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New Alpinism
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I’ve been using the basic principles of heart rate zones from the new alpinism for several years. Keeping below my AeT allows me to run distance for the first time in my life! This year I finally got the log book and have built a plan to get into way better shape. I started a few weeks ago, but I was using the uphill athlete heart rate zones with the new alpinism training log. I switched to all new alpinism and set the uphill athlete book aside for now.
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Scott is doing a zoom book club starting this month for Uphill Athlete: 
I've just started Uphill Athlete, so I don't know an answer to the HR Zone q, but asking Scott directly may work. Uphill Athlete also has a forum that could help with specifics like this. |
Long Ranger wrote: For what is worth, I believe Scott and Steve no longer work together. Scott left to form a new training company calle Evoke endurance |
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Thanks for the heads up on that. Will be super helpful. Some of the stuff goes so deep it goes over my head. Being able to ask on zoom will be great! |
Gunks Jesse wrote: Hey Jesse -- Yeah, I know what you mean about the discrepancy in zones, and it confused me as well. Basically I think TNFA made a mistake in which zones they identified as being delineated by AeT, or maybe they mixed up the terms in some spots. Been a while and I don't have it in front of me, but I even remember chatting briefly with them about it years ago (as someone else noted, Steve and Scott are now running separate companies: Uphill Athlete and Evoke Endurance, respectively). They have it corrected/more conventional in Uphill Athlete, including the website, which is that the top of Zone 2 = AeT, and Zone 3 (not 2) is the so-called "No Man's Land" between AeT and AT. Despite the confusion, the key point is the same: Build a huge aerobic base by doing the massive majority of your endurance training at or below AeT, which most sources identify as the top/end of Zone 2. Sounds like you're on it, super cool about your building some distance! |
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Hi Kelly--thanks for chiming in. What tips do you have for keeping pace at or below AeT, with no heart rate monitor. Comfortable nose breathing? Ability to speak in full and relaxed sentences? For personal reasons, I can not use a heart rate monitor (happy to elaborate, but it's just unrelated stuff). Any help appreciated! |
Bruno Schull wrote: Those will both work, but are likely on the more conservative side. Point of reference: a marathon is completed around AeT, but most marathon runners aren't running with their mouth closed and chatting the whole race. AeT is the effort level you can sustain for multiple hours, so if you do a 2 hour trail run at a constant effort without being totally destroyed, it's below AeT. Just make sure to keep your shorter runs at the same effort/pace as those longer runs, don't crank the pace up because it's only 30 minutes or whatever. |
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Ok, so I’m prioritizing aerobic signals over cardio signals. I’ve a pretty decent feel for AeT and have confirmed it by wearing my heart rate monitor for every run in recent months.
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Bruno Schull wrote: Hey Bruno, yeah, those are ones that I go by, along with feel, after lots of comparisons with my HR monitor and various forms of testing (all of which used HR, which then I'd correlate to more subjective observations like feel, breathing and speaking, so that I didn't have to mess with the HRM). As Kyle alluded to, though, they can be off in either direction. For example, for a while I went the opposite of his mention and forced myself into nose breathing so hard that, looking back, it was comical and greatly overestimated my AeT. Snot flying everywhere, I felt like a real champ for a second until realizing that that I was lying to myself, ha. Where I've settled-in is the higher-end of reasonable nose-breathing, i.e. don't get competitive with myself. I can churn out sentences between labored breathing, so that one is less reliable for me. I suppose there's some art alongside the science in finding those zones. If you have a background in high-intensity exercise, then Z2 will feel really easy, maybe too easy. I remember talking with Steve and Scott about this, as initially with Z2 I very much felt like I wasn't doing anything. If you're used to going hard all the time, or have a competitive sports background, it's psychologically challenging to dial it back. It's soooo easy to drift up into Z3, more of the standard exercise-feeling-good-I'm-doing-something! pace. For me and others, I've gathered, putting in lots of hours at/below AeT (i.e. Z1 & 2) requires a mental shift of sorts. Now I greatly enjoy it, it's this huge base-building, big-engine pace. I'll occasionally take a quick 10 or 15 second manual/palpation HR when I'm out, too, since I don't often wear a monitor either. Can help steer the overall picture for me. Kyle makes a good point about multi-hour pace. I think of AeT as my low-gear, keep-going, all-day pace. Marathon pace could be one way, but that will also depend quite a bit. Another lifetime ago, while doing my master's in exercise physiology, we were always testing ourselves in the lab, including max VO2 and Lactate Threshold (i.e. Anaerobic Threshold), and one year I ran the Seattle marathon quite close to my AT/LT. No way I could have sustained it any longer. In fact, it was enough to make me "the first woman finisher!" as the announcer blasted over the speaker. Obviously this was before chip readers, so they must have glanced at their printout and saw my girl's name and, at the time, my long hair. As the applause settled down, I'm pretty sure I overheard someone in the audience mutter, "that's one ugly chick." Ha. They soon caught their mistake, so no trophy for me. Anyway, a brisk all-day pace is one way I've thought about AeT, and so thus a good pace for the lion's share of my endurance training :). |
Kelly Cordes wrote: Thanks for chiming in Kelly. Can you comment in more detail about the bit quoted above? My layman's understanding was that AT/LT was approximately 60 min race pace, which is faster than half marathon pace for us mortals, and therefore quite a bit faster than marathon pace. Where have I gone awry in that understanding? (For reference, I'm thinking of coaching materials like the Daniel's vdot system https://www.rundna.com/post/vdot-training-tables, https://vdoto2.com/calculator/, Mcmillan https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/half-marathon-pace/, etc.) Thanks for all the info! |
