Good workouts to get the lungs ready for high elevation

[P Carter]

@P Carter @Poser
You guys both seem quite knowledgeable about fitness and training. In your experience, what types of training lends itself best to mountain hunting?

I'm not nearly an expert, just a hobbyist. I think there is a very wide range of training that gets someone in good enough shape to do well in the mountains. The best type of training: works with your schedule; that you like, so you stick with it consistently; that contains a mix of aerobic, anaerobic, and strength work; and that does not result in injury, such that you can stay in some sort of training pattern year-round and build fitness year-over-year. (Understanding that a training pattern will contain downtime also.)

For me, personally, I like to maintain an aerobic base through running, 30-40 miles a week, do a simple strength routine 2x per week, pushups and pull-ups every day (or nearly every day), and then add on top of that for various objectives. For hunting and backpacking, I do a weighted pack hike one day a week leading up to the season, working on muscular endurance. If I'm running a race, I'll add in intensity-focused running workouts and one longer run per week. Not saying that this is "the best," it's just what I do.

My primary goal is to maintain fitness in the long term; I am deathly afraid of being one of the many folks I see walking around in their 30s, 40s or 50s whose quality of life is limited, sometimes severely limited, by their abysmal physical fitness.

 

[bigcanyon]

Ha! You are a real runner! With those distances and paces, I can understand how the workout you posted would be V02 Max. For me, I'd be way too fatigued to stay in that zone for a mile after the 10x200. I'm with you that anaerobic work is a very good addition that most folks don't do. But non-runners also go the opposite way, jumping right into hard intervals without putting in the time for a base. For what it's worth, coincedentally, I've been right in that 30-40 mile per week zone for the past few years because I've been focused on hunting rather than running events. And slow, super slow compared to your pace. For many or most on the board, that seems to be a lot of running, but in the running world that is low mileage. Funny how perspectives change depending on your area of interest.

I definitely understand there is a difference between what I do and what most people do. I also understand that the example workout I posted is not something most people can do. It was used just to show the difference between a true workout and what most people are doing for their runs. I think it is great that you maintain 30-40 a week. I love back country elk hunting and competitive running and they have coincided well. If you ever want some toned down sample workouts I would be more than happy to help.

 

[Poser]

While You certainly need an aerobic base and running can play a part in that, particular if you cycle it, My issues with running in general, particularly running 30-40 miles a week year around, is that it’s catabolic. Since rucking uphill with a pack is a muscular endurance event, you’re only going to stand to benefit from being considerably stronger than the typical runner. Ideally, running would be subordinate to other areas of fitness as it relates to hunting. If you are an actual runner, that’s your primary thing and you do races, that all look different, but a person who uses running as their primary means of training for backcountry hunting is likely going to be lacking in the muscular endurance department since that it a different energy pathway.

I do have a hunting and backcountry snowboarding partner that’s an mountain ultra racer. We put on camelbacks and go peak bagging, he’s hard for me to keep up with. His zone 2 is easily zone 3 for me (he’s also 10 years younger) and he’s often ~200+ yards out in front of me and I’m working hard to keep up. No doubt his cardiovascular system is better conditioned than mine. HOWEVER, we strap on 35# packs and do an overnight scouting trip, this scenario is reversed and I’m 200 yards out in front climbing to a glassing point at 12,800 with packs on and he’s the one struggling to keep up. The primary adaptation there is muscular endurance, not “cardio” like it is intuitive to believe and certainly nothing to do with getting your lungs “in shape” (is that is anything more than en expression).

That’s not to dismiss the fact that you need an aerobic base in order to achieve proper muscular endurance, but that base serves entirely subordinate to muscular endurance. If you are already strong, muscular endurance will come fairly quickly. In conjunction with strength training and some aerobic baseline maintenance, it’s something that can be effectively achieved by training it just once a week: uphill rucking in zone 2. Surplus strength will contribute considerably to continued performance after fatigue sets in (numerous studies to support this claim) and trying to build strength and muscular endurance at the same time is entirely inefficient.

As is the case in all of these threads, my advice is always the same: “get strong first” -some part of your year should ideally be dedicated to pure strength training. With studies suggesting that you otherwise lose ~1% of your muscle mass annually after the age of 40, if nothing else, you should be thinking about longevity and how you don’t want to end up. If you wake up at 50 and find yourself with 10% less muscle than you had at 40 and you weren’t very strong to begin with, you’re on the verge of serious decline and you’re going to have a much more difficult time realizing muscular endurance.

