How to Do Exercises for Mountaineering

Fit Climb Hi I’m Ali from Fit Climb and today I’m going to show you some strut training exercises you can do in the park or even at home where you don’t need a gym member to accomplish just to add to your aerobic fitness when your getting ready for your mountaineering, backpacking or even hiking. Generally, your core and lower body are what you use most in supporting your back pack and bodyweight in mountaineering and hiking so that’s what I’m going to focus on most today. For a beginner starting off you typically need a flat smooth bench realize that it’s wet outside wood can be really slippery and dangerous. Your bench should be 4 to 6 inches off the ground when starting off for a beginner. As you advance you can increase it to 10 to 12 inches for glacier mountaineering or hiking up hills. Steps up are going to develop your quadriceps, gluts, and hip muscles. The technique is to just place one foot on a race platform about 4 to 6 inches height to start off and then working up to 1 to 2 feet. Once on a step balance briefly on one leg and then slowly lower yourself down. Side step ups are a variation of the step up. The two we show here improve your balance, agility, quads and gluts. Step down has helped you control your gravity and balance on your way down the mountain which is really important. You want to make sure you pause at the bottom of your step and you can do back raises with a partner or holding on to some type of bar. The three exercises for your core are the boat, crunches and plank. For boat you want to make sure you have a nice V keeping your legs and back straight and looking forward with both arms up to the side. Try and hold this for 30 seconds to 1 minute. When you’re doing crunches do them side to side alternating between your elbows touching the opposite knees, try to remember not to pull on your neck and keep your neck fairly straight. For plank make you’re back straight with both elbows down and looking forward. Squat jump, develop your quads, hamstrings and gluts, start off in a sitting position, bend your knees 90 degrees and then jump forward fully extending with pauses in between landing gently. For pushups keep a straight back, hands about shoulder width about fully extend downward and slowly come up looking forward. Mountain climbers are good exercise for working both your core and your legs. Skip, set forward and back keeping a straight back and remember not to fully extend if you’re using a platform so you don’t hit your knees. Balance exercises are important in mountaineering. A lot times in hiking or mountaineering, your stepping from rock to rock log to log and you want to make sure you don’t fall especially if the edge of crevices or cliff sides. Starting your balance exercises and start off low holding on to something as you progress the logs make sure you have a dry surface so you don’t injure yourself before climbing. As you do, many of these exercises especially on the step up and step downs you can incorporate it with water bottles. You don’t want to add too much weight to your package to avoid injury. Running is a good cardio exercise for your aerobic training. Remember you can vary it by running up and down hills, bleachers, out in parks or even trail running. Remember the stretch and warm up before you work out and stretch and cool down after you workout and there’s no better way to get in shape for hiking or mountaineering than to actually hike or mountaineer so on weekends try and get out, vary your workout and I’ll catch on the trail. Hosted by Ali Alami Visit us on the web at: FitClimb.com