back a little bit, what is your background in coaching and your education? We'd love to give the audience a little bit more about who you are.
00:03:27
Speaker
Well, I'm old, so how much time? Just kidding. That's called experience. That's right. That's right. That's experience. I had my first exposure to coaching when I was pretty young. I was 14 and it happened by accident because I played hockey and I grew up in a really small town in Canada, if you can't tell from my accent.
00:03:51
Speaker
um and there wasn't any girls team so I played with the boys and then when I was around 13 they started thinking it was a little bit weird um and uh when I was 14 they said this is definitely weird and you can't play anymore which was devastating um so my dad said well you know you're a good skater try figure skating and I continually got yelled at by the skating coach because I was
00:04:16
Speaker
Skating around she said like a Neanderthal, you know hunched over like I had an imaginary stick in my hand and I couldn't I couldn't master the master the posture so my former hockey coach felt bad for me watching this happen on the ice and asked what I would think about coaching and so I started coaching hockey and
00:04:38
Speaker
Even though I was super bummed not to play anymore, I was just really shocked how much I got from coaching and that's something that stuck with me throughout my life. I had different types of jobs in different parts of the world, but coaching always kind of lingered there for me.
Understanding the Aerobic Base and Endurance
00:04:56
Speaker
I got into running races kind of late in life, but once I got to that point, I really enjoyed getting back to helping other people do the things they wanted to do and challenge themselves. And at the ripe old age of 43, I decided to ditch the corporate life of suits and
00:05:18
Speaker
uncomfortable high heel shoes and go back to school. And I earned a master of science degree in high altitude physiology. So, uh, did that in, in Colorado and Gunnison. And that was just amazing to be able to dedicate myself full time to coaching. And I'm still kind of pinching myself that I made this happen kind of later in life. That's amazing. Also, I'm so excited to dig into.
00:05:46
Speaker
the high altitude because I know that's so much a part of the journeys of our athletes. So I think that's going to be amazing. So why did you want to come to uphill athlete? What was kind of the attraction to the company?
00:06:01
Speaker
Well, I would say that uphill athlete first came onto my radar when I was in grad school and I was working on some projects with ski mountaineers in in Colorado and that, you know, living at a higher altitude. So training for the new alpinism and that training log as well that you produced was very dog eared and very well loved during that time.
00:06:24
Speaker
And I just continued to follow the work that Steve and uphill athlete were doing. So it was always a really important resource for me. So when I started talking with Steve about his vision to sort of rebuild uphill athlete in an intentional way with a focus on improving access and inclusion to a variety of different athletes, I couldn't help myself with wanting to be part of your team.
00:06:51
Speaker
I feel that completely. It's one of the things that I was most attracted to as well. I think that there's huge room for us to grow in that regard and I think that Steve's commitment to that is really exemplary and I think it attracts some people who want to do the same work.
00:07:08
Speaker
Absolutely. But with that, we're definitely going to keep learning more about you. But we also want to have these podcasts be really tangible resources for people. And one of our major goals is to help educate mountain athletes to be their best selves. So drum roll, we are kicking off a major series of educational material on the podcast, starting with this episode.
00:07:37
Speaker
Chantal is here, not only as an introduction, but she is beginning our multi-part series focusing on training for mountaineering. So that is one of our huge pieces of our company, and this is a series of podcasts that we are putting on to help you be your best.
00:07:58
Speaker
So our goal is to discuss the steps of training for a mountaineering objective and give you actionable items to take with you on your training. So really what we're going to dig into with this first episode and focus on is aerobic training fundamentals and how you can set yourself up for success from the first step.
00:08:21
Speaker
Thanks, Elisa. This is really fundamental because this is really where I probably began was talking about training for mountaineering and specifically alpinism subset of mountaineering. We've always been about applying conventional endurance training methodologies to what I like to call unconventional sports.
00:08:47
Speaker
As such, there's a few pillars of endurance training that are universal to all mountain sports. And first and foremost among those is probably having a well-developed aerobic base. It's a job of every mountain athlete. Adding to that, having a periodized progressive strength training component is probably job number two for any serious bout butting mountaineer in training. And then the third leg of that tripod
00:09:17
Speaker
is really the sport-specific muscular endurance training. We've talked a lot about that in other places throughout our writing and website and podcasts. And while the ME, as it's sometimes called, the muscular endurance training sometimes gets all the glory because it's a fun and sexy kind of training, it's only the icing on the cake. And we want to start at the beginning here where
00:09:45
Speaker
people will see the most important foundational layers of a training plan, which is to build aerobic base. So starting with aerobic base training, Chantal, let me just ask you a question. How would you define aerobic base and what importance does that serve?
