So another good day in the back country had me thinking that it was time to start putting up some more workouts for those out there who are in for long slogs at altitude. We need the lungs, the legs, and the calf strength for everything from post holing waist deep, through skinning in 100cm + of pow on 50 degree slopes, and of course the occasional bit of technical climbing in soft boots on steep glacier faces.
Now there are always a host of tooling exercises to work on for people, but today’s stuff is more of a Mark Twight style suffer fest offering. Of the workouts, one was developed with Bobbity so that he could feed the need to suffer while injured this spring. The second option is a bit of an edit on the same theme. In both cases rowing could be switched out for something else… though my preference is rowing. No joint impact and a phenomenal workout which feels about as close to death as you can get. Actually makes skinning in deep snow seem pretty easy.
Workout 1: Bobbity
300m row in one minute
Rest one minute
Repeat for ten rounds.
When you fail rest a minute then pull a casual ten minutes of rowing.
Workout 2: Advanced Suffering
300m row in one minute
Rest 30s
20 calf raises with barbell (I used 225lbs for this.)
Rest 30s
Repeat until unable to continue.
Have fun with these ones. Something to wake you up at 4:45am, and get the body working. Almost as good as a fight with a badger.