Fitness 2014

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've really only been posting about this in TBR, but the past year or two I've been doing some rather aggressive hiking / basic mountaineering. I have a trip coming up in September. In the past I've prepped by regularly running and one day a week hiking up and down relatively small mountains in Georgia .

I want to get more training in, but adding more miles running can't be done (I start breaking down), and time wise I can't do more hiking. I'm spending some time on an exercise bike but I'm not sure if this is wasting my time. My theory for the bike is that it puts my quads through the paces a bit, and to a lesser extent is more cardio.

What do the gurus here think? Drop the exercise bike or keep it? Bring in something else?

What kind of strength training are you doing for your legs? If you're serious about a certain type of activity, strength training will almost always make you better at it. It's a concept even some very good athletes fail to recognize. But basically imagine each step you take while doing a rough hike uses say, 0.5% of your "potential" energy, if you make your legs stronger through strength training, each step may only use say, 0.25% of your "potential" energy. Do you see how that can actually make you able to go farther before getting tired? Because you exert less effort per step.

Marathon running is a good example, most failures of marathon running are actually failures of strength. While it requires great cardiovascular endurance to finish a marathon, you can basically just walk for awhile and still finish if your endurance isn't where it needs to be. But if your legs are too weak you'll hit a point at a certain mile where you basically can't continue physically. That happens because of a lack of strength.

Some of the best endurance athletes are those that understand strength is part of all endurance activities.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I think the best way to get good at walking / hiking is to walk / hike. The same way the best way to get good at cycling is to cycle, and the best way to get good at running is to run.

You can't get good at something without doing it. But it's a common fallacy that your best time spent training for a given activity is always that activity. General strength training for example contributes to all physical activity. Endurance training can contribute greatly to activities like wrestling/boxing. Yeah you probably shouldn't be getting serious about hiking without ever hiking, but other forms of training are very important.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I've really only been posting about this in TBR, but the past year or two I've been doing some rather aggressive hiking / basic mountaineering. I have a trip coming up in September. In the past I've prepped by regularly running and one day a week hiking up and down relatively small mountains in Georgia .

I want to get more training in, but adding more miles running can't be done (I start breaking down), and time wise I can't do more hiking. I'm spending some time on an exercise bike but I'm not sure if this is wasting my time. My theory for the bike is that it puts my quads through the paces a bit, and to a lesser extent is more cardio.

What do the gurus here think? Drop the exercise bike or keep it? Bring in something else?

Extra time running or hiking isnt going to help you anyway.  You need to increase the intensity of your workouts not the length so that mere hiking up a mountain will seem easy.

I would suggest intense sessions of ladder work mixed with weights.  The key is to keep your heart rate up throughout - thats where the ladder work comes in and the weights to build endurance - deadlifts (and ironically squats) will really help if you do them with a high heart rate.  You could also do hill running - sprint up a steep hill, walk or jog down and repeat.  Stair running also will do it if you have a long set of stairs that you can run up.  The key is the intensity not the length of the work out.

Yep, CC is spot on here. I surprised many of my friends on a long hike on the Appalachian Trail a few years ago because unlike my wife I wasn't a part of their regular hiking/running group. But I do sets of full intensity sprints/sled pushes a few times a week and lift weights very aggressively. Fairly difficult trail hiking simply did not tire me out, my legs are very strong and I'm adapted to the sort of short bursts of energy required on the toughest parts of the trail from sprinting.

As for the lower intensity parts of hiking, typically if you've been doing any kind of serious training you're adapted in a way suitable to get you through that sort of low intensity cardio.

[Maladict]

I agree. Most of my training is not outdoors on the bike, but fairly brutal, short indoor cycling sessions. I don't find I'm having trouble on the long outdoor trips.

The only downside I notice on long cycling trips is that my body isn't used to burning fuel economically. As long as I keep force-feeding myself continuously, I'm fine. Stop eating for half an hour, and it's crash and burn.

