New Alpinism

@FosterK: You got me thinking more about hours. I agree that tracking hours is probably the best way. With trail shoes and a light pack, I can estimate the time from the miles and the elevation change. But, when I add boots, and a pack, the miles will go down, but the effort will still the same or harder. Hours will be the best way when I shift to that (probably not until it gets cold).

Have you tried foam rolling for your IT band? Plenty of youtube videos on that. On the other hand, there is some controversy over whether it can make things worse, so go easy. It worked great for my wife and I.

@Tom Nyce. Like you posted a little higher, I tend to play in a couple of areas at a time. This is kayaking and mountain biking time for me, starting in November, moving to ski and ice climbing. Have you tried to apply the principles of New Alpinism specifically to another sport? I am working towards a mountain bike race in early November and have been trying to fit training time/schedule to mimic Alpinism training.

Tom Nyce wrote:@FosterK: Have you tried foam rolling for your IT band? Plenty of youtube videos on that. On the other hand, there is some controversy over whether it can make things worse, so go easy. It worked great for my wife and I.

I definitely need to get more serious about resolving the issuem yes. The sort of basic maintenance of stretching, rolling, etc. has always been one of my short falls.

How much rolling did you do to resolve the issue? I'm aware of the controversy surrounding rolling your IT band, but given that I have never rolled it, I doubt anyone would say it is too flexible. I'm also going to try to pay more attention to my running mechanics and increase my cadence. Hopefully that combination resolves the issue.

I may preemptively see a physiotherapist for assistance. If it doesnt I'll probably replace all the running volume with heavy pack hikes in boots.

FosterK wrote: I definitely need to get more serious about resolving the issuem yes. The sort of basic maintenance of stretching, rolling, etc. has always been one of my short falls.

I have had issues with ITBS in my left leg. YMMV, I have had better luck with rolling + stretching combo than stretching alone.

My layperson belief is that if you're getting ITBS, it means that you're increasing load / volume / stress too rapidly.

mikegillam wrote:@Tom Nyce. Like you posted a little higher, I tend to play in a couple of areas at a time. This is kayaking and mountain biking time for me, starting in November, moving to ski and ice climbing. Have you tried to apply the principles of New Alpinism specifically to another sport? I am working towards a mountain bike race in early November and have been trying to fit training time/schedule to mimic Alpinism training.

Nothing in the TFTNA book is new, as far as exercise physiology goes. It just ties everything together and presents it from a climber's/alpinists perspective. It does a great job at that. The topics are presented in such a way that a climber will be really interested in them. Things like, building a base each year, periodization timed for a specific goal, making year to year gains etc. have been around for a long time.
There are tons of topics covered in TFTNA, so I'm not sure exactly which parts you are asking me about in your question (about applying the "principles" to another sport). Feel free to add some specifics there, or I'll end up writing a tome, and putting everyone to sleep.
Are you interested in the periodization aspects; building up fat burning abilities; year to year gains?
How long is your mountain bike race? Is it technical?

PS Going in the other direction (i.e. how bike training helps your Alpine abilities), you might find it interesting that my partner (who lives and trains near sea level) uses biking as his main activity to keep his cardio up. Then, for a period before a mountain trip, he puts the boots on and starts hiking up and down the hill in front of his house (in Alabama) with a heavy pack on. He has done Denali (West Rib), Aconcagua, Liberty Ridge, all of the CO fourteeners (several in winter, with me), and a bunch of other things.

FosterK wrote: I definitely need to get more serious about resolving the issuem yes. The sort of basic maintenance of stretching, rolling, etc. has always been one of my short falls. How much rolling did you do to resolve the issue? I'm aware of the controversy surrounding rolling your IT band, but given that I have never rolled it, I doubt anyone would say it is too flexible. I'm also going to try to pay more attention to my running mechanics and increase my cadence. Hopefully that combination resolves the issue. I may preemptively see a physiotherapist for assistance. If it doesnt I'll probably replace all the running volume with heavy pack hikes in boots.

