The Mountaineer's Guide to Periodization Training for Epic Endurance

Let's start with some bad news: the world is rife with truly terrible training advice for mountaineers. All that noise can make it tough to write your mountaineering training plan. Which is why I’m dedicating this post to the topic of training periodization.

To illustrate, here's a summary of the training lecture from my high-altitude mountaineering class.

• Lift six days a week

• Cardio seven days a week (even on your "rest" day)

• Workout 2–3 hours each day

• If you don't do it, you're an irresponsible teammate who's probably going to die and orphan your children

Now before you freak the eff out like I did, let me reassure you that this is NOT how you should train for a beginner mountaineering trip! Seriously, it's more like what you do if you're a sponsored athlete and training for Mt. Everest.

To put it in perspective, during my peak training cycle for Mount Rainier (which only lasts a few weeks), I usually average about 12 training hours a week. Not because 12 is a magic number, but because it's all I can manage and still hold down a job and have friends. And that's just my peak volume. For most of the training rest of the season, I do less.

And here's a secret: I know people who have climbed big mountains on way less training volume than that.

So today, let's talk about training Smarter, not harder. Basically, this means doing the right workouts at the right time.

This concept is known as training periodization, and mastering it can help you train for multiple goal climbs in a season without burning out or overtraining.

types of periodization

On its most basic level, training periodization means adjusting your workout type, load, and intensity over time. You can think of endurance training in four overlapping cycles:

• Annual Training Plan – This encompasses the entire training year, including your active training periods and off seasons.

• Macrocycle – This refers to an active training period where you are building toward a goal. For example, if you are climbing Mount Rainier in July and Orizaba in November, you will probably train in two separate macrocycles lasting a few months each.

• Mesocycle – Smaller phases within your training cycle that focus on a certain fitness objective. For example, you might build muscle strength early and shift to muscular endurance later.

• Microcycle – The weekly building blocks of your program. In order to get stronger over time, you need to balance working out with rest and recovery. Your microcycles are where you do your short-term planning for best results.

Sounds a bit confusing, right? It’s not as bad as it seems. Let’s take a look at each of these cycles and how you can put them to work for you.

Annual Training Plan

On a given day of the year, your training should look different depending on how close you are to your goal. Because if you trained all the time like you were about to climb a big mountain, your hips and knees would blow out and you'd probably lose your mind!

In general, your annual training plan will move through the following phases.

While it’s helpful to think of your annual training plan as a circle that repeats every year, keep in mind that this is a bit oversimplified! It’s normal to move back and forth between phases, especially when you’re training for multiple goals during the year.

Also, your training phases will not all be the same duration. For example, your taper probably won’t last more than two weeks.

Here’s a quick explanation of each annual training plan phase and its purpose.

Off Season

During this time, you may be active, but not following any kind of structured training plan. Your goal during the off season is to maintain your baseline fitness while refreshing your mind and body. This is also a great time for activities that aren’t specific to mountaineering (skiing or cycling, for example.)

Base

This is the early part of your training season. Your goal during the base period is to build a solid foundation of sport-specific fitness. This period may be very short if you’ve been active through the off-season. But if you’re brand new to fitness, it could last several months.

Build

The build phase is what most of us think of when we hear the word “training!” It’s the part of the season when you’re increasing your workout time and intensity each week as you work toward your goal.

As we’ll see in a minute, the build phase is usually divided into distinct mesocycles that focus on different fitness goals over time.

The build phase usually lasts a few months. However, if you have several goal climbs planned throughout the year, the later build phases might be shorter.

The hardest couple of weeks of a build phase is called the peak. If you’ve done your build right, you should be near maximum fitness at this time.

Taper

The build phase can be tough on your mind and body. So before your goal climb, it’s important to take take a short rest from hard training. For beginner mountaineering trips, 1–2 weeks is usually a good taper duration.

For more info, check out my blog post on how to peak and taper the right way.

Recover

After your goal climb, you’ll probably be tired (and also busy unpacking). Take a week or two off training (or train lightly) to celebrate and give yourself a break.

Maintain

If you have another goal climb coming up in the next few weeks, you may be able to maintain your fitness peak by doing a dialed-back version of your build program.

Macrocycles

If you have multiple goal climbs in one year, you will cycle through several of the phases above multiple times.

Generally, your first macrocycle of the year will be the longest (typically several months). During this cycle, you will move through the base, build, peak, taper, and recovery phases.

What happens next depends a bit on the timing of your next climb, and also how you’re feeling after your previous climb.

For example, let’s say it’s July, and Jennifer has just finished a climb of Mount Rainier. Here are some possible scenarios for her:

• Let’s say she wants to climb Gannett Peak at the end of August. In this case, she already has great mountaineering-specific fitness. So after a week of rest and recovery, she moves into the maintenance phase. She also does a one-week taper before Gannett.

• Alternatively, let’s say Jennifer feels totally wiped mentally and physically after Rainier. She takes a month off to rest, and then starts to train for a December ascent of Orizaba. Since she’s lost some fitness during her rest period, she repeats her base and build phases. However, she is pleased when her training progresses much faster the second time around. She actually slows down her build phase to avoid peaking too soon for Orizaba.

