 Poster: A snowHead
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My husband has a ski touring training week booked for mid-March.
Could anyone recommend a series of videos of exercises that might help him prepare for this? He’s generally fit-ish but COVID x 2 and a recent dose of flu have hit hard. Plays badminton & basketball once a week each plus we’re going a session at a snow dome each week and he does circuits once a week.
Thanks 
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I would recommend the book training for the uphill athlete. Although they have so much information online you can probably get a pretty good overview for free.
Basically lots of low intensity endurance training. Perhaps the best exercise is walking up and down hills/staircases with a weighted backpack. If you don't have hills nearby you can just step up and off an exercise step (boring but effective).
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Thanks - will order it.
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+1 for Uphill Athlete.
They have lots of suggested programmes. The free one for pre-ski season training is very good. You’ll also benefit from spending a bit of £ on subscription to their online Chamonix Mountain Fit strength & conditioning workouts. These are really ideal prep for touring and off piste, esp combined with cardio. My OH and I do them regularly and found them transformative.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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It might sound weird, but if time is short try a standing cycle ride, by which I mean you go for a ride without sitting down at all. You will need to be in a higher gear than normal, but you will be riding slower. If you haven't tried it is surprisingly hard, and gives you both a tough leg and cardio workout in a short ride, particularly if a hill is involved. When you start doing a mile might be difficult, the longest I've ever done is 10 miles, which was knackering.
You can also wear a backpack while riding to get you used to carrying several kilos.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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@LavaLaura, +3 for uphill athlete
Time however is very short. At under 2 months you may be as well purchasing one of their online 8 week training plans and get cracking immediately
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Stair climber in the gym wearing a weight vest
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@LavaLaura, if you have access to semi decent countryside I would go for a long (14 miles +) and fast walks on the hilliest terrain that you can find with a pack. It's really time intensive but it is probably the most representative activity. A week of ski touring is very much about endurance, he will probably be fine on day 1 but then risks his legs aching so much that days 2-4 just aren't enjoyable. The sports that he does are more about explosive energy, good for the down, but not great for the hours spent going slowly uphill
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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It’s true the book the Uphill Athlete is good but he’s not got time to read it all now. It’s quite long. Like @rambotion said the key is activities that build endurance rather than explosive power. Hiking uphill for hours on end, if not got any high mountains in your area then hike the ones you do have twice over (or 3 times) stair climber for an hour or more wearing a weight vest, the best thing would be the hiking because it’s time on feet that matters too.
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Plus he needs to factor in the ski touring will be harder work as a newbie to it.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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The only way to train for going uphill is to go uphill. Walking 2-3 hours with an altitude gain of 6-900m is ideal but not easy to find in the UK. Laps of your local hill perhaps.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Is this an introductory touring week? It sounds like he’s reasonably active already. These suggestions sound like a lot of work to me! I generally get fit enough for skiing/touring by cycling. If the weather’s good, a 2or 3 hour ride at the weekend. If not, a reasonably intense workout on an indoor trainer for an hour or so.
That’s not going to win me a skimo race but it will mean I’m not slowing a group of recreational tourers down unduly
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@LavaLaura, based on your description of his current regime, and my experience as a 50 something part-time tourer… get him on an additional hour of ‘hard’ cardio, and 1 or 2 ‘tempo’ runs. The cardio will work the system and grow heart muscle/get the body used to working hard (which his first tours will feel like, with kit, altitude etc), the ‘tempo’ stuff is 1-2 hours of sustained, ‘can just hold a conversation’ effort… as others have said, the closest thing he can do to replicate ‘touring’… which is faster than walking uphill, and carrying more kit.
Oh, and clearly purchasing ‘carbon’ products (for light-weight) is an important side task….
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| RedandWhiteFlachau wrote: |
| The only way to train for going uphill is to go uphill. Walking 2-3 hours with an altitude gain of 6-900m is ideal but not easy to find in the UK. Laps of your local hill perhaps. |
Laps of stairs (multistorey car park/tall building) can work if in a city, but will definitely get you some strange looks! 
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Poster: A snowHead
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Cycling or a cross trainer / eliptical machine. Although if he's doing all of what you described every week he should be in decent shape. Technique is what will make the biggest difference at that level of fitness.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Have to do a +1 for getting out and going uphill for extended periods (3+ hours). Obviously the best option is shorter ski tours, but given that is probably difficult, hiking.
(Despite being overweight (and heavier than previous touring trip  managed a decent weekend in cairngorm this year, I suspect because I have kept up low-moderate exercise)
If they are doing a couple of hours of regular exercise a week then chances are basic fitness is comfortably good enough;
The big issue is endurance - both being used to exercising for hours on end AND having a good idea of how you maintain effort levels all day (food, water, not overworking initially, how often you rest, what to wear (how warm, how important is waterproofing to you, etc)). Several factors are personal that while people can advise, you will only get right with experience of extended exercise. You don't want to learn you don't have enough water half way up a mountain, but equally you don't want to carry several extra kg up. You don't want to learn that the gels you planned to use make you sick while granola bars work brilliantly (etc etc).
Certainly having not been doing long days recently resulted in me carrying way too much water on the first days touring this season (dumped a good chunk and still had some left over at the end);
I.e. the long days aren't just for fitness, they also help prepare in other ways.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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@qwerty360, very true about the endurance and finding what works and what doesn’t on long hiking/touring days
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I also think that endurance is very important here.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Cardio Cardio Cardio.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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My prep for ski touring is to get as much hillwalking in as I can; aiming to do consecutive days with 1000m+ ascent when the weather allows me to get out into the hills over the winter. There really isn't anything that completely substitutes for this. Otherwise, I try and do at least 5 hours of cardio a week (swimming, cross-trainer in gym, cycling, running). Extended sessions on cross-training machines are probably the next best thing to hill-walking, maybe followed by cycling ? On the last skinning day I did, there was someone who did mainly swimming to train (several hours a week) and that seemed to have got them the required level of cardio fitness.
I can normally keep up a decent pace on the skinning (maybe 350m+ per hour) with this preparation (aged 55); but being an experienced hillwalker means I have learnt to set a pace I can sustain without having to stop for rests. There is probably an element of mental training/endurance involved too (ie. being comfortable in the knowledge that you can keep going for a number of hours at a particular rate).
As others have already said, skinning is a slow-burn activity, so short duration high-intensity activities aren't particularly useful for training.
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