 

[bigcanyon]

While You certainly need an aerobic base and running can play a part in that, particular if you cycle it, My issues with running in general, particularly running 30-40 miles a week year around, is that it’s catabolic. Since rucking uphill with a pack is a muscular endurance event, you’re only going to stand to benefit from being considerably stronger than the typical runner. Ideally, running would be subordinate to other areas of fitness as it relates to hunting. If you are an actual runner, that’s your primary thing and you do races, that all look different, but a person who uses running as their primary means of training for backcountry hunting is likely going to be lacking in the muscular endurance department since that it a different energy pathway.

I do have a hunting and backcountry snowboarding partner that’s an mountain ultra racer. We put on camelbacks and go peak bagging, he’s hard for me to keep up with. His zone 2 is easily zone 3 for me (he’s also 10 years younger) and he’s often ~200+ yards out in front of me and I’m working hard to keep up. No doubt his cardiovascular system is better conditioned than mine. HOWEVER, we strap on 35# packs and do an overnight scouting trip, this scenario is reversed and I’m 200 yards out in front climbing to a glassing point at 12,800 with packs on and he’s the one struggling to keep up. The primary adaptation there is muscular endurance, not “cardio” like it is intuitive to believe and certainly nothing to do with getting your lungs “in shape” (is that is anything more than en expression).

That’s not to dismiss the fact that you need an aerobic base in order to achieve proper muscular endurance, but that base serves entirely subordinate to muscular endurance. If you are already strong, muscular endurance will come fairly quickly. In conjunction with strength training and some aerobic baseline maintenance, it’s something that can be effectively achieved by training it just once a week: uphill rucking in zone 2. Surplus strength will contribute considerably to continued performance after fatigue sets in (numerous studies to support this claim) and trying to build strength and muscular endurance at the same time is entirely inefficient.

As is the case in all of these threads, my advice is always the same: “get strong first” -some part of your year should ideally be dedicated to pure strength training. With studies suggesting that you otherwise lose ~1% of your muscle mass annually after the age of 40, if nothing else, you should be thinking about longevity and how you don’t want to end up. If you wake up at 50 and find yourself with 10% less muscle than you had at 40 and you weren’t very strong to begin with, you’re on the verge of serious decline and you’re going to have a much more difficult time realizing muscular endurance.

To be a good distance runner you should also strength train and at 30-40 miles a week is not going to deteriorate any muscle if you strength train as well. The thing with ultra guys is that in reality they are not in the same type of shape as a track athlete. Yes a 100 miles they are mentally tough And would beat track athletes,but most ultra guys are at a snails pace for most of their races which keeps your heart rate very low. Hiking up a steep hill at elevation with a pack on is very taxing on the HR if your moving at a good pace. The original posts question was “how to prepare the lungs”. You can’t prepare your lungs, but you can strengthen your heart to pump more blood and your body can learn to use more of the oxygen it takes in.
In reality there is not many placeS in the US you can be more than ten miles from a road.So at most your hiking a few miles or less to a glassing spot. Being more of a high rpm athlete would seem to be more convenient for that situation, so doing more high intensity track workouts would be more suitable for that.

 

[bigcanyon]

While You certainly need an aerobic base and running can play a part in that, particular if you cycle it, My issues with running in general, particularly running 30-40 miles a week year around, is that it’s catabolic. Since rucking uphill with a pack is a muscular endurance event, you’re only going to stand to benefit from being considerably stronger than the typical runner. Ideally, running would be subordinate to other areas of fitness as it relates to hunting. If you are an actual runner, that’s your primary thing and you do races, that all look different, but a person who uses running as their primary means of training for backcountry hunting is likely going to be lacking in the muscular endurance department since that it a different energy pathway.

I do have a hunting and backcountry snowboarding partner that’s an mountain ultra racer. We put on camelbacks and go peak bagging, he’s hard for me to keep up with. His zone 2 is easily zone 3 for me (he’s also 10 years younger) and he’s often ~200+ yards out in front of me and I’m working hard to keep up. No doubt his cardiovascular system is better conditioned than mine. HOWEVER, we strap on 35# packs and do an overnight scouting trip, this scenario is reversed and I’m 200 yards out in front climbing to a glassing point at 12,800 with packs on and he’s the one struggling to keep up. The primary adaptation there is muscular endurance, not “cardio” like it is intuitive to believe and certainly nothing to do with getting your lungs “in shape” (is that is anything more than en expression).