00:10:08
Speaker
Well, I think aerobic base or base training is one of those terms that has, you know, if you looked it up, googled it, you'd find all kinds of different definitions just like
Metabolic Basis of Endurance Training
00:10:20
Speaker
lactate threshold. I think it's one of those terms. And so if we think about where did this concept first start, it probably dates back to the 60s and was popularized by Arthur Lydiard's work where he had athletes doing a lot of low intensity volume to kind of build a base. And his training structure was kind of like a pyramid where they would build a base
00:10:44
Speaker
onto which they could layer on some higher intensity work in a safe way. And the base training would be at the bottom, which would be most of the athlete's training time. And then the middle was some higher intensity work in and around their lactate threshold, pace or intensity. And then the highest intensity work was kind of the sharpest end of the stick done closer to their event.
00:11:09
Speaker
And over time, you know, this concept has morphed into different things for different people. But I feel that the concept of a base implies that something else is going to be layered upon it. And so I think it's important to think about what happened for approaching an athlete or talking to an athlete about developing a plan. What's happened before this base phase and what do we feel is important to come next?
00:11:37
Speaker
And for a lot of uphill athletes, they're doing longer endurance events, whether that's a mountain project, whether that is a hundred miler or some other long event that's going to take more than a couple of hours. And it might not make sense for them to do this typical
00:11:58
Speaker
sharp end of the pyramid before their event. And so their training does definitely need to be periodized to account for where they are starting from and where they need to go to reach their goal or their objective. And so although they might have a block of endurance work planned throughout their training, they have to be starting with a good foundation.
00:12:24
Speaker
And so we have to think about where are they starting from? Are they recovering from an injury? Are they just a month after a race or completing an objective? Or are they completely new? Is this something new that they have decided to do? And we have to think also about the goal that they're planning for and how far away that is. So we can't really look at this in isolation because
00:12:51
Speaker
developing this foundation is going to, um, and how we develop the foundation might depend on the answers to those questions. And so we always have to think about the, you know, zooming out and then sort of, I like to think about it as sort of zooming out and then zooming back in, you know, so where are we going? Where are we starting from? And then how do we get from point A to point B and building endurance is something that we're doing throughout our lifetimes, right? It's not just,
00:13:18
Speaker
one block of training, even though it is our foundation, it's something that we're spending a lot of time on. Like you said, Steve, there's maybe other aspects of training that might seem to be more, might be perceived as being more fun or more sexy, but if we don't establish a strong level of endurance and a strong aerobic engine first, then we can't successfully or safely do all those other fun things that we might want to do.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah. So let's, there's a couple of things I want to dig into there. One is, you know, what are some of these other sort of euphemisms for aerobic base? You mentioned, um, aerobic engine. We talk about in other places in a philosophy writing, we've talked about having someone having a quote unquote big engine, those kinds of things. What are some of those other kinds of euphemisms or, or, or
00:14:17
Speaker
structures that people might find useful. Like if you're brand new to this, how do you visualize that? How do you visualize what we're talking about?
00:14:27
Speaker
I would say probably something that, you know, colloquially is, is, you know, for an athlete that might be new is like cardio training, right? Cardiovascular training. That's probably another one that's, that's thrown out a lot. If someone is going to a, you know, the first thing that happens if someone walks into a gym, January 1st, typical, right? I want to lose some weight. I want to get fitter. All right. Well, then we've got to, we've got to, you've got to do some cardio and you've got to do some strength training. So that's probably, you know, something that someone is going to,
00:14:55
Speaker
learn first, you know, in terms of a word, cardio, which is cardiovascular training, you know, training our cardiovascular system. And, you know, it's also thinking about, you know, someone wants to get fit, they want to do it fast, right? They think about, okay, well, then if I'm going to get fitter, then I should just do more of the stuff I'm not doing.
00:15:19
Speaker
Or they look at someone else that they consider to be fit or fast or inspirational for what they want to do. Let me look at their training and what they're doing and let me try to copy that. And I think that's why the gyms tend to not be as busy in March as they were in January because people go and they try to maybe approach things the wrong way or do too much too quickly and they get hurt or they get injured or they get frustrated and they don't show up again.
00:15:48
Speaker
That's why I think having a proper, as you mentioned, Steve, proper periodized training where we're spending an appropriate amount of time on building an aerobic base before we start layering on all the other fun things or all the extra things.
Structured Training vs. Casual Exercise
00:16:08
Speaker
Because if we're not giving our bodies enough time to
00:16:13
Speaker
There's a lot of things that are happening when we're training to build our endurance or build our aerobic system. And these things don't happen in isolation. So we're training our metabolism so that we can handle the work better, so that eventually the work is going to feel easier for the effort that we're putting out. But we're also, it's important to not just, we're not thinking about just our heart and lungs, but also
00:16:43
Speaker
thinking about our bones and our ligaments, making sure that our bodies can withstand that, and also our minds. That's an important part of this process as well in understanding our own limitations and being able to really have a good sense of how hard we are working and how much it's costing us, not only physically, but also mentally to do the work that we're doing. And if we're not in sync with those things, then
00:17:12
Speaker
it's really easy to make some mistakes that might not always be visible upfront, but they certainly will be visible with time. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think probably we are remiss in not saying that health underlies everything. First is physical and mental health, and then training can come on top of that. Yeah, and I also think we're going to dig into this more in a minute, I know.
