Training for the Uphill Athlete: A Manual for Mountain Runners and Ski Mountaineers - Softcover

House, Steve; Johnston, Scott; Jornet, Kilian

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1938340841 ISBN 13: 9781938340840

Publisher: Patagonia, 2019

Synopsis

Dovetailing on the success of Training for the New Alpinism and Patagonia’s own emphasis on all mountain use, Training for the Uphill Athlete translates theory into methodology to allow you to write your own training plans and coach yourself to endurance goals.

Steve House, one of the best mountaineers, and his coach Scott Johnston, an Olympic-level cross country ski coach, along with Kilian Jornet, hands-down best endurance athlete at this time, present training principles for the multisport mountain athlete who regularly participates in a mix of distance running, ski mountaineering, and other endurance sports that require optimum fitness and customized strength.

This is an authoritative but accessible training manual for athletes and coaches who feel most alive in the mountains or pushing the uphill ascent. Distance running, ski mountaineering, skimo, and skyrunning are becoming increasingly popular all over the world, and are often undertaken by the same person during a single year. This book collects the scientifically backed and athlete-tested wisdom and experience of three of the best uphill athletes and coaches and extrapolates both to educate outdoor athletes of all stripes to perform their best.

The book includes the same mix of theory, application, and experiential essays from experts in the field, as well as instructional illustrations as in Training for the New Alpinism. Contributions by Kilian Jornet increase the worldwide appeal of the book.

About this title

About the Author

Steve House is a world renowned climber, mountain guide, and Patagonia Ambassador, widely regarded for his light-and-fast style. He has published articles in a number of periodicals, and he is the author of Beyond the Mountain (Patagonia Books, 2009). He lives in Ridgway, CO.

Scott Johnston, who grew up in Boulder, CO, has ski raced on a national and international level and is an avid climber. He currently coaches several of the nation’s top cross country skiers, and climbs, establishing local climbing routes in and around his home town of Mazama, WA, in the North Cascades, where he lives.

Kílian Jornet is a professional sky runner, trail runner, ski mountaineer and long-distance runner. He is a six-time champion of the long-distance running Skyrunner World Series and has won some of the most prestigious ultramarathons, including the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc, Grand Raid, the Western States Endurance Run and the Hardrock Hundred Mile Endurance Run. Jornet holds the fastest known time for the ascent and descent of Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Denali and Everest.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

We wrote this book to share three lifetimes of knowledge on the science and methodology of endurance training. But we need to start with a disclaimer: Collectively, the three of us have made all the training mistakes and a few of them more than once. We know from painful firsthand experience just as much about how not to train effectively as we have learned about how to train correctly. There are many more ways to train wrong than right. While learning from your own mistakes is the best teacher it is painful and perhaps more importantly, a terrible waste of time. By steering you around the pitfalls and danger areas we hope to save you the wasted days and weeks, to say nothing of the heartbreak of ineffective training. Over the accumulated decades that we have been training and coaching we have been able to refine our approach and want to share this with you in these pages.

The study of any subject is best managed within a framework. We hope to establish that intellectual framework within which to dissect what is a complex topic. Even though none of this material is overly complex there are a lot of topics covered and we don’t expect you to absorb all the information presented here in one reading. It is our hope that you will use this book as reference manual to guide your training over many seasons as you apply what we have spent decades learning. No single part of the book is meant to stand alone. Each section is supported by the preceding ones and as such supports the subsequent parts.

We start in Section 1 with a look at The Physiological Basis of Endurance Training. Despite the limitations of idealized scientific studies, they can still provide us with a better understanding of the whys even if they can’t help us so much with the whats or hows. These last two are where endurance training becomes more art than science. And like any art or craft it can only be learned by diligent practice.

In Section 2, which we call The Methodology of Endurance Training, we identify and explain numerous concepts that, if understood and applied correctly, will make you a better athlete or coach. These are the tools in your tool box. Knowing which tool is appropriate for each task is what makes the master artisan. The range of topics here is as broad as it is deep and this is the area of the book that we suppose will be the one you go back to over and over again to refresh your knowledge.

Section 3 is devoted to Strength Training for The Uphill Athlete. We demystify strength in terms most applicable to endurance athletes as opposed to weight lifters

By the time we get to Section 4 we will be focusing on How to Train. Here we talk about how to categorize, design, and structure workouts as well as how to mix them depending on what you want to achieve. All the previous information will be brought into play as we show you how to progress from very basic, but essential aerobic capacity building to the specific speed endurance required for your event.

Finally, in Section 5 we roll up our sleeves and dig into Planning Your Training and give several example plans you can use for guidance or apply directly to your own training.

Edition details

• Publisher: Patagonia
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 1938340841
• ISBN 13: 9781938340840
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 368