[Brazen]

I'd actually drop the bike and add resistance training. It can be bodyweight if you don't want to lug barbells. Here's the routine my running guru gym trainer gave me for glutes and core:

TRX squats (could be prisoner squats if no TRX)
Skater lunges
Single-leg bridges
Pendulums (stand on one leg and lean forward while lifting your other leg until your torso and leg and parallel to the floor - holding kettlebell optional)
Groiners: http://www.menshealth.com/celebrity-fitness/exercise-detail.php?91
Russian twists
Heel touches
Reverse crunches

But if you really want to stick to endurance training only, make it activity-specific. Is there a climbing wall near you or can you get to a gym with a step-mill or climber? Failing that, walk or run up steps in a sports stadium or a tower block, like every sports movie you've ever seen! If you want recovery cardio, make it swimming rather than another leg thing.

Also stretch. A lot. Not just 2 minutes at the end of your workout, but a good 30 mins to an hour of dedicated stretching, Pilates or yoga a couple of times a week. You can get very tight around the hips and glutes and throw out your back, hips or knee. I know, I didn't practice what I preach and I can barely walk with crippling hip/lower back pain after a race yesterday 

[mongers]

I agree. Most of my training is not outdoors on the bike, but fairly brutal, short indoor cycling sessions. I don't find I'm having trouble on the long outdoor trips.

The only downside I notice on long cycling trips is that my body isn't used to burning fuel economically. As long as I keep force-feeding myself continuously, I'm fine. Stop eating for half an hour, and it's crash and burn.

Not noticed this*.




* probably because I never seem to go further than 60-65 miles.

[Maladict]

Not noticed this*.




* probably because I never seem to go further than 60-65 miles.

I won't make it to 60 miles without taking food with me.
Maybe it's just my metabolism.

[mongers]

Not noticed this*.




* probably because I never seem to go further than 60-65 miles.

I won't make it to 60 miles without taking food with me.
Maybe it's just my metabolism.

No I meant I never go over 60-65 miles. 


That must be my limit, one day I need to find out what balance of effort, food intake and hydration is necessary to go further. Think I'll try and do something further in September.

I think you probably have a pretty normal metabolism.

[Eddie Teach]

Normal for dudes who go on hundred mile bike trips.

[alfred russel]

What kind of strength training are you doing for your legs? If you're serious about a certain type of activity, strength training will almost always make you better at it.

This is the crux of what I'm asking.

Last year I committed to focus on the leg press. But then this year I decided on the exercise bike with a decent amount of resistance instead. There are a few reasons why:
-I have an exercise bike at home, which means I don't have to be at the gym (which is very helpful because some days I'm doing two workouts, and practically I need to do one at home).
-I'm only running 4 days a week, and I'm hoping to do a marathon in the not too distant future. The cardio helps. It also puts me 2/3 of a way to triathlon training.
-I still get the burn in my quads from biking, similar to leg press. Does that mean both are helpful? (I don't know, that is why I asked)

Also, I am going up and down a small mountain. Right now I'm doing 5600 ft. up and down. I'm hoping to increase that to 8000ft over ~10 hrs. That shouldn't be overlooked--it is quite intense.

[alfred russel]

I'd actually drop the bike and add resistance training. It can be bodyweight if you don't want to lug barbells. Here's the routine my running guru gym trainer gave me for glutes and core:

TRX squats (could be prisoner squats if no TRX)
Skater lunges
Single-leg bridges
Pendulums (stand on one leg and lean forward while lifting your other leg until your torso and leg and parallel to the floor - holding kettlebell optional)
Groiners: http://www.menshealth.com/celebrity-fitness/exercise-detail.php?91
Russian twists
Heel touches
Reverse crunches

But if you really want to stick to endurance training only, make it activity-specific. Is there a climbing wall near you or can you get to a gym with a step-mill or climber? Failing that, walk or run up steps in a sports stadium or a tower block, like every sports movie you've ever seen! If you want recovery cardio, make it swimming rather than another leg thing.