That’s not to dismiss the fact that you need an aerobic base in order to achieve proper muscular endurance, but that base serves entirely subordinate to muscular endurance. If you are already strong, muscular endurance will come fairly quickly. In conjunction with strength training and some aerobic baseline maintenance, it’s something that can be effectively achieved by training it just once a week: uphill rucking in zone 2. Surplus strength will contribute considerably to continued performance after fatigue sets in (numerous studies to support this claim) and trying to build strength and muscular endurance at the same time is entirely inefficient.

As is the case in all of these threads, my advice is always the same: “get strong first” -some part of your year should ideally be dedicated to pure strength training. With studies suggesting that you otherwise lose ~1% of your muscle mass annually after the age of 40, if nothing else, you should be thinking about longevity and how you don’t want to end up. If you wake up at 50 and find yourself with 10% less muscle than you had at 40 and you weren’t very strong to begin with, you’re on the verge of serious decline and you’re going to have a much more difficult time realizing muscular endurance.

We are all in this together and as long as you stay in shape and love the outdoors there is no wrong answer.

 

[Poser]

To be a good distance runner you should also strength train and at 30-40 miles a week is not going to deteriorate any muscle if you strength train as well. The thing with ultra guys is that in reality they are not in the same type of shape as a track athlete. Yes a 100 miles they are mentally tough And would beat track athletes,but most ultra guys are at a snails pace for most of their races which keeps your heart rate very low. Hiking up a steep hill at elevation with a pack on is very taxing on the HR if your moving at a good pace. The original posts question was “how to prepare the lungs”. You can’t prepare your lungs, but you can strengthen your heart to pump more blood and your body can learn to use more of the oxygen it takes in.
In reality there is not many placeS in the US you can be more than ten miles from a road.So at most your hiking a few miles or less to a glassing spot. Being more of a high rpm athlete would seem to be more convenient for that situation, so doing more high intensity track workouts would be more suitable for that.

Yeah, but the heavier your pack, the slower you go. Once you exceed a weight threshold + a gradient threshold, you can’t maintain zone 3 for consecutive hours on end. If you push into zone 3 you are relying more on the cardiovascular pathway vs muscular endurance, but it’s not an efficient combination for moving weight that exceeds some relative % of your Bodyweight I.e. the 160# guy shouldering a 45# pack. I don’t know exactly what the threshold is, but it’s lighter than you might think: 25-30# for most people under 200# or so. If your primarily focused on training for that as it relates to hunting, you are going to suffer tremendously on a sustained 80# packout with constant uphill.

 

[bigcanyon]

Yeah, but the heavier your pack, the slower you go. Once you exceed a weight threshold + a gradient threshold, you can’t maintain zone 3 for consecutive hours on end. If you push into zone 3 you are relying more on the cardiovascular pathway vs muscular endurance, but it’s not an efficient combination for moving weight that exceeds some relative % of your Bodyweight I.e. the 160# guy shouldering a 45# pack. I don’t know exactly what the threshold is, but it’s lighter than you might think: 25-30# for most people under 200# or so. If your primarily focused on training for that as it relates to hunting, you are going to suffer tremendously on a sustained 80# packout with constant uphill.

This is 3 hours in zone 4 and 5 and a hard marathon I ran. No breaks. Train right and you can go hours at a high HR.

 

[bigcanyon]

I get what your saying but there is a point that you can get in such good cardio that 25/30 pounds doesn’t make much of a difference.

 

[Felix40]

Everyone has different needs. For cardio I feel the best when I make myself do long CrossFit type workouts coupled with running. Anything that puts you at the redline for 30 to 60 minutes is going to be beneficial.

I do a fair amount of lifting all year. I can’t think of a time in the last few years when I wished I was stronger on a hunt. There have been a lot of times I was struggling to breathe.

 

[MuleDeerMike]

What about a plyometric exercise like P90X Plyo X? I was thinking this would be a good exercise to get in cardio/functional strength shape?

 

[bigcanyon]

I apologize for turning this into a competition. I just strongly believe in cardio for the mountains but again no wrong answer if your happy.

 

[Will_m]

This is 3 hours in zone 4 and 5 and a hard marathon I ran. No breaks. Train right and you can go hours at a high HR.

Well, this chart seems to hard to argue with.

 

[bigcanyon]

What about a plyometric exercise like P90X Plyo X? I was thinking this would be a good exercise to get in cardio/functional strength shape?