My wife and I both have benefitted from rolling the outer thigh, and our ITB problems were different.
She had the typical scenario, where the band is rubbing on the outer side of the knee and gets sore there. When this problem crops up, she rolls several times a week for 2-3 weeks, and the problem goes away for many months at a time. Presently, she hasn't had a flare up for more than a year and hasn't been using the roller either.
The source of my problem was different. I damaged the area near my hip bone in a fall on ice. That effectively gave me an IT band problem where it would start rubbing at my hip after running or walking a certain number of miles. It took months of regular rolling, and being especially cautious with mileage, and sleeping in positions that reduce tension/pressure on it, to let that thing heal up correctly. In this case, my problem wasn't originally caused by having too tight a band. So reducing tension on it was only part of the solution.

Nice thread!

To anyone's following the programm: in the transitioning period program examples, there is a switch from General Strength workout (spec'd in the same section) to a Functional Strength workout around week 6-7. Does anyone understand what the latter is? I could find no reference for it in the book.

Thanks!

Pavel, I had the same question so I sent an email directly to Steve House and he told me it was an editing error and that General Strength and Functional Strength mean the same thing in the Transition Period.

Tom,
In reply to your 9/15 query, I'm getting ready to enter my last week of base period training with two of my training partners. We've been pretty faithful. I'm in the lowlands, so the thing I've really let suffer are my step-ups-- just really difficult to sustain box-steps mentally, and pretty tough to get access to stadia around here.
I use a spreadsheet to build our weekly schedule, increasing volume as a function of time per the suggested schedules. I split it a bit between the mountaineering and alpine climbing aspects, as we have neither option close-by. Our volume has gone from 185 minutes in weeks 1-3 of Transition all the way to 533 minutes. Went for a two-hour, 11 mile sub-Zone 3 run this morning. Kept about a 10 minute pace and breathed through my nose the entire time. Muscles and body structure are clearly the limiters at this point-- felt like I could've kept the pace indefinitely. Big change from 27 weeks ago.
Feeling pretty spent the past couple of weeks. Daily job/family constraints make 533 minutes/week about the top end of what I can devote to training right now.
Jonny d

Adding me experiences up to this point:

I have been following a modified version of the training program for ~15 weeks now, and have seen some interesting changes that I wasn't expecting. I haven't been rigorously following the aerobic portions of the training program, instead I have just been doing lower intensity workouts when I run or hike. Which has allowed me to maintain my current aerobic fitness pretty well, without getting too exhausted from the aerobic workouts.

However, I have been following the strength workouts pretty religiously. I have not done any gym workouts in the past ~10 years, so I first was surprised how much time I needed to recover from them. I extended the transition period out to 12 weeks, and worked my way up to 4 circuits of the general training plan. The main benefit I've noticed is that the core workout, the overhead squats and the turkish get-ups have really helped to correct some lingering imbalances in my pelvis and back due to old injuries from bike racing (and crashing), and to improve my functional flexibility. Nothing is fixed 100% yet, but I've been really happy with those benefits alone, enough that now that I am in the max strength phase, I'm making sure to continue to do turkish get-ups and overhead squats, even if not for max weight.

Has anyone else with lingering injuries noticed similar improvements due to the strength workouts? I have been really happy, as I used to try and just stretch my injuries away, but the combination of flexibility and strength needed for the exercises recommended in New Alpinism have made a much bigger difference than any amount of yoga and stretching that I used to do.

Dr. Crankenstein, - thanks a lot!

@ Jonny d: 533 minutes is a lot! It sounds like you are making great improvements. I also find that “muscles and body” are the limit (rather than cardio) when doing a pure run. My hip flexors are one of the first things to fatigue and/or my stride starts to get sloppy. A person’s aerobic level generally improves much faster then the length of their maximum continuous run does. That is the principle behind Galloway’s run/walk scheme for "marathon training with less suffering."

