Muscular Endurance for Mountain Athletes

[bpitcher]

Had some similar experiences as you guys (although not as long or as many miles) on my NM trip. Muscular fatigue was near zero, except for a few sections we were on our tippy toes going up. I am happy with the results considering I started these about 5 weeks before the hunt. 30lbs felt effortless going up and down.

Our limiting factor was our lungs in most places. Likely because we came from sea level straight to 7-9k with no acclimation and we are used to moving too fast. I'm too used to racing around everywhere with my ruck on and I think that's probably not the play in steep terrain - especially on longer trips. Lessons learned for next trip...

(bonus points if you can spot the bull)

 

[mtwarden]

^ Good deal! Top of ridge, just right of center?

 

[COJoe]

I read through most of this post as it was so relevant to what we do each year on the mountain. We had seven days on the mountain with only sitting still on opening day. All other days were hiking with about 30-35 lbs or so heading up drainages, sometimes straight up, slowly but so much of the time was spent side hilling. This is something I need to start training more for as it will fatigue your ankles, shins and knees more than I realized. For me, it was my weakest point, not terrible, just fatigued at times which starts a mental issue of thinking, I don't want to go down/up there. That can ruin a hunt. How many of you train for side hilling? The mountains I hunt have no flats spots, lol. Also, they have lots of beetle kill pines and small dead aspen that you can't use for any uphill leverage. I've started back up my training for next year so, God willing, I'll be stronger and focused better for 2025. I was so glad to have my Crispi Colorados on.

Poser, we saw a few drainages like your photos show and was kinda hoping I didn't see an elk down in them, lol.

 

[mtwarden]

When I did my ME stuff (steep, straight up), I always finished (w/ the same pack) with an additional 3-5 miles, mostly downhill, but tried to include some side-hilling as well. Side-hilling is definitely taxing, especially if it's all the same direction.

Side-hilling is exactly what crushed my dreams of using a "trail runner" for hunting

 

[Poser]

I don't specifically "train" for side hilling as in going out of my way to purposefully get some in, but just being out and about all summer in the mountains backpacking, fishing, hiking, shooting etc and then backcountry skiing in the winter gets me a regularly and healthy enough dose that I'm adapted to it. I don't tend to have any issues with my ankles.
I'd say the same applies for blowdown. I tend to think of blowdown as more of a tolerance factor than physicality. Its frustrating so you have to be build your tolerance to the frustration.

 

[justinspicher]

I spent the months leading up to this season in a much lower elevation than I live and recreate, by about 6k feet lower.

Anyway, for the past 70ish days I was gone, I tried a new approach to prepping for the rifle seasons in Colorado. I spent the first 30 days performing 200 kb swings, 100 air squats and 100 pushups each day. On Saturday I’d do 20 minutes of stairs.

The next 30 days I bumped my swing total up to 400 each day, swapped the squats for lunges and switched to dips from pushups. Moved my Saturday stair work to 30 minutes.

The last ten days I dropped to 100 swings each day and nothing else.

I got home the Tuesday before 2d rifle, headed to elk camp that Friday and covered roughly 25 miles between 9-10k, including helping pack out a buddy’s bull.

Since I spent roughly half the year away from home, this will be the plan moving forward for my training.

 

[Josh Gray]

Not nearly as arduous as @Poser s' hunt, but a metric for me to consider. Last weekend I packed in a 35-ish lb pack for a three day hunt and the last day packed a 80-ish lb pack (buddy killed a cow) out ~ 6 miles (mostly downhill).

The most weight I used for ME training was 45 lbs. I'm not going to say the pack on the way out felt like a feather, but wasn't overly discomfortable and my legs weren't overly fatigued.

I really believe it’s unnecessary to train with more than 60 pounds. Maybe someone can push it to 70 if you’re a big dude. Rucking around with 100 pounds isn’t going to give any real physiological adaptations but certainly will increase your chances of tweaking your knee or back. Packing out meat is just going to suck regardless of how much you “ruck” but if you’ve built a big enough base/strength then you can suffer better. Scott Johnston once told me that he never has his guys training for SOF selections do endurance work with packs over 50# and will only use ME days to push the pack weight higher than that. Even then it’s only done once a week. The rest of the aerobic volume is filled with running or hiking with 25-30 pounds.

The fact you were training on a hill steeper than you’d ever imagine packing an animal up in many ways gave you a training stimulus equal to or greater than carrying double the weight on 1/2 the grade doing the real thing.

 

[Poser]

I really believe it’s unnecessary to train with more than 60 pounds. Maybe someone can push it to 70 if you’re a big dude. Rucking around with 100 pounds isn’t going to give any real physiological adaptations but certainly will increase your chances of tweaking your knee or back. Packing out meat is just going to suck regardless of how much you “ruck” but if you’ve built a big enough base/strength then you can suffer better. Scott Johnston once told me that he never has his guys training for SOF selections do endurance work with packs over 50# and will only use ME days to push the pack weight higher than that. Even then it’s only done once a week. The rest of the aerobic volume is filled with running or hiking with 25-30 pounds.

The fact you were training on a hill steeper than you’d ever imagine packing an animal up in many ways gave you a training stimulus equal to or greater than carrying double the weight on 1/2 the grade doing the real thing.