00:17:41
Speaker
this whole concept of endurance training being a process of training your metabolism and aerobic-based training being a metabolic process rather than a physical process. And the way strength training is commonly perceived is, I think, a really important way to view these things. So next question then, like if you're an athlete listening to this,
00:18:07
Speaker
We're coming back to training and you want to go climb some mountains next summer. And they hear us talking about a strong aerobic base, these kinds of things. How does a person know if they have that? How do they know where they are in that process?
00:18:27
Speaker
And that's a great question. I think we have to look at a couple of things. Is this person new? Is this whole concept of climbing a mountain new to someone? Or is it that they have been active doing a lot of other things, but now they want to add this new goal? I think of a good friend of mine who's always been active as a cyclist, but last year he turned 50 and his goal was to climb the Grand Teton.
00:18:56
Speaker
and so He was active, you know for many years and definitely had a lot of good skills and abilities already but he did have to train differently for that that adventure because it was going to be something that was going to test his body and mind in very different ways and Then that's going to be obviously different than someone that has Not really been very active for most of their life and they watch
00:19:26
Speaker
they watch a documentary or a movie on, I don't know, let's say, Alex Honnold, and they decide, okay, I'm not an Alex Honnold, I'm not going to go, I'm not going to go free climbing anything, but I would like to learn how to climb. You know, that's a starting point.
00:19:44
Speaker
So if we're looking at an athlete who has had a good amount of experience doing endurance training throughout their life and they've just had a short break, that's going to be a lot different than how
Training Patience and Long-Term Perspective
00:19:57
Speaker
you might approach things with someone who is totally new to taking on a new challenge. And if I think about someone taking a break, I'm talking someone that's maybe they've had a bit of a break for
00:20:10
Speaker
after a big event, maybe they've taken a month off. And typically those types of people are not just sitting on the couch eating Doritos, they're still doing things. If we're looking at someone who's had a little bit of a longer break, we'd have to look at what were they doing during that break. And maybe it's someone who's unfortunately had an injury or they've had surgery. So now we're looking at if it's been a longer break, I'm thinking three months, that's a longer break where
00:20:41
Speaker
they might have to take some steps back and might have to more cautiously build themselves back up. Because again, we're not looking at just the training our hearts and lungs, but we're thinking about our bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments that sometimes need a little bit more time to ease into things as well. Because if we're not careful,
00:21:05
Speaker
Um, you know, I think a lot of people that are interested in endurance sport tend to be pretty strong mentally, right? They can, they can bully their way through a lot of things, but that's not always the best way because I think for me as a coach, I want athletes to think about themselves as, you know, if these are the things you love to do, you probably want to do them for a long time.
00:21:26
Speaker
And you probably want to do them with your kids too. And when that time comes in your life and your grandkids, if that time comes in your life. So we always want to look at the long-term health of the person as well, which sometimes people can't see that. They're just thinking, I just want to go up that mountain.
00:21:46
Speaker
Definitely. Yeah, I think that's one of the things that I often remind my athletes as well is that it's not a sprint, it's a marathon or an ultra marathon and that sometimes or the parts that you don't see the most are those ligament and tendon buildup and that's so key to not getting injured.
00:22:06
Speaker
And that's, I think something that's really easy to forget when you're so excited about your goal, which is, that's the fun part, but you really do have to take time in each step of your journey and really embrace that, which I try to emphasize.
00:22:22
Speaker
But that's such great advice. I think going forward too, I know we want to touch on some key points in the actual journey of building aerobic base and kind of get into the background of what that actually means. So Steve, can you kick us off on that? Yeah, absolutely. I think that, you know, there's sort of these
00:22:49
Speaker
Gates in the approach that we've developed at
Aerobic Base Training Specifics
00:22:54
Speaker
a Palatly over the years. And one of the first ones is establishing training zones. And we do that by assessing a person's aerobic threshold. It's a little different than what is typically
00:23:15
Speaker
which can be thought of as, let's say a race pace for most athletes, like as hard as you can go for an hour is a good definition of anaerobic threshold. Whereas what we're trying to do is more figure out where an athlete's aerobic
00:23:33
Speaker
training zone is so that they can focus most of their training on that because as we've just talked about, we're going to prioritize and emphasize building a good aerobic base. So I really say that that's the first step in the journey. Chantal, is there anything you'd like to add to that beginning process? Yeah, I think for, you know, when we think about what are our limiters and what
00:24:00
Speaker
when we're out doing these bigger adventures. Endurance is kind of limited by the rate that our muscle cells can sustainably produce the energy that they need for their contractions. So probably everyone has experienced that. You're going along, you're going along, you're going along, and all of a sudden it's like your legs are so heavy. They just don't want to move.