@ TWrenO: I’m not doing the whole strength routine from TFTNA yet, but adding the exercises from “Scott’s Killer Core Routine” to my pre-existing program has helped my back noticeably. My core is weak for a climber, but I’m working on it.
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My update: I don’t have an alpine challenge planned at the moment, so I’ve been practicing specifically for a big hiking challenge Oct 4.
My three big hikes this month were:
Up 4800 feet in 3.5 hours (Mt. Timpanogos, Wasatch), down in 2.5 hours.

Up 5800 feet in 4 hours (Lone Peak cirque w summit), down in 3 hours. Ugh.
Down 4,700 feet in 2 hours. Up 4,700 feet in 3 hours. (Grand Canyon, Miner's route).
I'm generally in zone 2 on the uphills (with bits of zone 3), and lower zone 1 on the downhills.
Weekday mornings, I'm doing an easy hour on trails, or a strength workout.

For the folks who are vertically challenged because of distance from mountains or time for other life commitments, I found the step-ups to be hugely beneficial. They're worth the boredom and suffering. I would put on a movie and do them for an hour once a week when I was ramping up training last spring.

It certainly paid off, I have a fair amount of technical climbing experience (i.e. climb 5.12 sport, climb 5.11 trad, climb ice) but prior to this past summer had never been on a glacier or above 14k'. I'd also never even heard of aerobic base before last December. I got started training last winter with the Maffetone method for running, and switched to TFTNA's methods when it came out. I didn't follow the routines particularly, as I'd already developed some of my own that I wanted to test out and see through, but I did incorporate weighted step-ups and a shit ton of aerobic work into my training.

I spent this past summer in the Cordillera Blanca ticking off a bunch of easy lines and getting lots of glacier/mountain experience so I can start going after harder alpine lines in the future. My team was definitely one of the faster groups we ran into, we skipped high camps and did most of our lines from base camp, generally summitting at about the same time as people who were starting from high camps, with no more suffering on our part. All of our summit days were 1000m+ pushes.

By the time I left for Peru, I was doing 1 hour a week of step-ups with a 50# pack on onto an 18" chair. I was also doing 1 hour continuous climbing sessions once a week, and running 6-7 hours a week (often half of that in one long session), plus some just for fun bouldering and the odd bit of outdoor rock.

I started writing to say "don't skip your step ups", and ended up writing a testimonial. But don't skip your step ups.

Also, I had to maintain a really high protein intake to keep up with this, I still dropped about 10#, but with a high protein intake none of it was muscle and my bouldering ended up jumping a grade to v8 on plastic.

I just started my new year of training, after taking 3 solid weeks off after I got back (I actually think I'm still recovering a bit), and this time around I'm using protein powder, which takes all the stress out of eating (it's really hard to cram 150+ grams of protein in using just natural food). I split my macronutrients pretty evenly between fat/carbs/protein, and try to get most of my carbs from fruits and veggies. Nutrition has been super important for me to maintain a training load, and have mental energy (I'm in grad school and I work part time, so mental energy is pretty important).

I maxed out around 12-14 hours of training a week (my numbers up above don't include general conditioning workouts, yoga, and bike commuting). Oh, and foam rolling is absolutely key too.

@Nick: thanks for the informative post! Sounds like you are getting great results.
I've got a question. Do you keep track of your step ups, and figure the total gain? How does it compare with the "ratings" in the fitness test section of the book?
Those ratings seem awfully difficult to achieve, especially with pack and boots on.

Tom Nyce wrote:@Nick: thanks for the informative post! Sounds like you are getting great results. I've got a question. Do you keep track of your step ups, and figure the total gain? How does it compare with the "ratings" in the fitness test section of the book? Those ratings seem awfully difficult to achieve, especially with pack and boots on.

I figured out in the beginning (and checked periodically) that I can more or less nose breathe at 20-25 steps per minute. Using conservative numbers I was doing 1800' of gain during an hour session. Last season I did it barefoot (in my house), and focused on increasing weight and time.