I think most people in this thread have agreed that's there's no real reason or benefit to training with "heavy" (let's generally say North of ~60 lbs or so) packs. I think its often the newbies to Western hunting who are of the mindset that "I'm going to have to pack an elk out so I need to spend a lot of time with a 90 lbs pack on." While it might make sense to see what 90 lbs "feels" like in your pack and maybe even experiment just a bit to find out how much weight you can deal with in pack, when it comes down to spending time training to carry packout types weights, the only time that's going to give you a good ROI is time you spend getting stronger in the gym so that you can manage such weight without getting hurt. I believe that point was covered in the Evoke podcast regarding both hunting and SOF selections -your greatest risk to injury is handling/putting on/taking off those extreme loads.
Mark Rippetoe has stated something along the lines of "A guy with a [relatively modest] 300 lbs deadlift just isn't going to hurt his back picking up an awkward 30 lbs object"

 

[Josh Gray]

Also I

I think most people in this thread have agreed that's there's no real reason or benefit to training with "heavy" (let's generally say North of ~60 lbs or so) packs. I think its often the newbies to Western hunting who are of the mindset that "I'm going to have to pack an elk out so I need to spend a lot of time with a 90 lbs pack on." While it might make sense to see what 90 lbs "feels" like in your pack and maybe even experiment just a bit to find out how much weight you can deal with in pack, when it comes down to spending time training to carry packout types weights, the only time that's going to give you a good ROI is time you spend getting stronger in the gym so that you can manage such weight without getting hurt. I believe that point was covered in the Evoke podcast regarding both hunting and SOF selections -your greatest risk to injury is handling/putting on/taking off those extreme loads.
Mark Rippetoe has stated something along the lines of "A guy with a [relatively modest] 300 lbs deadlift just isn't going to hurt his back picking up an awkward 30 lbs object"

Love me some Rippetoe for a solid dose or common sense , Particularly fond of the often used “'Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.”

 

[mtwarden]

Going to circle back to this thread post season.

Prior to using the muscular endurance approach lined out in Uphill Athlete, I would starting some pack weight training about 8 weeks out of hunting season—increasing pack weight slowly and doing it a couple times/week. This approach worked pretty well for me. This was in addition to strength training at the gym twice a week (with some cutting back on the weight as the season got closer) and hiking single track trails almost daily.

Their approach isn't radically different than what I was doing, but it is different. Still adding weight slowly and incrementally, keeping the training sessions in the hour-ish range and still only doing it once/twice a week. What was different was the terrain where the training took place—very steep. My prior pack training was done on single track trails with quite a bit of ascent/descent, but not nearly as steep as they prescribe. Also, I didn't pay a lot of attention to staying in Zone 2 prior (although most of it was in Zone 2), but did this year.

My takeaway is that this more focused approach, using very steep terrain, works. It wasn't a night and day difference from prior years, but I did see an improvement in my ability to ascend with weight on my back.

There was a glassing spot that I visited several times this season and coincidentally very close to the steepness of one of the routes I trained on. My day pack was 25-ish lbs and I noticed that this hike was easier than years past and my heart rate was lower—more Zone 2, less Zone 3.

With all that said, I've changed my approach to pre-season pack training and will continue with their prescribed approach

 

[TaperPin]

I think most people in this thread have agreed that's there's no real reason or benefit to training with "heavy" (let's generally say North of ~60 lbs or so) packs. I think its often the newbies to Western hunting who are of the mindset that "I'm going to have to pack an elk out so I need to spend a lot of time with a 90 lbs pack on." While it might make sense to see what 90 lbs "feels" like in your pack and maybe even experiment just a bit to find out how much weight you can deal with in pack, when it comes down to spending time training to carry packout types weights, the only time that's going to give you a good ROI is time you spend getting stronger in the gym so that you can manage such weight without getting hurt. I believe that point was covered in the Evoke podcast regarding both hunting and SOF selections -your greatest risk to injury is handling/putting on/taking off those extreme loads.
Mark Rippetoe has stated something along the lines of "A guy with a [relatively modest] 300 lbs deadlift just isn't going to hurt his back picking up an awkward 30 lbs object"

City girls on month long NOLS backpacking trips are carrying 40% of their body weight every day all day - I think you guys will be ok with a heavy pack from time to time.

We had a flat lander guy named Beach Muscles who worked a big chainsaw all day better than than any of the wirey guys, but damned if he wasn’t the slowest one going up steep hills and was always teased for not having a piece of equipment to use in the off season for carrying weight up a hill.

Carrying 30 lbs up and down the steepest western terrain all summer got me in in great shape to carry 30 lbs, but heavier weight is different and stresses different stabilizing muscles, especially where shoulder straps take a lot more weight. I’ve been with tough guys who quickly developed painful muscle strains in some of those secondary shoulder muscles, when carrying a modest 70 lb pack, that took weeks to recover from and cut their backpacking trips short, or at least made them suffer needlessly. I do love an opportunity to poke fun at them - “All that time you saved not working with a heavy pack, how’s that working out? *snicker*”

*chuckle*

Everything in moderation, but by far the best guys to carry weight up a hill, train carrying weight up a hill, and train all you want on nicely groomed trails, but nothing prepares the legs for hunting like going cross country.