ENDURANCE V.2
Using Short, High Intensity Circuits and Intervals to Sharpen an Endurance Base
BY MARK TWIGHT
The subtitle says it all: if you train endurance exclusively you'll be weak and slow though able to go forever. To go long AND fast the program must include strength training and high-intensity intervals and speed work to sharpen endurance.
In May 2003 I began tweaking my training. I was hesitant at first because the program I had been using for the previous eight years appeared appropriate to my sport performance goals and it had been working. That program is detailed my book titled "Extreme Alpinism – Climbing Light, Fast and High”, The Mountaineers Books, 1999. It worked well enough for me (and others) that I'd never fallen too far short of my sport or adventure goals so how could I have been wrong?
However, in early 2003 I began to realize that machined-based movements limit range-of-motion and neglect stabilizing musculature so they do not convert to sport specificity efficiently. On the other hand, functional movements done with body or free weight require stabilization, balance, and sport-like muscle firing sequences and timing that is easily adapted to sport performance. So I began training multi-joint rather than isolation movements in the weight room. And instead of the standard rep and rest structures I combined power and cardiovascular demands into non-stop circuits instead of training power and/or muscular endurance specifically. While circuit training isn't anything new to knowledgeable mainstream athletics (and I began using multiple, long, 300-rep circuits to train muscular endurance for a specific route in 1992), climbing is a sport, which, at that time, had no specific, structured training program associated with it. As a group we were casting about, testing, discussing, and developing sport specific programming. I also began running intervals at the track, and while these were quite hard and fast I did not immediately realize the benefits I'd reap if I carried that same intensity into the gym. Once I did it seemed I took the first step.
The Deadlift, among other lifts improved my core strength to such a degree that I could actually take advantage of the skeletal muscle developed by years of less functional strength training.
It is said the journey begins with one step and even that first one produced improvements so, in December of 2003, I attended a CrossFit seminar to learn more about the modern manifestation of circuit training. I went there fit for my sport, but I was destroyed by the varied fitness challenges that were presented. Humbled, ego thought a test of the skills demanded by “soloing on loose rock” would be appropriate but pragmatism held sway and I poured ego from my cup in order to fill it with more knowledge and experience, and to add another training tool to the fitness and preparation toolbox I had been building since the mid-80s.
Although skeptical that high-intensity, short-duration effort could have a positive effect on endurance I accepted the results others had obtained. Of course, I read all the research I could lay my hands on as well. Being more open minded than when I was younger I designed a personal experiment: I would train only at high intensity for less than 20 minutes per session and, after four months, take an endurance test. The test, a ski mountaineering race involving both uphill and downhill skiing that would last from two to two and a half hours would appear to require a specific type of training, which I consciously avoided.
Between December 1st and March 20th my average workout lasted 15 minutes, though some approached 25 minutes and only nine lasted longer. I trained six days per week “virtually,” indoors using non-specific but very functional movements. In March I skied a few times to sort out my equipment but nothing at race pace.
Needless to say that with all I had laid on the line I was nervous about the test. For twenty years I trained to climb mountains and was one of the faster climbers around. The sport mostly demands long and slow efforts, which may be punctuated by periods of great metabolic intensity, and by intervals of highly complex movements mated to significant power output. Recovery is built-in, dictated by terrain, and by the consequences of a mistake. The race would require me to go hard, in competition, at a level of intensity at or above my anaerobic threshold for more than two hours and I had never done any type of event like it. Besides, I'm a climber not a skier though I can get around on skis. I would lose time to guys with better downhill skills so I had to gain what margin I could while going up but I couldn't count on movement efficiency to help since race day would be my 10th day on skis of the season season.
The 2004 Powderkeg was an International Ski Mountaineering Confederation sanctioned event and one of the stops on the World Cup circuit that season. Some incredible athletes showed up. Both the World Cup and Race divisions skied the same course that featured 1650 meters of vertical gain and 1555 meters of descent over 13.5 kilometers. There were seven transitions from up to down where racers reconfigured their bindings to ski up or down and applied or removed climbing skins to/from the bases of the skis. Although much time can be lost or gained during the transitions, the race is truly won on the uphill, which occupies more than 80% of the total time of the race.