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Hey Kyle, appreciate your note -- made me think a bit deeper, and realize that I was wrong, at least in how I used my marathon example. It's been a while since I thought about running splits! I have a bunch of fused body parts nowadays and no longer run, too much impact for me, but train with cycling, steep hiking, ski touring, etc. Anyhow, you're right, about an hour at highest sustainable pace (race pace, if that's still the term) is closer to AT/LT. In my personal example, now that I reconsider it, my first half split was way too fast (closer to my LT at the time, foolishly). I slowed a lot in the second half, but my average pace was still way faster than what I suspect my AeT was. So my total time was a poor example, as it wasn't consistent/steady, thus not representative of anything beyond my terrible pacing. Your links had good info, helped refresh my memory -- I don't work in that field anymore, just maintain a personal interest in training. Thanks for making me think! |
Kelly Cordes wrote: I lol'd. |
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Wow, respect for an OG to come in and bump this thread with some wisdom. Kelly when I was first getting into climbing, I was really inspired by your “Something About Nothing” video. |
Kelly Cordes wrote: Kelly, when you mention nose breathing I'm wondering if you have focused on this much (versus mouth breathing)? Are you mouth taping at night, doing CO2 tolerance training, Buteyko breathwork, anything like that? |
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If anyone feels like they understand ME very well... I've been doing ME type of work with good results long before the book. It just made sense to me that if I load my pack with about 50 lbs of crap and go up and down a steep city block in SF, I would be getting sport specific adaptations useful for general mountaineering. I then moved away from it and in the last year or two am coming back to incorporating cycles of ME into my 'off season' conditioning. Trying to figure out what is the most optimal way to train and why... What I've been doing now is hiking up a very steep trail with about 3,300ft of gain in about 2.25 miles (up west side of Grandeur Peak in Salt Lake City). I load my pack with 6-7 gallons. I dump the weight on top. On the way up my intensity is decent and unless the trail is snow blasted I get to the top in about 1hr 12-15mins. It feels like a consistently hard effort with my HR rising to mid to high 160s and if I am really sending it low 170s. During my efforts it feels like technically I could increase my pace but my HR would go up to high 170s and it would feel like an uphill round during a race effort. On bad weather days, I do stairmaster with 50-60 lbs. During last workout I did 60 lbs warming up with level 8 for 10 mins, then 40 mins of 9 and last 10 mins at 8 since my HR was at about 180 and I felt my effort was very hard. In Scott Johnston's YouTube video about ME he states that HR/cardio shouldn't be what limits the effort, but the weight of the pack must be the limiter. If I am understanding correctly. In my training I feel like I could carry more weight if I slow down my pace. Should I try to carry more weight in that case, or sort of continue with progression in a similar fashion to what I've been doing. |
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SirToby - unless you’re going sport specific for a pack race, I have to wonder if those calories aren’t better burned with olympic lifts and core in the gym and a trail run up that peak the following day - ie focus on strength, then focus on cardio - not both at the same time. Seems to me the typical active alpine climber gets plenty of mileage with a pack and too much would create odd muscle imbalances. Carrying a pack up stairs seems like something a midwesterner would do, lacking wknds in real mountains. |
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Scott talks about the ME training a lot in this podcast: https://uphillathlete.com/podcast/muscular-endurance-for-mountain-athletes-with-coach-scott-johnston/ It sounds like your aerobic effort level during these sessions may be higher than they recommend, but it's hard to know without knowing your AeT, AnT, etc. I think you're likely fitter than the average poster on here too, so that may complicate things... Your pack weights are pretty high, check out the TFTNA book where they show an example of a routine Steve House used before an expedition, his weights were lower. (It seems highly improbable that olympic lifting is going to be more beneficial for an alpinist than carrying a weighted pack. UA has talked about this extensively, and they use this type of training for high level alpinists who have regular access to mountains, not just "midwesterners.") |
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Vitaliy, |
SirTobyThe3rd M wrote: Sounds like your ME workouts are actually more like threshold workouts. The high heart rate makes it really difficult for the gains to transfer to high altitude, as you can only work at a much lower % of max with lower O2 pressure. When I do ME workouts with the traditional hill setting I will do a much steeper rate of climb, at least as steep as stairs. I use an old logging track in FS that goes straight up the hill, no flats and no switchbacks. I will do MS and get my step-ups over 100lbs during a 6-8 week block before I do ME. Then my pack weight typically starts at 65lbs for the ME session. One season I got my MS step-ups up to 135lbs and then did 80lbs for my uphill carry. At this point my pain tolerance for shoulders was the limiter and so once I reached this level then I progressed my speed instead of adding more weight, but this was only at the end of a long base training cycle. Another alternative that UA has used is to do interval style ME using a 60 sec on/30 sec off structure... see their ice beast workout which is published for free on their website for an ice specific version. I created my own for times of year where daylight/work/weather/snow makes it more difficult: 3 min step-ups, 1 min rest, 90 sec latteral ski jump plyos, 30 sec rest, 60 sec forward/backward ski jump plyos, 30 sec rest, calf raises for 30sec each side, 2 min rest, repeat (two sets first couple weeks and working up to 4 or more sets over 8 weeks). Since the step-ups are on a shorter interval I have gotten up to 95lbs bar and 60 step-ups in the 3 min. This weight keeps the limiting factor on the muscles, making it more ME and less of a cardiovascular interval stress. |
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Here’s another good alternative ME workout that can be done at home without a pack: https://uphillathlete.com/strength-training/at-home-muscular-endurance-workout-with-progression/ |
