Strength Training for the Backcountry Athlete

Throughout my athletic career, I’ve heard the “weights or no weights” debate too many times to count. I’ve heard many comments from fellow athletes along the lines of:

“You don’t need to do strength exercises if you’re a runner.” The best way to train for climbing is to climb.” “I’m already strong enough.”

Having experimented with lots of different exercises and weight training programs for a variety of activities, I’ve come to a few conclusions:

1. Core strength (abs, lower-mid back) is important for almost any athletic activity. Whether you’re trying to keep your form intact at the end of a long race, perform a powerful heel hook or swing a bat, you will benefit from solid core strength.

2. Flexibility is underrated and underutilized. It’s important for injury prevention and it allows you to build muscle without getting muscle-bound, a condition that limits range of motion and can lead to injury. Flexibility also improves performance and energy efficiency. If you’re a runner, an extra inch on your stride multiplied by thousands of steps equals a materially faster time. If you’re a climber, being able to raise your leg higher means reaching that foothold that was previously out of reach (without pulling your hammy).

3. For athletic activities that require lots of strength, you will reach a natural “plateau” without strength training. Your body will get used to performing the same movements over and over, and you won’t get any stronger. At some point, you need to mix up your training with strength specific exercises to reach the next level.

4. Context and balance are key. Everyone has seen the local gym rats that only lift upper body. It’s a wonder that their chicken legs can support their teetering massive upper bodies. It’s nonsensical and nontransferable to athletic activities. Match your training to your activity. If you’re a runner, focus on core strength, not your biceps. During my junior year in college, I started lifting too much upper body (I was an XC runner). I was 6’2, 160lbs and I could bench press 230 lbs. I got slow. As soon as I started doing only core strength exercises, I lost 10 lbs and dropped a minute off of my 8k time. Now that I’m a mountaineer, I would love to get back to 160lbs and 230lbs on the bench press.

5. Focus on building strength (not “getting ripped”) and keeping opposite muscles in balance. If you train your quads, be sure to train your hamstrings as well. Imbalances among opposite muscle groups can lead to injury. Good climbers, mountaineers and backcountry skiers should aim for solid overall strength and cardio conditioning.

While I realize that the debate is still open, I’m personally convinced (based on my own experiences) that supplementary strength training is very helpful for sports like climbing, mountaineering and backcountry skiing. Alex Lowe agreed and his climbing partners said that he was a “level above everyone else.” Perhaps he was on to something. In Jackson, WY and Boulder, CO, there is a gym called Mountain Athlete that subscribes to a training philosophy for climbers and mountaineers that is similar to mine. On their website, they have links to a variety of videos (36 to date) that feature strength exercises that are geared toward climbers. Below, you can see an exercise called “Alligator Pushups.” It’s not hard to see how this one would be useful for climbers.

How to Make a V-thread Hooker

Given the miserable state of the global economy, it seemed appropriate to show you how to save some money. Here's a short video that I created to show you How to make a "homemade" V-thread hooker (while listening to Beethoven's 6th in F major). Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Ice climbing and using sharp objects and rotary tools are inherently dangerous. Make and use at your own risk. You assume all responsibility for any injuries that result from the making or using of a V-thread hooker as shown in this video. No animals or ice climbers were harmed in the making of this video.

Everything You'd Want to Know About Snow Anchors

While reading Backcountry Magazine last night, I came across an ad for K2 skis that showed various types of ski anchors. This led to me spending some time studying up on snow anchors and ultimately finding THIS great resource. It's by no means a new resource (circa 2002), but it's a good one and the laws of physics haven't changed since it was written.

Brief Update and Black Diamond Skins Video

Long time, no post. The last couple of weeks have been very busy. I recently joined Aurora Photos as a contributing photographer and it's taking longer than I expected to complete my first upload (since I have about 100 initial submissions that all require a long process of entering IPTC meta data and meeting other technical requirements). Additionally, I've been getting my financial statements and other paperwork ready for taxes.

In the midst of the madness, I've been able to sneak away from the desk for a few hours to solve my ski dilemma. I recently moved my Dynafit F12's to some '08 Black Diamond Kilowatts (175cm) and I picked up a 32L Black Diamond Covert pack that should carry skis much better than my floppy REI pack. Since the Kilowatts are significantly fatter than my previous skis, I had to get some new skins as well. I got some STS skins that should work much better than my ClipFix skins that never did stay on very well. I thought that I would share a video that I used to fit my skins flawlessly. It's much better and easier to understand that the directions that come folded up on a small paper in several languages.

JPG Compression Loss

I recently had a conversation with a photographer that insisted that shooting in RAW was a waste of time and disk space. I’m not going to spend any time refuting this point as it is well known that there are all kinds of advantages to shooting in RAW (from editability to data retention, etc). That said, I recently found a video that shows what .jpg compression does to an image over time. Watch closely as the image is compressed up to 600 times. Obviously there is no practical reason to compress an image up to 600 times, but it’s still interesting to see...

http://hadto.net/category/sketchbook/generation-loss

The MMO

You need a MMO, and you don’t need to switch over from a HMO or a PPO to get one. You just need to know how to tie one. The Munter-Mule-Overhand (MMO) is one self-rescue technique that enables a climber to lower/belay an injured party using a munter hitch combined with a mule hitch (for a hands free position) and an overhand knot (to back up the mule hitch). The MMO is a must have tool for climbers and it doesn’t weight a single ounce. If you want to learn how to make one (and many other self-rescue techniques), refer to page 43 and following of “Climbing Self Rescue: Improvising Solutions for Serious Situations” by Andy Tyson and Molly Loomis. You can see a preview of the book (including the section on the MMO) via the link below:

http://books.google.com/books?id=J5_sl0YR9eUC&pg=PA66&lpg=PA66&dq=MMO+rope+rescue&source=bl&ots=h_9W0Je-uF&sig=dvyW9B7QGBphUvteTPruUzGl500&hl=en&ei=65-uSejKGYS2nQf8v_TBBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA46,M1

Last night, I joined a large group of friends at the Erie Community Center to practice self-rescue and ascending techniques. A few of the guys even broke out the portaledge. Since it can be easy to forget techniques that you hope you never have to use, an annual practice session is a great idea. After all, if you can’t perform in a controlled environment, you’ll probably have little chance of success in a serious high-stress situation when you’re several pitches up your route.