Mountaineering Training | Body Weight Core Strength Circuits
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Categories: Mountaineering Fitness & Training
These strange times have many of us off balance and out of rhythm, and our training routines have felt the toll as well. Stay at home policies across the country have closed fitness centers and kept us at home without our usual tools. Body weight core exercises are a great way to continue to improve your strength and functional mobility, and taking your strength workout outside is a great way to break your routine and inject some new energy to training. The Dartmouth cross-country ski team uses this type of workout (and it’s where many of the example exercises come from) as part of a base and strength building cycle each fall.
Choose a jogging loop that has areas that you will be comfortable getting down to the ground on (a park, forest loop, or city parkway).
- Set out for a good warm-up, 10-15 min at a gentle pace that is still conversational.
- Find a comfortable spot (grass or a forest floor are much nicer than concrete!) and complete a set each of two different core exercises (pushups and crunches for instance). This style of workout will build more endurance strength since they use just body weight, so try to pick a number of repetitions that you can do several sets of, but still push you hard in the individual set. 60 full crunches and 40 pushups is a great example.
- Jog easily for 200 meters. The active recovery of jogging easily will still allow you to recover, but will train your body to recover while maintaining at least some level of effort.
- A set each of two more exercises (dips on a park bench and side planks).
- 200 meter jogging recovery.
- Complete a third set of exercises. 6 exercises is a great number to start from for your total workout.
- Continue until you have done 3 sets of each exercise (9 total strength stops).
- Cool down and head home!
As you progress, you can vary the workout in the number of repetitions you do during each set, or by varying the total number of sets. Try to mix up the exercises that you use, so that you get a complete core workout, without stressing one group of muscles unduly. This a great workout to do with partners at a safe social distance. You can spice it up by having different partners choose the exercises for a given set, which can add variety and show you some new exercises to add to your routine. If you don’t have a loop that is suitable, try a couple of laps of a small park. While it may take some imagination to get going, getting outside and breaking up your strength routine is a great way to keep the upward progress of your training going!
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These three resources have a number of good core exercises for inspiration:
http://www.brianmac.co.uk/exercise.htm#cte
https://experiencelife.com/article/core-circuit-workout/
http://www.sport-fitness-advisor.com/circuit-training-exercises.html
Comments? Questions? Share your thoughts here on the RMI blog!
Comments (1)
You should contact Maria Faires at My Active Nutrition. She trains mountaineers all the time including individuals climbing Everest, and has trained many for Rainer, etc. on her own and through Climb for Clean Air.
She is an excellent resource for your climbers and clients.
Posted by: George R Naumann on