Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete

by Steve House

super compression

contimuity gradualeness and modularity

For some of you this will be the hardest zone to train in. You may find that you can barely jog, or can only hike uphill very slowly, before you must begin mouth breathing or your speech becomes disrupted and your heart rate starts to climb out of this zone, right through Zone 2 and into Zone 3. This situation arises more often that you might think. This phenomenon is called Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome, and people this afflicts are forced to rely on the contributions of high-intensity, anaerobic energy pathways even to do slow-paced work. We have seen many such athletes. If you find yourself short of breath at low intensities and low heart rates, for example, or if you are unable to carry on a conversation while hiking up the approach trail, then you really need to take the time to read Mark Twight’s essay “TINSTAAFL” and understand chapter 3. There is a cure; we’ll give you a prescription for it in this book, but it takes time and patience. To be clear: Low intensity does not mean slow in well-conditioned athletes. Those who have spent the time to maximally develop their aerobic capacity can maintain prolonged high speeds (in conventional sports, typically 80–85 percent of race pace) at their aerobic threshold. A high

Hill Sprint Training To execute this workout outdoors, first you need to find a steep hill with decent footing so you are not dodging roots and rocks and can sprint flat-out. The steeper, the better for our purposes. It should be at least 10 percent or a one-in-ten slope with 20–50 percent (two- to five-in-ten slope) being even better. A steep stadium can provide the needed steepness. If your movements are slow and cautious due to poor footing, you will not get the desired effect. The steep hill allows those who can’t run fast to impose very high loads on their legs and

absolutely important during base building

Typical Progression for Hill Sprints We have noticed that athletes who are unaccustomed to such high power training have difficulty even getting tired in the early weeks of doing this workout. That is because they move slowly due to their inability to engage enough of the fast twitch fibers needed to produce truly powerful movements. For

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