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From Dan May

At the beginning of April a crop of RMI guides including myself, Leif Bergstrom, Henry Coppolillo, Lacie Smith, Tatum Whatford, and George Hedreen, headed off to the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to work on honing our alpine guide skills with the help of the AMGA. We split our time between Boulder and Estes Park, Colorado while completing the Alpine Guide Course. Often in these courses, you are amongst colleagues spread across other guiding companies, however in this instance, we had the opportunity to work and learn together. Being able to sharpen our guiding skills in alpine terrain amongst our peers that we work with in the North Cascades, Denali, and South America was a great opportunity.

These courses offer us the chance to add additional tools to our ever-growing toolkit as guides while being reviewed, critiqued, and taught by the AMGA instructors. While romping around the Flat Irons, Eldorado Canyon, and Tyndall Gorge of Rocky Mountain National Park, we took turns climbing rock, ice, snow, and mixed routes while guiding each other through the terrain. These chances and skills as a guide are invaluable. It is easy to convince your friends to go climbing with you, but to convince your friends to let you guide them through peculiar terrain to practice your techniques and skill sets is another story.

At the end of the nine days, all RMI guides successfully completed the course and had a great time doing so. Now we are all turning our sights to Ashford and Mt. Rainier in preparation for another great summer of climbing.

It was another breathless, warm morning on the Ecuadorian countryside. Our beautiful hacienda was situated perfectly in a giant valley which runs directly from our dining room window unabated for 7000’ vertical feet straight to the summit.   

Chimborazo, the farthest point from the center of the earth and closest to the sun, was mostly displaying her majesty as we sipped coffee and ate our eggs. As the morning wore on, she hid herself from view and we loaded the magic bus ready to take us to the Chimborazo trailhead.  By 1:30 all our packs were packed, and it was off to high camp at 17,500 feet.

At this altitude nothing feels perfect, unzipping your trousers just to take a pee can leave you winded. But our seemingly invincible team has again handled things with grace under pressure and is doing well up here.   Once again, the Ecuadorians have done it right, providing a giant dome tent for our lounging pleasure.

But don’t get too comfy bloglandia, the alarm is set for a mere four hour from not.  It is then we will have our final test?  

The is rest well with a positive psych ! Wish us well!  

RMI Guides Adam Knoff, Hannah Smith and Team

Hello again everyone,

All is still well here in the Khumbu as the team members made our way back to Pheriche. It was a busy day on the trail with climbers, Trekkers, yaks, and porters all bound uphill to basecamp. We slowly made our way through the maze of traffic and enjoyed a few last good views of Everest. 

Pretty amazing how thick the air here at 14,000' feels compared to 17,500'. Spirits are high even with slightly tired legs after an eight hour day! 

RMI Guide Casey Grom and crew

A well crafted training plan is one that comprises multiple phases of training. Commonly called Periodized Training, this is the method of dividing your training program into phases in order to focus on different aspects of your training while effectively incorporating the needed rest and recovery.  Periodized training is effective because it is a strategic approach to training. If you try to focus on every aspects of your training all at once, you're likely to get injured or burn out. Much like building a house, the foundation must be laid before the walls can be put up and the interior finished. In the same manner, periodized training is focusing on different aspects of your training in a complementary manner, where each phase makes you stronger and more prepared for the next. 

Basic Training Phases

Phase 1: Building Base Fitness 

Your goal in this phase is to build your overall "base fitness." This entails improving your aerobic endurance, increasing strength and flexibility, and incorporating occasional interval work. This critical training phase focuses primarily on aerobic fitness. Aerobic training increases the amount of oxygen carried to the muscles, lowers the rate at which lactic acid is created and helps the body remove it more effectively, and increases the overall metabolic rate (1). Put simply, you are getting into good overall shape in order to prepare your body for the stresses of more intense and specific mountaineering training. 

