Prior to embarking on any training programme you should seek clearance from a trusted and qualified medical professional to see if you are healthy and fit enough to partake in it. You should also seek professional coaching in order to safely learn the movements. Immediately stop all exercise if you feel dizzy or weak. It is your responsibility to safeguard against risk.
What I am about to describe may probably take first place for the most boring workout you can possibly do. Think swimming laps is bad… spinning? You haven’t seen anything. It is simple however. And if you are subject to living in the flatlands then you will need to get down with this, if your goal is to go up. When I lived in the mountains it was easy to train for climbing them. Training was climbing. Climbing was training. Simple as that. Of course back in the day we didn’t really know any better. Today we have alternatives; or as in what I am about to describe for the terrain challenged, are forced to have… an alternative. Enter the humble box step.
Huh? Yes the box step. Take careful notes here. What you will need for this is the following:
- Mountain boots.
- A pack that you can load with up to 30% of your bodyweight.
- A sturdy box (or step) that is about 250 to 300mm high.
- An extremely high boredom resistance coefficient.
To perform this workout you must… Lace up the boots. Put on the loaded pack. Step up onto the box. Step back down. Repeat 1000 times.
You will probably want to first attempt this with less than 30% bodyweight. There may be some merit in going over this amount eventually, but personally I can’t see it. You are also going to want some target times to shoot for. I would say that if you could do this drill in 30 minutes or less then you would be chasing on the heels of a pretty hard group of elite individuals.
It’s deceptively simple and the only real nuance is that to be most effective you need to get both feet onto the box before stepping off of the box. The biggest non-physical challenges that you will face are the boredom and that you will need to devise some way to count your steps.
You may think that you can use one of those fancy stair climber machines instead. Don’t! They don’t work the same and it’s easy to ‘cheat’, plus this is simple and cheap and you can do it anywhere. Your basement, garage, back yard, the park… anyplace you can park your box. Outside training is always best in my books. Doing this in the rain, snow, or blistering sun will add another dimension to your training as well. Consider having a hydration system in your pack. As you can imagine this workout has loads of opportunity for variation. Combinations of pack weight, number of steps, time, and step height can give you virtually limitless possibilities.
For some types of training I am against listening to music, because you need to be concentrating on skill development. There is only a little skill development needed for box stepping. So cue up the Reverend Horton Heat, crank up the volume, and get to it.
I don’t care if you do live in Nebraska; if you are diligent and disciplined with this you have no excuses for not being able to train effectively for alpine climbing.