Also stretch. A lot. Not just 2 minutes at the end of your workout, but a good 30 mins to an hour of dedicated stretching, Pilates or yoga a couple of times a week. You can get very tight around the hips and glutes and throw out your back, hips or knee. I know, I didn't practice what I preach and I can barely walk with crippling hip/lower back pain after a race yesterday 

Some of those are out. A part of my new year's resolution was to go to a climbing gym once a week. That hasn't happened. There just isn't time. Same with a pool. I don't have practical access.

Right now what I outlined takes the following time (assuming I don't miss workouts, which I do from time to time):

bike: 4 hrs / week
run: 5 hrs / week
hike: 8-10 hrs / week

Plus a bit of upper body strength training not under discussion.

Realistically, that is all the time I have. Anything coming in means something coming out. I'll go through the posts again later day and come up with an alternate plan (I'm supposed to be working right now  ).

[crazy canuck]

A couple things AF.  First, leg presses on a machine dont do much for you or at least not nearly as much as other resistance training.  All it does is focus on your big muscles without strengthing our core and supporting muscles - which is really what you need.

Second, we are all essentially telling you the same thing.  You keep saying you want advice but you don't seem to understand what we are saying to you.  Its not about the time you put in. Its about the intensity and resistance (weight training) with your heart rate kept up so you increase your strength and endurance.

You would be better off if you cut down on all the hours you are spending hiking.  Your body is already used to doing that and you wont see much improvement.  You will just maintain your current level of fitness.

If you do an intense work out, it will only take about 6 hours per week max for you to get into great shape.  That is assuming you do it for one hour six days a week.  But the catch is you really have to push yourself for that one hour.

[alfred russel]

You would be better off if you cut down on all the hours you are spending hiking. 

I'm only hiking one day a week. Also, I've seen things like going up and down stairs...but keep in mind that my hiking is going up and down a (very) small mountain. I'm currently doing 5,600 vertical feet of ascent and descent, and hoping to get to 8,000. 8,000 vertical feet is the equivalent of going up and down the empire state building about 6 and a half times.

Anyway...I'm going to drop a bunch of the exercise bike time and replace it with resistance training, and maybe a bit of yoga. Probably not yoga ( ). Squats, lunges, leg press...No leg press? I can also add in some stair work with pace. Maybe at lunch climb my building as fast as possible (it is 26 stories)? Hopefully I won't sweat too much.

[OttoVonBismarck]

It sounds like you're somewhat committed to doing your own thing, and that's fine. But what I'd advise specifically:

1. If you feel you need to do a big long hike, do it once every other week. You're already adapted to that hike because you're doing it every week, if you do it once every other week you will not become any less adapted to it and it should fulfill what I believe is your belief you need to be hiking a lot.

2. You need to have some coherent cardio plan, I am not sure what cycling 4 hr / week and running 5 hr / week looks like. Maybe you explained it but I apologize I didn't go over your post with great precision atm. Training is having a consistent idea as to what you will do, and then doing it. You should never start a training session without knowing exactly what you're doing and why. Will flesh this out at the end.

3. To expand on what CC said. Leg presses isolate the legs from the rest of the body, in the real world almost all human physical activity involves the leg muscles being used in conjunction with the rest of the body. Exercises like the squat, where you are required to put a barbell on your back and balance it force involvement of all core muscles. There are lots of people with weak cores who do machine circuits. There has never been a person who squats 400 lbs and has a weak core, because you will literally collapse just trying to stand with the barbell on your shoulders at that weight if you have not learned how to utilize your core to hold the bar up. [There is no risk of this in actuality, because no one squats 400 pounds without first squatting 100 pounds, and as you develop the ability to squat body weight and beyond this comes naturally.]