00:24:25
Speaker
And if you think about marathon runners, they talk about hitting the wall. So if your event is two hours or less, you can struggle through a lot. But if it's longer, then our fuel stores are a major limiter. And also, those muscle contractions, whether or not those muscle contractions can continue or not,
00:24:49
Speaker
That's also a limiter, right? The fatigue that we get into is definitely a limiter. So that's why it's really important, as Steve mentioned, looking at what the aerobic threshold is so that we can guide athletes to train within that aerobic threshold so that they can allow themselves to improve their metabolic processes.
00:25:14
Speaker
And that means improving things that we don't see. It's easy to go to the gym and lift some weights and you start to see the muscles growing. Or maybe if you're running, you suddenly notice that a route that you normally takes you an hour, you get really excited because you realize, wow, that felt really easy, but that only took me 50 minutes. A few months ago, that took a little longer. And it's hard to see those changes happening day to day.
00:25:42
Speaker
But actually, as we do this type of training, endurance training or in our aerobic zone, we are able to get faster with less effort because we're making some really cool biochemical changes happen. So here's where the nerds get excited. I'm pointing to myself and I'm looking at you two over there. This is where us nerds get excited because what's happening is that
00:26:08
Speaker
By doing that training, we are improving the oxidative capacity and metabolic efficiency of our muscles by improving the way that our bodies use oxygen. And we think about ATP, which is the energy currency. And we have the mitochondria. They're the ones that are actually growing their muscles, right? They're getting stronger. And their little army is growing as well. So we think about we're improving the mitochondrial density.
00:26:39
Speaker
We are improving the way that oxygen is delivered throughout our body because we actually are able to, through our aerobic training, we're actually able to have new blood vessels forming from pre-existing blood vessels. So that's pretty cool and something that we don't see happening.
00:26:58
Speaker
And we're actually able to improve the way that our bodies are using the fuel that we're giving it, the way that they are using carbohydrates, the way that they are tapping into our fat stores as well. And as our muscles also start to adapt to this exercise, you know, our tendons are getting stronger, our ligaments are getting stronger.
00:27:19
Speaker
We also will use our fuel a little bit more slowly. And so that means that we can do more work for less effort, which is great. We always want to work, not necessarily work harder, but work smarter. And that's what we're training our bodies, metabolic processes to do through aerobic training.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, I always tell people that they're training their metabolism. And even in that sense, the word training sounds misleading. It's really the metabolic adaptations that we're talking about here that support endurance. So, you know, we're going to, I want to dive into some of the more, you know, ditty gritty of that as we will. But first let's go back to, you know, sort of setting up zones
00:28:11
Speaker
designing. They want to climb, putting myself back in the mindset of this person that said, okay, I'm going to go climb Rainier next summer. And I feel like I need to start training. I want to get in shape. I want to have a good experience. I want to climb the mountain safely and efficiently and relatively quickly.
00:28:29
Speaker
And so there's probably at this point thinking, OK, I need to build a big aerobic base, and I need to do some sort of test to figure out what my aerobic threshold is, whatever that means.
Metabolic Processes in Training
00:28:42
Speaker
And then I need to start doing something. And one of the big misconceptions, I think, is that there's some magic bullet. And I think that if there's any kind of magic bullet, I just want to dispel this notion right now.
00:28:58
Speaker
setting, figuring out your training zones, and then distributing the intensity of the training in the right way, which means what Chantel has been talking about, doing most of your training in lower heart rate, which is the zones in which you build your aerobic capacity, and doing most of your training in those heart rate intensities.
00:29:20
Speaker
And if you just simply do that one thing, that's your 80% of the way there. In fact, it's often called like polarized training or some people call it 80-20 or there's different terms like that that refer to the distribution of the intensity. And the intensity simply means the heart rate, like a high heart rate, high intensity, low heart rate, low intensity. That's the easiest way to think about it.
00:29:50
Speaker
So there's a couple of ways we do this. We have, as it says, a lot of our athletes will be familiar with already. We have a pretty well-established protocol for sort of doing an aerobic threshold test in the field. You can do it at your local track. You can do it on a treadmill. And we found that that's a really pretty good way for people to get started. Chantel, have you had experience with these tests as well with your athletes and how has that worked out?
