Home Workout Routines for Mountain Sports Athletes

Think of your local gym as a basecamp on an expedition. Gear is everywhere, and you’re equipped to the gills with tools for every scenario. Training at home is the pared-down summit push. Gone are the heavy weights, fancy treadmills and exercise machines. You’re stuck with whatever you can fit or find. Utilizing what’s there to maintain a level of fitness for when you can next access the outdoors is a matter of getting creative, taking advantage of recovery time, and sticking to a routine. Here are four that require minimal equipment you can start doing at home now.

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Ab Roller

With its wheel and padded handles, the ab roller looks like a kid’s toy. But once you start using it, you realize it’s anything but fun: rolling the wheel out and back while holding yourself up with your arms burns. Frequent use, however, builds up the abs and side abs, helping to form a six-pack. It also strengthens the shoulders, chest and lower back.

The most common way to use an ab roller is via kneeling rollouts, which can be done with variations like with a V motion (side to side), with one hand, with one leg extended, or any change thereof. Other methods include stabilizing yourself with your arms and rolling the wheel out with one leg at a time.

Having a strong core allows mountain athletes—skiers, rock climbers, alpinists, runners—stability. A strong center increases balance, poise, and boosts overall power.

Start slowly with few reps, focusing on form over quantity and build from there. Extend the ab roller all the way out in front, hold it there, then slowly bring it back. Repeat 20 to 30 times with two-minute rests in between.

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Push-Ups

Push-ups strengthen the arms, chest, abs and upper back. They’re especially useful for climbers, as push-ups use antagonist muscles. Building up these muscles helps prevent injuries and tendonitis caused by overtraining.

Along with the standard push-up method, there’s also a plyometric style, as in dynamic. Think: the clapping push-ups seen in Rocky, though that is an extreme example. There’s also hands together, hands far apart, touching knee to elbow, and elevated styles (where either hands or feet are above the head to provide an incline). You can also do one-arm push-ups.

Push-ups are done in the kneeling position or plank-style. Build up to sets of 20 to 30. Pushup bars make the exercise more comfortable by alleviating wrist pain.

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Jump Rope

Jumping rope requires cadence, focus and speed, and few exercises are more effective in getting the heart pumping. To the unaccustomed, it feels like sprinting up a steep hill. With time, however, skills improve. Since it also requires swinging a rope over your head, unless you have high ceilings and plenty of space, it’s best done outside.

Jumping rope is done forward, backward, crisscrossing your arms or with one foot at a time.

Jump rope for 30 seconds and then repeat after a two-minute break; if you miss, keep going.

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Pull-Ups/Hangboarding

Pull-ups strengthen the arms, shoulders, back, and improve grip strength. A bar is required and many pull-up bars fit in doorways, where others can be wall-mounted and some are free-standing.

Many people—climbers included—can’t do a single pull-up, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. Just a little more effort each day, no matter how much, allows muscles to build up.

Where doing a pull-up isn’t required to climb, having strong fingers makes a big difference, which is why climbers use hangboards. This tool can be used for pull-ups, but their primary purpose is for hanging by your fingertips. Hangboards are thin rails with varying lengths, or pockets, made of wood or polyurethane. Check out this workout-routine training tool that Alex Honnold uses.

Hangboards and pull-up bars can also be used to build up abs by doing individual leg lifts, simultaneous leg lifts and front levers.

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Courtesy Osmo

Recovery

Muscles burn after a workout, and no one wants to sit around all day feeling achy. Proper nutrition and hydration help alleviate discomfort and recovery bars drinks help too. Floyd’s of Leadville makes a variety of recovery items, including a CBD-infused recovery bar designed for fueling muscles and reducing pain (since pain and inflammation reduction is one of the benefits of CBD).

Recovery drinks work well too, which is why many cyclists, runners and climbers use them between workouts. Osmo Nutrition makes hydrating drinks, including Active Hydration and Rapid Recovery. Additional recovery and hydration brands include Hammer Nutrition, Skratch Labs, Nuun, and Endurox R4.

Online Resources

In 2014, Scott Johnston and Steve House’s book Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete, helped mountain sports athletes train smarter with the theory that “all training is exercise, but not all exercise is training.” Besides coaching and helping the world’s top climbers reach their objectives, the duo and their team at Uphill Athlete provide several training plans for all types of mountain sports. In the new shared crisis of the coronavirus pandemic, Uphill Athlete is now offering up 24 free in-home workouts.

These workouts are split up into three categories: Rainier (easiest), Denali (intermediate,) and Everest (hardest). From the Rainier series, Workout No. 5 aka the “Meat and Potatoes Workout” consists of squats, push-ups and “body rows,” an excellent and simple routine starter. Level up with more hard-core “leg day” workouts like Workout No. 8 from the Denali series (literal butt-kicker).

Uphill Athlete also provides free info on managing nutrition while isolating or sheltering in place. The team is also holding weekly Zoom meetings to discuss various issues like how to stay motivated, along with storytelling sessions about various climbing trips House, Johnston and other alpinists have done to help people stay fit, motivated and sane during this new era.

 

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