I only did 4 or 5 weeks with step ups, and I got up to the 50lbs (30% of body weight, I'm 170+-5lbs) for an hour. On the 6th week, my Spantiks arrived (shortly before I was leaving) and I made it through 15 minutes with boots and pack before I collapsed on the ground like a turtle and couldn't even sit up.

So, bootless, I'm towards the bottom end of the scale. With boots I can't even see the scale. Fortunately, in the Cordillera Blanca you can wear trail-running shoes right up to the edge of the glacier, and then stash them and any extra weight from your pack, blitz the summit, and be back in time for lunch (as long as you're not doing any of the 6000m+ peaks).

I think those ratings are dead-ass on, if you're looking to do moderate-hard stuff in the mountains. If you just want to do trade routes and walk-ups, it doesn't matter so much (but if you can hit those ratings the walk-ups will be total cake!). Now that I've gotten a pile of time in at altitude, and I have a better sense of what I'm aiming for, I'm going to try for sub-30 minutes per 1000' with Spantiks on.

That'll be combined with 2/week 1x60minute sessions on the autobelay at my gym, with boots and (much lighter)pack. And then I will go to the mountains and frolick.

Got the book a couple weeks ago. I've gotten though Section 1 and am now getting into some of the training regimes. Haven't been able to implement anything very structured yet, but have been trying to conduct Zone 1 training 3-4 times a week. I have been averaging about 6 mile runs with 400ft elevation gain, most of which is within one specific half-mile of the run.

My est. MHR is 190, based on what I have seen, not the MHR test (need to do this still). I have been averaging about 12:30min miles for the run doing my best to keep my HR below 142. I seem to average 138bpm, and I am Zone 1 for approximately 80-85% of the run.

That is where I am at and some stats in case others want to compare.

I am curious how much any of you have researched your HRV. Subscribing to many of the ideas from Bulletproof Executive, I have heard about HRV for quite some time. I think it is interesting that it is also a good measure for fitness and fatigue. Since I use an Ambit, I get the RR data. I downloaded KubiosHRV, but since the last update to the ambit, the .json file that the ambit now uses isn't compatible with Kubios yet. Anyone else out there doing this or know much about how to evaluate the HRV or RR from a fitness standpoint?

@Tom - It might be fun to meet up with you for some of your hikes or other workouts, although I'm limited since I'm doing the 9-5 thing right now. Coming into the winter season I try and get down to Sedona for climbing when it's sunny and hit the Canyon for some trail running/hiking when it's raining.

I've found I have a big discrepancy between my nose breathing rate, and my recommended Zone 1 max based on percentage of max heart rate. I haven't done the MHR test outlined in the book, but I did go balls out on a technical trail until I had to stop running because I couldn't breathe hard enough to keep up with it, and my max rate on that was 199 BPM. With that, my zone 1 MHR should be about 150 bpm, but that's so easy I can hold my breath while running. At approx 10-15 bpm higher, I can still hold a conversation and it still feels easy.

That puts me at about a 9-10 minute mile on pavement, and 11-12 minute miles on trails.

I haven't looked into Heart Rate variability at all.

Somewhat unrelated, because I don't think it's mentioned in New Alpinism, I've read via other sources (Ultrarunning mag, some running tomes) that for serious aerobic gains, you need 6-7 hours of zone 1 training per week, and that the optimal training block for simply building your aerobic base is 60-90 minutes. I'm currently working on building back up to 30 miles/week of running, as that generally gets me into the 6-7 hour range.

DesertRat: Are you in Flagstaff? Hiking together might be good. PM with contact info.

Nick: I've also found the "nose breathing" criteria to be somewhat erroneous. It depends too much on what the person's sinuses are like, IMO. I'm the opposite of you. I just can't get much air through my nose, and typically have to mouth breath even at low intensities. I find the "conversational" criteria to be a more consistent/valid one.

I was wondering what people are doing for the best approximation for alpine climbing. I live in Reno so I do have some opportunities to get up some this winter and will be doing some skimo but not at the frequency that I need to. Any ideas and recommendations are welcome.

Has anyone seen technical climbing difficulty increase with the program?