I think anything that gets your HR up and keeps you active will be productive. I have had some friends do it when it first become popular and seemed to like it.

 

[Runwilderness]

My $0.02. I also truly believe that the mental aspect of hiking at altitude plays a significant to role in addition to overall fitness.

Regardless of whether I am in good shape or poor shape, I perform better at 2500ft than I do at 9000ft. I am faster without a pack than I am carrying weight. A road workout is never the same as an off trail climb.

I need to spend time at altitude, with a pack, off trail, etc to train my brain to adjust my actual effort level to my capability, rather than allow myself to become upset with the pace or the suffering and push myself into either a physical or mental breakdown. If I haven’t done this, I need to consciously tell myself this is hard because of the conditions, and force myself to settle into the effort.

 

[P Carter]

On Poser's point about muscle loss, my understanding is that the 10% muscle loss figure was based studies of sedentary people. As I recall, studies of non-sedentary poplutions--triathletes, I think so endurance athletes--suggested that muscle loss can be dramatically reduced (or perhaps completely halted) by activity. In my view, the takeway from those studies is not so much "get as strong as you can so you will have some residual strength after you lose 10% of muscle mass per decade," but rather "come up with a program that can be continued as you age so as to slow the rate of muscle loss to the extent possible." Again, not an argument, just a discussion.

Edit: Here's the link: https://www.researchgate.net/public...reserves_Lean_Muscle_Mass_in_Masters_Athletes

"This study contradicts the common observation that muscle mass and strength decline as a function of aging alone. Instead, these declines may signal the effect of chronic disuse rather than muscle aging."

 

[bigcanyon]

On Poser's point about muscle loss, my understanding is that the 10% muscle loss figure was based studies of sedentary people. As I recall, studies of non-sedentary poplutions--triathletes, I think so endurance athletes--suggested that muscle loss can be dramatically reduced (or perhaps completely halted) by activity. In my view, the takeway from those studies is not so much "get as strong as you can so you will have some residual strength after you lose 10% of muscle mass per decade," but rather "come up with a program that can be continued as you age so as to slow the rate of muscle loss to the extent possible." Again, not an argument, just a discussion.

Edit: Here's the link: https://www.researchgate.net/public...reserves_Lean_Muscle_Mass_in_Masters_Athletes

"This study contradicts the common observation that muscle mass and strength decline as a function of aging alone. Instead, these declines may signal the effect of chronic disuse rather than muscle aging."

Great point. I also believe most people that think of serious cardio or marathon people picture 118 pound kenyons or Ethiopian. I would completely agree that a 50 pound pack would hinder that size human. In reality take a 800 meter runner who trains 60 miles a week and is also doing lots of strength training, this is what I mean by cardio shape and strength.

 

[Poser]

This is 3 hours in zone 4 and 5 and a hard marathon I ran. No breaks. Train right and you can go hours at a high HR.

Can you sustain that with a 50# pack going uphill, though? That’s the problem with applying running to rucking.

 

[Poser]

Well, this chart seems to hard to argue with.

Let’s see the chart correlated with a mountainous elevation profile and then put a 50# pack on and then see if it can be sustained. I’m not diminishing the effort unto itself, but it’s a different energy pathway than rucking and the training volume needed to sustain that effort under the weight of a 50# pack for thousands of feet of elevation gain, while surely possible, would be entirely impractical.

 

[bigcanyon]

The heart doesn’t know you have weight on or how fast your going, it’s sole job is to pump blood. So yea I could but at much slower pace. The thing is you would never do a 3 hour climb while hunting. In my experience you walk 20 minutes or so stop look around, have a snack etc. the biggest difference though is when you are in very very good cardio shape, during those short breaks your heart rate drops considerably quicker than the guy that is not in shape, so when you start again your already more recovered. Again I am not saying you shouldn’t be physically strong, but I would trade 15 pounds on the bench press for the ability to run a mile a minute faster.

 

[bigcanyon]

Let’s see the chart correlated with a mountainous elevation profile and then put a 50# pack on and then see if it can be sustained. I’m not diminishing the effort unto itself, but it’s a different energy pathway than rucking and the training volume needed to sustain that effort under the weight of a 50# pack for thousands of feet of elevation gain, while surely possible, would be entirely impractical.

Yes there is a trade off to a point, but I am not talking about the average guy trying to cut down to 120 pounds I am just saying they should do a bit of high intensity track style workouts to teach the body how to be shorter on oxygen and still function.