00:30:21
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's always something that I start with as long as I feel the person's capable of doing it right. If they're just coming off an injury, maybe we don't want to test the waters. But if, if we feel like they, they can handle that kind of test, I think it's good for a couple of reasons. One, it helps give them a reality check. You know, sometimes you have people that sandbag themselves and they go out and, and do the test and you know, they can gain a little bit more confidence of where they're at.
00:30:49
Speaker
because they might say, I haven't been running or I haven't been doing much for a couple of months and feeling really down. So they might be able to gain some confidence to see like, Hey, look, it's things aren't as bad as you thought, you know, all that training that you've been doing throughout your life. You know, this is why it's important to keep going because it stays with you.
00:31:09
Speaker
On the other hand, you might have someone who is maybe not in tune with where they're at and they're maybe a little overconfident. So it might be sometimes it's a bit of an ego check, you know, to say like, okay, yeah, you've been going out on your weekly group run, but you're, you know,
00:31:27
Speaker
If I look at your training peaks, maybe I get the sense already that they've been running harder than they need to, and they're spending no time at all in their aerobic zone. And they say, no, no, no, that effort was really not that hard for me. But then you really see how they're maybe not able to maintain a stable pace. If they are out there and you see that they are running at that pace,
00:31:53
Speaker
But you see the heart rate response isn't what you'd like it to be. And these are tangible things that you can show the athlete their data afterwards. And if it's someone doing it out on their own, it's a good place for them to start.
00:32:10
Speaker
they're getting some good guidance from the information that uphill athlete has online, how to do the test, how to put the information in after the test, and it also gives them some advice to say that your aerobic capacity is in a good place, or you could definitely benefit from spending more time doing some
00:32:34
Speaker
some good volume at a low and slow intensity. So it gives someone a start point, but also I think these types of tests are easy to do. It's also a nice check-in. If you're training and you're running along and you're not really sure whether things are improving or not, you can easily redo this test, recreating the same situation as well as you can and really see how much progress you've made or whether you are making some progress.
00:33:03
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I think that we've often seen that with Apple athletes who will have their benchmark test in every couple of months. We don't recommend that you do it too often because you actually need to be a little bit rested, so you don't want to taper for just a test just to check yourself for your own.
00:33:25
Speaker
gratification but the other way you do it is you just like you mentioned in an example earlier you're you know we tend to train the same places from home and you tend to do the same loops or whatever and you tend to notice like oh that
00:33:41
Speaker
That's always kind of subjective feedback is very real, very important. And I think it's worth stepping back again into remembering one of the things we're talking about here is we're talking about without going into the really nitty gritty detail, I want to make a clear distinction between what we're talking about, which is training and what I would call exercise.
00:34:08
Speaker
And what I mean by training is that the exercise is structured. The workouts are structured. The workouts are timed. And those of you that are familiar with our books will remember this diagram, which I think is one of the most important diagrams in any training book, where you have a moment in
Aerobic Base Test Protocol
00:34:30
Speaker
time where you
00:34:32
Speaker
go for a run, you'll apply a training stress. And then that after that workout is over, you are more tired, you're driven into fatigue. And then as you recover through eating and sleeping and so on, then you come at some point in the future, you become back to homeostasis and then, and then you overcompensate, you get a little fitter than you were before. And it's maybe completely imperceptible to you, but in that,
00:35:00
Speaker
quote unquote moment, you apply another bout of training and then that drives you into fatigue again. And this cycle repeats over and over and over again for days and weeks and months and years. And that's how long-term progress is made. And that's very, very different than randomized exercise where, you know, maybe you're going for a group run once a week, but maybe the other day at some days you're not doing anything. I mean, this is sort of the pattern I fall into lately in my current role as director of
00:35:33
Speaker
do something on the day that I can, but by no stretch of the imagination is it structured. It's like, oh, I have a half an hour today. Okay. Go run for a half an hour. Like, oh, okay. Today I can go for an hour and a half. Great. But training is a little different than that. Training is structured and organized and works off of these principles. So I think it's important to understand that sort of definition. Definitely. No, I think that's a good,
00:36:00
Speaker
differentiation, and I think I want to get more into that later, of recommendations for new athletes, but we'll leave that for another episode. And in another episode, actually the next one, we'll be talking about the specifics of how to perform that aerobic test. I think that's a question we get quite frequently, and also different ways that you can assess this aerobic threshold and our recommendations and kind of the ease of that.
00:36:31
Speaker
Um, but that's for another time. Um, so I'd actually be curious to dive into specifics because that's one of the things we do want to, um, show in these episodes is like specific examples and then also specific takeaways. So Chantal, do you have any specific examples of, um, really focusing on this aerobic base building, uh, that you could share from athletes that you've worked with or. Yeah.