I was quite nervous until the gun went off. Ego asked what if the training program didn't work and I blew up 25 minutes into the race? About one hundred yards up the first climb my brain settled down because the feedback from my body told me it was going to be a good day. I kept my heart rate between 165-168 for the entire race, right below my anaerobic threshold for altitudes between 8,500' and 10,500' where the race happened. I had a little bit of gas left at the end but played it fairly close. Out of 66 in my division I was 11th (my goal was to finish in the top 20), crossing the line in 2:21:19. My division was won in 1:56:46, and 25 minutes is an insurmountable gap. Everyone who beat me had at least 50 days on skis before the race and all trained specifically for it. The World Cup division was won in 1:34:44, a result that is light years ahead of the Race division winner. The times are stunning considering the amount of work being done and the skill and accuracy that must be applied at high heart rates for a lengthy period of time.
The results of my test suggested to me that short duration, high intensity circuits in the gym combined with high intensity intervals are indeed very good preparation for endurance and power endurance efforts despite the short duration of the workouts. That said, it must be understood that these workouts were not undertaken in a vacuum; they were used to sharpen a 20-year endurance base gained by training and climbing at intensities specific to long endurance effort. The same results would not be produced in the athlete without a similar aerobic base and one downside of training exclusively at high intensity showed up quite quickly.
On a lark, I raced in the North American Ski Mountaineering Championships one week after the Powderkeg race but the moderate workout I did midweek was enough to crash my recovery progress and I blew up halfway into the race then struggled to finish. During the two years since that race I have learned – through personal experimentation and experience and discussion with coaches and scientists smarter than me – that recovery must be trained, and recovery adaptations occur just like the compensatory reaction to imposed athletic demands. Similarly, it is now absolutely clear that there is no such thing as a free lunch and there never was: to go long you have to go long, if you want genuine endurance and/or multi-day endurance you have to train it. Period.
Nearing the summit of the Aiguille d'Argentiere
To train myself for these races, and for 24-hour non-stop climbing efforts I built a hybrid program that melds sport specific endurance efforts with short, intense circuits and interval training. The results of the 2005 season were inconclusive since I had knee surgery in December 2004 and missed much of the racing season. I did however compete in the Trofeo Mezzalama in Italy, a race that covers 3000 meters of vertical gain across 45km, which took our team just under eight hours to finish. Afterward we rested one day and recovered well enough to go out and ski up a peak requiring 1800m of gain within 36 hours of finishing the race. Based on those results and that I can still do 40 consecutive pull-ups and deadlift more than twice my bodyweight I'd say the hybrid program works well all around.
However, the story does not end here. The 2006 season brought up some other issues related to endurance training and performance. The totality of what we have learned about improving endurance without compromising power (too much) is too extensive to address here. It is one subject of the seminars and classes we teach.
Screaming down the Gran Paradiso
To learn more about ski mountaineering competition visit www.uiaa.ch, and for info about the Trofeo Mezzalama visit www.grivelnorthamerica.com/headlines.php?id=25, from that page you may link to others detailing the event.
January 2008:
Every now and then someone posts an old quote of mine about Crossfit and using short-duration, high-intensity effort to improve endurance, referring to my initial experience. Those who imagine I still believe what I did then, or train the way I did when testing the validity of the method should re-read the following paragraphs:
“... it must be understood that these workouts were not undertaken in a vacuum; they were used to sharpen a 20-year endurance base gained by training and climbing at intensities specific to long endurance effort. The same results would not be produced in the athlete without a similar aerobic base ...”
Surely the meaning of “20-year endurance base” is clear.
“During the two years since that race I have learned – through personal experimentation and experience and discussion with coaches and scientists smarter than me – that recovery must be trained, and recovery adaptations occur just like the compensatory reaction to imposed athletic demands. Similarly, it is now absolutely clear that there is no such thing as a free lunch and there never was: to go long you have to go long, if you want genuine endurance and/or multi-day endurance you have to train it. Period.
A few have asked me to update my thesis on the subject and I’ll do so eventually. For now, the link below should clear up any misconceptions regarding how I think about endurance and what I am doing to train it.
Yeah, a diet of 20-minute workouts got me through the Iron Horse Classic and the Everest Challenge ... and if you believe that I know a guy who's selling a bridge ...