This post is informed by the insights in Training For a New Alpinism and tries to condense essential elements from the book into a 5 minute read. The concepts on this page are attested to by athletes and coaches for elite teams in a variety of sports. They are also personally battle tested on a 2018 expedition to Denali after a 6 month training cycle, for which Training For a New Alpinism served as my training manual. For reference, Denali is considered one of the coldest and most physically demanding mountains in the world. Day 1 of the 3-4 week expedition features a 10 km trek, often in knee/thigh deep snow carrying loads of 100-120 lbs. Subsequent days get harder as the air thins. I have climbed big mountains in the Cascades and the Andes but I was unsure of how I would perform when I set foot on Denali. It was as hard as I expected, and the training ensured I performed better than I anticipated.
The following core elements are discussed briefly below, with pointers to relevant chapters and pages of the book
- Heart Rate Zones
- Strength and Mobility Training
- Supercompensation (Very Important)
Heart Rate Zones
The maximum (safe) heart rate changes based on age and is formulated as
\[\text{Maximum Heart Rate} = 220 - \text{age}\]For a 25 year old runner, the maximum heart rate is 220-25 = 195 beats per minute (bpm). For what its worth, there are several variations of the formula for maximum heart rate in popular discourse and most of them should serve you fine (I recommend you confer with your physician regardless). Heart rate ranges reflect intensity and are a way to break down training for cardiovascular fitness into different types. Here is a table with the breakdown
| Intensity | Approximate % of Max HR | Feeling | Ventilation | Range for 25 y.o. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recovery | < 55% | Very Light | Conversational | < 107 bpm |
| Zone 1 | 55%-75% | Easy Breathing | Nose Breathing | [107, 146] |
| Zone 2 | 75%-80% | Medium | Deep and Steady | [146, 156] |
| Zone 3 | 80%-90% | Fun Hard | Short Sentences | [156, 176] |
| Zone 4 | 90%-95% | Hard | No Talking | [176, 195] |
| Zone 5 | N/A | Maximum | N/A | N/A |
The upper end of Zone 1 is referred to by exercise physiologists as the Aerobic exercise Threshold (AeT). For reference, during a treadmill test, this is the heart rate at which blood lactate rises above the baseline. Zone 1 training is the bedrock of endurance and cardiovascular fitness.
Zone 1 training has been shown to produce adaptations that make lipolysis more efficient. These adaptations range from increased mitochondrial density in muscle cells to the upregulation of enzymes like cytochrome-c. Zone 1 may feel like you are not doing much, but be wary of pushing harder. Zone 2 is considered a black hole for training effort because there does not seem to be any evidence that it helps improve performance.
It is also important to know that the time you spend in Zone 1 training adds up over calendar time and training cannot be accelerated by flogging your body with extra workouts in a compressed time window i.e. you cannot work out twice as hard and achieve results worth 2 months of training in 1 month, so consistency is key.
On a personal note, I observed two things in my training as it progressed. First, my heart rate would stay lower for the same load as my endurance improved. Second, I think my Zone 1 ceiling started to rise beyond the 75% threshold (this phenomena has been reported) though I never verified whether this was indeed happening with a lactate test or any other concrete assessment. For details, see Chapter 2 (for training methodology), 3 (for physiological underpinnings) in general and pages 34,35,40-49 and 59 in particular.