00:37:03
Speaker
I would say the athletes that I've worked with that seem to have struggled the most with
00:37:10
Speaker
with running within their aerobic zone is athletes that come from a traditional, maybe collegiate running backgrounds. They've run a lot of track or maybe cross country shorter events and even marathon runners who they have had training plans that are very focused on, more focused on miles and maybe a lot of hill repeats.
00:37:36
Speaker
And even their long runs are done at a pretty moderate effort. There's not a lot of running that's done that easy.
00:37:46
Speaker
And so they tend to have, you know, be kind of stuck on running at a certain pace for a certain amount of time. And it's really difficult for them to kind of make the mind shift that, you know, the pace is not the goal. And, you know, particularly if they're preparing for a trail-based event, right? We're not running on the road or on a consistent surface. They're going to be, you know, transitioning to running on
00:38:14
Speaker
a more variable surface. But they're still trying, they've still got these things in their brain that I've got to run at a certain pace and it's got to be a certain amount of miles. And that's going to be really different, right?
Consistent Training and Personalization
00:38:26
Speaker
If I say go run 10 miles and you're running on a flat road versus go run 10 miles on a given trail, even 10 miles on one trail and another trail in your neighborhood is not going to be the same.
00:38:39
Speaker
because there's going to be different elevations. There's going to be different technicality on that trail. What's your experience with that technicality? Is it snowy? Is it slippery and icy? So that's going to really vary.
00:38:54
Speaker
So trying to get them into the mindset of paying attention to how they're feeling, you know, is one thing. And being honest, right, with cueing in to how they're feeling. How are they breathing? What heart rate does that easy effort correspond with? And getting away from looking at the pace, because the pace
00:39:15
Speaker
is really gonna be irrelevant. It's the amount of effort that they're putting out that's going to be more relevant and having them focus on that. So if you say, I want you to go out and run for an hour and I want you to keep it really easy and aim to keep a nice steady heart rate, that means that on a given trail, you might not be able to run a section of that trail right now. Right now, that's gonna be a hike or that's gonna be a walk. And that's really hard because they've been really, it's really been ingrained
00:39:44
Speaker
in them to be looking at their pace and to be, you know, running. Running is running, right? And if I'm not running, it's not a run. So that could be really kind of tricky sometimes. And getting them through that is hard.
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, I can't tell you how many times I get asked, Oh, what's your pace during an ultra? I'm like, you know, sometimes it's a 30 minute mile. And that's a really fast mile, because I'm going straight up a mountain. And sometimes it's a seven or eight minute mile. And so pace just does not matter on a trail compared to a road. And I have a hard time convincing my road runners and like,
00:40:24
Speaker
I actually really don't care what your pace was for this section. How did you feel and how did it go for you? Have you seen something along these lines from one of your athletes or do you have a reference point or even yourself? Yeah, well, all of the above, but I think that
00:40:47
Speaker
I often see it when somebody's out training and somebody might be me, but you know, might not. This is like one of those, this is one of those jokes, one of these questions like, suppose I had this friend and he was out running and somebody passed him on the trail and then he had to speed up to catch that person.
00:41:10
Speaker
And his ego got the better of him and he started running out of his training zone because he couldn't bear to be passed. This is another way that I think that this happens. I think it's hard actually and I've had this discussion with a lot of athletes over the years where
00:41:31
Speaker
they start to realize they can't just do their fun runs or fun training events with their friends because they actually have to stick to their training zones if they want to see improvement. And it becomes a little bit lonely because everybody's going to be in a little bit different spot and one person's going to be traveling through the mountains at a rate of 120 and that's going to be as fast as they should be going and somebody else is going to be doing
00:41:58
Speaker
the same trail and their heart rate's going to be 155 and they're going to feel like it's super easy and they're obviously going to probably be going much, much faster. And those two people can't be friends. I mean, they can be friends, but they can't train together, I guess. So there's no friends on training days. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, exactly. No friends on training days. And training gets a little solitary for sure. I certainly experienced that in my professional climbing days.
00:42:31
Speaker
except obviously the climbing itself, but yeah, it definitely gets a little lonely. I'm with you on that. My husband will always be like, why haven't you joined a running group or anything? I'm like, is no one's doing a four hour tour de jamb paste run on as much elevation as they can get today? I wish I knew that person, but I think that person's just me.
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, that's also at the same place in their training journey as you, right? Like that's the other piece, even if the event was the same.
Community Aspect and Aerobic Base Journey
00:43:05
Speaker
Yeah, I want to go back to the metabolism a little bit because I think that this is such an important point and such a core sort of tenet of conventional endurance training and therefore the upper athlete approach.
00:43:23
Speaker
I just want to unpack a little bit when we talk about what's going on on the metabolic level when somebody is what we call aerobic. Aerobic simply means with oxygen, essentially, right? It's a metabolism that's happening with oxygen. There's another type of metabolism, I mean, broadly speaking, anaerobic metabolism, which is what happens when you're without oxygen at the cellular level.