• Or, let’s say Jennifer wants to get in shape for a trail marathon after Rainier. Since running is a related but separate discipline, she repeats her base and build phases, focusing on running-specific workouts. Again, she is pleased to find that she progresses faster the second time around! She runs her trail marathon in October (after a taper) and feels great.

Eventually, Jennifer will probably reach a natural end to her climbing season where she moves into the off season. She can then start planning her next year of climbing, when the cycle will repeat.

Mesocycles

Breaking your build phase into smaller cycles can help you get better results. Here are two ways you can do this:

use training cycles to Build in easy weeks

One endurance training mistake beginners often make is to keep increasing their training time, mileage, and elevation gain week over week until the taper.

This ignores an important principle called the training effect, which states that after hard exercise, your body actually gets stronger at rest.

So after a couple weeks of building, it’s important to take an easy week. This will allow your body to consolidate the gains you’ve made. 

Most people do well on a four-week training cycle, which means you will build for three weeks, then rest for one week. This is actually where I suggest you start. 

Some exceptions to this rule: if you are over 50, have a chronic health condition, or just need more recovery time for any reason, you can use a 3- or even 2-week cycle. 

Another tip: it’s totally fine to adjust the length of your training cycle across the season. Some people who start out at four weeks start to get run down as the workouts get longer and harder. In this case, it’s fine to go down to 3-week cycle or even a 2-week cycle.

Workout cycling

This technique is bit more advanced. But for those of you who are excited to level up, it’s worth a mention here!

For endurance athletes like hikers and mountaineers, training focuses on doing lots of cardio at moderate intensity. This is also known as aerobic base training. It means that volume (time) will eventually become your limiting factor when it comes to planning your workouts.

However, because it takes awhile to build up your aerobic base, you will often have extra time and energy early in the build phase to work on other kinds of fitness. Some places to focus:

• Max strength (heavy lifting)

• VO2 max (high intensity interval training)

• Lactate threshold (medium intensity interval training)

My most on advanced mountaineering workouts walks you through each of these workout types in detail. Keep in mind that you don’t need to do these workouts at an advanced level in order to benefit!

As your aerobic base increases (and with it your training volume):

• You can ease off the frequency of your interval training. However, you may still want to incorporate some speedwork 1–2x a week for maintenance.

• Shift your strength workouts to muscular endurance training. However, lifting heavy 1–2x a month will help you maintain strength gains.

microcycles

Have you ever followed a training plan from a website or book — and had a hard time sticking to it?

This is because every human is different, and every training season is different.

Right now, it’s almost impossible to know how your body will feel a month from now or where your fitness level will be.

That’s why I’m a big advocate for mapping out a rough plan for your training season, but writing your workouts just one week at a time. This allows you to listen to your body and make adjustments as needed.

The training effect and the need for recovery

As you exercise, you might think you’re getting stronger. But you’re actually getting weaker. 

Imagine if you had to run a 5K right after a big hike. Your time would be slower than if you were rested, right?

During exercise, you strain your cardiovascular system and make tiny micro tears in your muscles. If you take a few hours or days to rest, this damage will heal, and you will recover.

That’s why it’s so important to plan some rest days and easy workouts every week.

Now here’s the cool thing. You don’t just recover back to your original fitness level. You actually get a little bit stronger for a day or so! This is called supercompensation.

You can see this illustrated in the graph below.

Training, recovery, and supercompensation [CC image courtesy of Haus via Wikimedia Commons]

In order to build excellent fitness for endurance sports, you should ideally exercise while you’re supercompensated. What’s more, as we can see in this bottom graph, each workout should get a little longer and/or harder to take advantage of that supercompensation. 

It’s by repeating this exercise-rest-supercompensation cycle over and over that you really take your fitness to new levels.

One of the best ways to make sure that you’re doing this is to log each of your workouts and grade your performance on a scale of A to F. If you’re mostly Bs with a few Cs, you’re probably in the right rhythm. If you’re mostly Cs and Ds, you may need a bit more recovery time between workouts.

Adjusting microcycles

Many athletes plan their workouts in weekly 7-day microcycles. Each cycle might include a long workout, two strength workouts, several shorter aerobic base workouts, and a rest day.

However, the 7-day cycle doesn’t work for everyone.

Some people have a hard time getting in all their workouts AND getting enough rest.

If that’s the case for you, feel free to plan in 8- or even 9- or 10-day microcycles!

It will mess up your calendar. But your body will be a lot happier, and you’ll probably make better progress.

The “eight-days-a-week” approach is ideal for:

• Older athletes

• People with chronic conditions that cause fatigue

• Anyone at any time who needs to slow down the pace of training and rest more.

Need some help putting it all together?

My FREE Training Plan Workbook walks you through a simple, six-step process to help you design a fitness program that gets results. Fill out the form below to get your copy.

And there you have it. Everything you need to make training periodization work for you.

If you have questions or need some help with your planning, jump in the Facebook Group for support.

Originally published June 18, 2020.