Phase 2: Introduce Mountaineering Specific Training 

This phase focuses on maintaining endurance and aerobic fitness while improving speed and strength by introducing more interval training and mountaineering specific training. Begin incorporating interval sessions into your training to increase your aerobic capacity and and broaden your range of comfort at various effort levels. Make your workouts more mountaineering specific with hikes and climbs with moderate weight in your pack. This phase is beginning to hone your fitness to the demands of mountaineering. 

Phase 3: Tailor Training Specifically for the Climb Ahead

In the final phase you are training specifically for the climb ahead. Try and train on terrain similar in steepness and difficulty to the mountain in terms of vertical change, weight in your pack, and length of days. Find training hikes with the vertical change that is similar to the amount of vertical change on your climb. Stack long workout days back to back to mimic the challenges of multi-day climbs. Train and with a pack weight mimicking what you will be carrying on the mountain and incorporate interval sessions to boost your anaerobic threshold.  Remember to dramatically dial down your training in the final week or so before the climb. This process, called "tapering", gives you the needed time to rest and recover from your final training push. The last thing you want to do is show up at the base of a mountain exhausted and worn out. 

Applying Phased Training

Pull out a calendar and mark down the date of your upcoming climb. You have every day between today and the start of your climb to build your fitness. Divide this time into three phases. Your current fitness level and the amount of time between now and your next climb will determine the length and focus of each phase. As you hone in on your different phases, also reflect back on your past climbs and training to determine what areas of focus (flexibility, balance, speed, etc.) to incorporate into the more mountaineering specific training phases. Find out more about specific training routines with RMI's Mountaineering Fitness and Training resources. We strongly encourage you to work with a trainer or fitness coach to help you map out this process and provided the specific routines and exercises for you. 

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(1: "Train Smart This Winter: Base Training Basics", Active.com)

Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!

Aerobic Base Training Aerobic Base Training is the foundation that the subsequent layers of your training will be built on. The first of the three standard phases of training, the goals of aerobic training are to increase muscle efficiency and endurance. During this building phase, your body develops its capillary network, delivering more blood (and oxygen) to your muscle fibers, minimizing lactate production, maximizing lactate disposal, and increasing mitochondrial density (which produces ATP to fuel your muscles).

Aerobic base training was initially pioneered by New Zealand running coach Arthur Lydiard1. In the 1960 and 1964 Olympic games, three of the athletes he coached combined for 6 medals, dominating the distance events. The world took notice, and soon some form of his theory of aerobic base training had become commonplace in nearly all endurance events. There were many misconceptions to his theory though that endured: namely that aerobic training involves lots of long slow miles, and nothing else. In reality, Lydiard typically included three workouts into his athletes base periods: long runs, shorter steady state runs at an increased effort, and fartlek type interval workouts.

Each workout in the period accomplishes a specific purpose, with the overall goal being to maximize the aerobic energy system before moving on to anaerobic training. While long workouts accomplish the goals that we usually think of such as increasing blood flow and muscular efficiency, the steady state workout is designed to increase the aerobic threshold (the level of effort the body can exert while maintaining aerobic metabolism and not producing lactic acid), and the fartlek workout is designed to mix up the pace, letting the legs turn over more quickly to stimulate the muscle fibers in a different way and develop the neuromuscular system as well.

As mountaineers, these same principles and goals apply. During our base phase, our goal is to maximize the aerobic energy system, and so long workouts, shorter steady state workouts, and fartlek intervals will all help to build that strong foundation that the rest of our training will come to rest on. Into that mix, we can also add endurance strength (light weights, but lots of reps) and core strength workouts to start to build the well rounded fitness that is so essential for our sport! During the base building phase, higher intensity workouts should still be done at a moderate pace however, perhaps around 80-85% of your max heart rate, rather than a 100% all our effort. This pace will continue to develop your slow twitch muscle fibers while beginning to develop your fast twitch fibers as well. This has the added benefit of reducing the chance that you get injured as you move into more intense workouts during later phases of training.

Mt. Rainier may not be the Olympics, but we can certainly train like an Olympian, and that foundation laid now, will provide the support for a great climb on your next big objective!

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(1: http://runnersconnect.net/coach-corner/base-training-running/)

Questions? Comments? Share your thoughts here on the RMI Blog!