00:43:49
Speaker
And so for those of you that have read our books or want to reference our books, there's such a chapter in them called the Physiology of Endurance. And I think it's hard going, especially the first couple of times, but the more you can kind of understand this, the easier it is to understand your training and understand the principles behind it. And so we need to first talk about sort of, I think that, you know,
00:44:20
Speaker
pyruvate and sort of the secret or not, maybe not secret, but maybe the misunderstood adjourned role, I guess is the word of lactate and sometimes the lactic acid in the whole metabolic process. And I can't remember when it happened, but at some point writing one of the books,
00:44:44
Speaker
with what I think is a very clever mental model for how the well-trained aerobic system works and that is as a vacuum cleaner. Now bear with me for a second and Scott has talked about this on other podcasts which we can link to in the show notes but
00:44:59
Speaker
Picture a muscle fiber that is working really hard. And when a muscle fiber is working really hard, it's burning sugar. And though that muscle fiber is producing a lot of power, it is also producing a lot of waste. That waste comes out in the form of lactate and hydrogen ions.
00:45:19
Speaker
that lactate molecule can have two fates. One, it can build up in the muscle and cause acidosis, which is that feeling that the end product of which is we slow down. Or it can be combined with pyruvate and then it is able to be shuttled by the aerobic pathway back to produce more work in the aerobically adapted, the aerobically functioning muscle. So in a simplified sense,
00:45:50
Speaker
If we think about it in metabolic terms, endurance training has a two-step process. And step one is to minimize the amount of lactate produced through lots of training at low duration, low intensity. And step two then is to maximize the power that a muscle contraction produces when operating at or above the anaerobic threshold. And those two things combined kind of put you
00:46:18
Speaker
essentially what I would call that's when you've done both of those. That's when athletes really see significant gains and changes in their performance and they kind of go.
00:46:29
Speaker
We call it colloquially Beast Mode. I think we even have an article on the website titled Beast Mode, which is precisely about how this works and how it's really slow to come on because there is no shortcut to doing a lot of long-duration low-intensity training on a consistent basis, and there's no shortcut
00:46:54
Speaker
to then doing the specific muscular endurance workouts that help maximize this. But once you kind of get all those things, all those ducks in a row, it's really pretty life changing for most athletes. I think that analogy is such a good one, like an easy one for people to
00:47:17
Speaker
think about how that metabolic process works. And I think it's good to keep reminding people because I still hear people talking about it when I'm out running sometimes. They'll hit like, oh, the lactic acid in my legs. And first of all, lactic acid doesn't exist within the human body. And lactate is not our enemy, right? It's actually our friend and it's something that
00:47:40
Speaker
that's really when we can train our bodies with a lot of aerobic exercise, it becomes our secret weapon to keep us going when our bodies have a greater need for energy. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's really helpful to break down for all of us and just keep those reminders and breaking those old myths. It's one of my husband's biggest pet peeves is when people talk about lactic acid.
00:48:11
Speaker
So going off of that, what mistakes do you most often see athletes make in this aerobic base building phase? Oh boy. I think a lot of it is, and I think we've alluded to this a little bit before,
00:48:32
Speaker
getting distracted by what other people are doing. You know, they're looking at Strava, they're getting a little bit of FOMO or the weather's good or conditions are good and they say like, I'm supposed to do a
00:48:43
Speaker
three hour, you know, easy run today, but I'd rather go climbing or I'd rather do that thing. So they're, they're getting just distracted by what else is going on rather than focusing on what they need to do. Because as you said, Steve, it can be lonely, right? Going out and doing your own thing or like a list so you don't have anyone else that is, you know, at the same level as you preparing for the exact same event in the exact same way. So it can be easy to be sidetracked.
00:49:11
Speaker
And the other thing that I often see is that they just think, OK, I need more volume, more easy volume. So they're just going out and they're just piling on the miles and, you know, but it's easy. It's easy work. So I can do, you know, the plan says I'm supposed to do an hour, but that felt pretty easy. So I'm going to go for three. And so they're constantly just going.
00:49:34
Speaker
beyond what needs to happen because they're trying to fast track their success, but it doesn't work that way. It takes time and they need to be prepared to take the time that it needs and to do what they need in their training to improve their own unique physiology.
00:49:59
Speaker
So Steve, what common mistakes do you see athletes making in this phase of aerobic building? Well, I think what Chantel just described is essentially the mistake of not trusting the process.
00:50:19
Speaker
Sometimes I think of it and we talk about it in the coaching circle as buy-in. Sometimes athletes just don't have buy-in and they think they can have their cake and they can eat it too. The truth is, and this is one of our jobs as coaches and educators, is that you can't
00:50:39
Speaker
You can't improve, you know, progress aerobically without a certain amount of discipline and without respecting the basic principles of training, which are continuity, doing frequent workouts, gradualness, the gradual increase of the training stress over time, like gradual, I really mean gradual.