When you eventually go on your big planned hike, your entire body is going to be working in a fairly natural way as a unified machine. You want to train that as  best you can, and the big compound barbell movements are the best form of training the muscular system for that. [There are endurance adaptations that must occur as well, which goes without saying.] Not to the total exclusion of practical hiking experience, but as a strong augmentation. Why? Primarily because hiking is not progressively loadable.

Both hiking and barbell training use the body's muscular (and skeletal system.) Both activities force adaptation of the body. The difference is the speed of these adaptations and where they stop. With hiking, if you hike the same trail each week, in roughly the same amount of time, then after a brief number of repetitions you've adapted to that activity as much as you ever will. You can then either increase the distance you go, or decrease the time in which you are completing the hike. But if it's over treacherous terrain there is most likely going to be a hard cap on how fast you can reasonably complete the same course.

Barbell training is like hiking in that it forces an adaptation of the muscular/skeletal system. However, where it differs is it is progressively loadable. Unlike the hike, where the best form of "progressive load" is actually altering the actual activity every week (because a different course or a faster motion through the course is not actually the same activity per se.), with barbell movements simply adding more plates is adding more load. The more load, the more you adapt. If you're adapted to a 225 lb squat, you then force your body to adapt to a 230 lb squat. Due to this unique combination of full-body adaptation and progressive loading, barbell training is truly the best form of training there is for almost all physical activity. In many activities this is simply understood and accepted. Almost all competitive sports from swimming to soccer incorporate some element of barbell training into the strength and conditioning program. In many of the sports it is only given lip service, because what barbell training improves is general strength, and in many sports strength takes a back seat to other skill based attributes. But for those willing to bother, being stronger always makes them better. Wayne Gretzky was not a big guy, nor was it required that he be tremendously strong to be a good hockey player, but as good as he was he almost certainly would have been a little bit better if he had been stronger.

Specific Cardio I would do:

Semi-weekly hike as you were doing (mostly because I doubt you'll even agree to drop it to semi-weekly)

3x a week do HIIT training. I recommended using a rowing machine, sprinting, or pushing what's called a Prowler, you may/probably do not have access to one. If you don't have access to the facilities for anything but an exercise bike, this can be done on an exercise bike. Your HIIT training including rest intervals should take no more than 20 minutes. I can go into further detail on this if you need.

2x a week do LISS - Low Intensity Steady State cardio. This is most likely what you're doing now, you can do it for as long as you feel necessary. I don't think it's that necessary at all, but I feel you'd comply better if you're doing the cardio you "believe" you need to be doing.

Weight Training: I don't really know what you're willing to do. If you're willing to do an actual squat program, squat with a barbell 2-3 times per week (yes, you can squat that often unless you're an experienced, adapted lifter.) Do the appropriate weight for a 5 x 5 set. That should basically be enough that on the 5th rep of each set you should feel the world is about to collapse around you from the strain of finishing the rep. Don't lift to fail, but that last rep should be very hard and extremely unpleasant. For someone I can tell is dubious of the value of strength training I'd recommend this simple 3 day lifting schedule:

(n x y refers to n = reps, y = sets)

Week 1
Day 1: Squat 5x5, Back Extensions 10 x 3, Chin-ups 12-15 x 3
Day 2: Squat 5x5, Deadlift 5 x 1
Day 3: Squat 5x5, Back Extensions 10 x 3, Chin-ups 12-15 x 3

Week 2
Day 1: Squat 5x5, Power Clean 5 x 5
Day 2: Squat 5x5, Back Extensions 10 x 3, Chin-ups 12-15 x 3
Day 3: Squat 5x5, Deadlift 5 x 1

For Back Extensions and Chin-ups, eventually the rep scheme will be very easy. Do not increase reps, instead do the exercises weighted, and increase weight as you can. The adaptation of being able to do 20+ Chin-ups or large numbers of unweighted back extensions are limited compared to the value from being able to do those reps with progressively greater resistance. You can do pull ups instead of chin ups if you wish, I prefer chin-ups as they involve more muscles.