Strength and Mobility Training
The basic objective of strength training is to ensure muscles are not pushed to their maximum limits during sporting activity (i.e. you should have a bigger strength reserve than you need). This is a bit counter-intuitive for endurance sports at first, but having greater strength and mobility in important muscles involved in your sport helps with improving cardiovascular performance because your muscles are less likely to enter the anaerobic regime. It also helps prevent injury because you are less likely to push your muscle beyond its limits and damage it. Here strength training focuses on increasing the maximum strength available from existing muscles rather than gaining muscle mass. Being lighter is easier on the bones of runners and mountaineers alike, so the addition of muscle mass is usually not an objective. The basic idea is to train muscles to be stronger (i.e. bigger strength reserves) and also to train them to work in synchrony with each other to execute specific movements for running more efficiently (think muscle memory). Variable training stimuli e.g., trail running, where terrain changes as opposed to a treadmill, recruit stabilizer muscles for load distribution, in addition to strengthening the main working muscle. This makes variable training stimuli a great tool for getting muscles to work together more efficiently. Strengthened stabilizer muscles/softer tissue (e.g. tendons) from variable training stimuli also reduce the likelihood of knee/ankle problems and should make climbers/runner’s more resilient to injury. I am not sure there is any benefit to joint tissue like cartilege, so folks with joint concerns may want to be mindful of that.
Strength training offers another advantage in terms of endurance. Greater maximum strength corresponds to a more efficient lactate removal mechanism, referred to as “the lactate shuttle” in the book, which prevents muscle fatigue and injury if you are pushing yourself.
Strength training to increase maximum strength for any area/muscles is done by exercising with a weight/difficulty at which you can do at most 5 repetitions. At this difficulty, do 3-5 sets in a workout session, with recovery intervals of 1-2 minutes between sets. The discussion in the book is fairly heavy with mountaineering context where mobility/range of motion for the upper and lower body becomes important (to be able to generate power at different angles for climbing) so some other resources discussing strength training routines for specifically runners may be worth looking up.
See Chapters 4 (basic ideas) and 5 (methodology) in general and pages 154-169 (in Chapter 8) for a broad variety (upper body, core, legs) of strength and mobility exercises recommended for mountaineers. There is also some specific discussion about what works well for women athletes, accounting for the fact that it can be harder for them to gain muscle mass.
Supercompensation
Supercompensation refers to the body’s adaptation response to training stimulus. The graph below visualizes the phenomena in abstract, with and time on the x-axis and fitness level (a.u.) on the y-axis.
The idea is that the body spends time recovering from fatigue after a work out and training in this period does not produce any positive adaptation toward an improved fitness level. However, once fatigue recovery is complete, the body enters a supercompensation phase where it is ready to go again, and better meet the demands of the workout than before. Timing your next workout with this phase will help you perform better. The supercompensation period is finite and training well after the super-compensation phase does not offer the same advantages in driving physiological adaptations as training during supercompensation phases. The effects of under/over training in a workout are also highlighted in this figure.
I think supercompensation is awesome because it means that you can get fitter without spending more time training if you manage to time your next workout to coincide with the supercompensation phase from your last workout. The next figure visualizes how an athlete can organize their training to ride the supercompensation curve to improved fitness, extracting the maximum value out of each workout. The importance of consistency is implicit in this figure, but fitness does not deteriorate or go away quickly if you miss a workout, though the decay rates of different kinds of fitness (endurance vs strength) is a more nuanced discussion smeared throughout the book.
Lastly, the figure below shows that supercompensation curves are different for training at different intensity levels. For Zone 1 training, taking advantage of the supercompensation curves involves repeating training sessions 8-16 hours apart. For strength training the optimal interval between training sessions is 48-72 (maybe 96?) hours.
In practice, it is not realistic for amateur athletes to be in the gym every 8-16 hours to ride the supercompensation curve for Zone 1 training. In my case, while preparing for a big objective like Denali (training approx. 15 hours/week), I tried to adhere to the Zone 1 training intervals for 2-3 days a week in succession with 1-2 hour sessions. The half week gaps between these 2-3 days did not lead to loss of fitness. Casual athletes can get reasonable results with lesser adherence. You do not have to chase after the peak supercompensation effect at the beginning. At first, your body will adapt even without riding the supercompensation curve. Optimal intervals for strength training 48-72 hours are easier to manage because they amount to 2-3 evenly spaced workouts a week. See Chapters 2,3 for more detailed discussion about supercompensation.