00:51:06
Speaker
modulation, which is the concept of having harder weeks and easier weeks, just the basic concept of stress and recovery. And there's no shortcut around those things. You can't cheat that system. It's just sort of like the laws of nature. You sort of ignore them at your own peril if you're trying to advance and progress in your training.
00:51:33
Speaker
Yeah, just as a small anecdote back when I ran.
00:51:38
Speaker
a world record of 95 marathons in 95 days, I was asked continuously, how do you train to do something like that? And my response was always, well, I ran 10 miles when I was 12 and was an endurance athlete in cross country skiers starting at 14. So about 10 plus years of endurance building capacity, not something I did in six months. So it really is honestly a lifelong pursuit.
00:52:05
Speaker
i think it not that anyone can begin but it's not just a i woke up one day it's not my fingers started running a marathon it's a continuous process of. I'm consistent training but sorry for that aside i'm.
00:52:24
Speaker
That's a great aside. I don't really apologize at all. It's great. No, it's yeah, it's just kind of a funny, I think I'm sure Steve, you got that question quite frequently as well with how you were training for your athletic pursuits. But what are good?
00:52:40
Speaker
Oh, well, I think I'll just quickly tell that story, though it's been told before that this is where the Training for the New Oppenism book came from. It came from when I was on the book tour with Beyond the Mountain, which I published in 2009. Everyone kept asking me, what do you do for training? What do you do for training? It was either the first or the second question. And the answer became, I could tell you, but I'd have to write another book.
00:53:09
Speaker
And that's eventually what happened six years later was another book was published. And that book is 464 pages of what's that phrase? I don't want to say what ifs, but it's 464 pages of conditions. It depends. It depends. That's the standard coach's answer, right? It depends.
00:53:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're already getting into it. But what if we can break down are some major takeaways for athletes that are starting out in this mountaineering journey? And Sean, tell her if you want to go first.
00:53:53
Speaker
Be realistic with where you're at and where you want to go, not only now within this year or within this training season, but in the future too. So it's important to have a good plan, be consistent with your training, ask for advice from a credible source, and I'm going to really put a bold, italics, sparkly light on credible source.
00:54:19
Speaker
When you need advice and when you need help and most importantly, you know, enjoy the ride. It's a process It's a journey, you know and where it's it's a journey that we're all hopefully going to be on for a really long time So, you know, it's important to remember that Building your endurance is going to be happening over your entire lifetime as an adult and as a human being so just be a
00:54:43
Speaker
Be patient with yourself, be patient with the process, and learn to enjoy that because it's going to allow you to do all the other things that you're going to want to do in your life for a really long time. Yeah, I agree with all of that. And there's so many ways to expound upon different pieces of that. But I think that, for me, the major takeaway is to get started.
00:55:13
Speaker
a process, but the process starts with the first workout and the first workout is only as good as the second workout is only as good as the third and the fourth and the fifth. And, you know, that process will unfold. But I think that one of the mistakes you can make is to not start and start figuring it out and start just getting engaged. Training is a gritty,
00:55:41
Speaker
one step back, imperfect, not made for TV, not pretty thing. It's just like a lot of being human is and it's just getting into it, getting stuck into it and staying with it and letting it unfold for yourself in your own place that you're starting from and your own destination where you're going to. That's kind of the
00:56:09
Speaker
individualized and I think that the most important thing is to just get started and make it a priority to do it and then it will happen. That's great. I always say that the secret to success and endurance training and I guess life is consistency. If you don't have consistency, you can't build off of that platform.
00:56:31
Speaker
Awesome. Well, thank you both so much for this incredible episode. I feel like there's a lot that athletes can take away whatever step they are in their process. So if you want to learn more about our resources, we have lots of training plans.
00:56:50
Speaker
We have a forum, we have one-on-one coaching, phone consultations, all available at uphillathlete.com. And you can also write into me, Alyssa, at coach at uphill athlete. But there are, those emails get distributed to people who can help the most. So it isn't just me, I'm just the first point of contact. But if you like this podcast, I ask that you rate, review, subscribe,
00:57:20
Speaker
on all podcast platforms. It really helps us to be able to keep bringing you this education. So thanks for being a part of it. Indeed, it is not just one but a community and together we are uphill athlete. Today's uphill athlete podcast was produced by Alyssa Clark. Our mixing engineer is Tim McClain and our theme song was written and produced by Chase Clark.
00:57:45
Speaker
We'd love to hear from you. Write to us at coach at uphillathlete.com. I'm your host, Steve House. Go simply, climb, ski, and run well. Thanks for listening.