This is essentially half a program, focusing on whole body (leg focused) lifts like the squat and then stuff that is going to really work your full body core strength. It omits a lot of things that involve specifically the upper body in terms of weighted progress (Chin-ups obviously involve upper body) because you've indicated you're doing your own thing for that. This is mainly crafted for someone I don't think will be much interested in it, but in such a way if you give it a try I think it avoids the things you really don't want to do.

Some rules for using this: You will likely skip work outs based on your posts about being busy and such. If this happens do it intelligently. Let's say you use a simply M/W/F for your Day 1 2 3, if you do Day 1, Week 1 on Monday, then can't lift on Wednesday, then you lift on Thursday or Friday instead, do the Day 2, Week 1, stuff. If you "skip" and go to Day 3, Week 2 you skip dead lifting for that entire week.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Some further notes:

1. These sessions of resistance training will probably take ~60 minutes if done properly. Why so long? Anything involving a barbell, you need to do warm-up sets. They are not part of the scheme I listed, but occur before those sets. If you're squatting 165, you should do something like:

45 x 5 x 2
75 x 5 x 1
105 x 3 x 1
135 x 2 x 1
165 x 5 x 5

Squat weight for starters tends to vary a lot, if you've been doing a lot of leg presses and other leg work your initial squats could be high. Leg presses can help build the squat to a point, because the legs are the main engines of the squat. But, since leg presses have not adapted all the other muscles involved in the squat, someone who has been doing them heavy should take great caution, as you will be in a situation where your legs can squat more weight (by far) than your back, abdominal etc muscles can safely support during the lift. This will lead to your chest not staying up, and your back rounding, which puts dangerous stresses on the lumbar spine and is the source of many squat injuries. I don't want to scare anyone of the squat, but consult some trusted video resources and make sure you actually know how to do the squat. Since almost all warm ups I do are with an empty bar (excepting power cleans and deadlifts which are inconvenient to do with an empty bar), your first time squatting just "notice" when you're warming up when the weight is at a point where you feel that you cannot keep proper form without great effort. Make that your starting weight and increase the weight ~10 pounds a session always maintaining form.

2. Marathon runners are the first to denounce weight training. In general this is because marathon running is an extremely specific adaptation to basically one thing: marathon running. It's one of the few endeavors that is truly incompatible with weight training. Primarily because the large amount of LISS cardio required to get in marathon shape is almost impossible to do while also building/maintaining muscle mass. I dislike distance running for this reason, it is deleterious to your strength. Not that no muscular or strong people have ever ran marathons--they have. But anyone who lives the marathon lifestyle for long enough has to choose between strength and running marathon distances.

Something like intense hiking can and is done by strong people, I've done it and many far stronger lifters than myself enjoy vigorous/difficult hikes.

3. Because marathon runners are strangely held up as the idealized form of fitness, the nonsense that makes for good marathon running has polluted many other fields where it doesn't belong. A common fallacy spread by this school of thought is more muscle mass = more weight to move, and thus makes you less capable. This is ridiculous. That's like saying a Corvette is going to move slower than a Focus because the Corvette's engine is bigger. You hear collegiate level coaches in many sports repeat this nonsense, and the state of collegiate and Olympic coaching in the United States is very poor in many sports (most specifically Olympic weightlifting, a sport we've not done well at in decades.) In many sports the best athletes are big strong guys, even in sports you may not immediately associate with strength. Have you taken a look at Lebron James lately? Lebron is not built like a distance runner, he's built like someone who hits weights seriously and on a regular basis. Beyond the level at which we're talking about in this thread (professional athlete) the more general strength program (only half of which I've laid out) I advocate for general strength isn't appropriate and you'd need a more specialized lifting program which I assume Lebron follows.