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Do You Have What it Takes to Climb a Mountain?

Mountain climbing is a hobby for some, but a one time dream for many. Climbing one of the highest mountains in the world is on many people’s bucket list, and it isn’t hard to see why. The satisfaction and achievement you get from climbing a mountain is immense! You can make yourself, and your family proud. But do you have what it takes? You can’t simply turn up at a mountain ready to go if you haven’t prepared yourself with training. You’ll need to be both physically and mentally ready when it’s crunch time.

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Building Your Strength

 

You don’t need to be able to lift a 40 kg plate while doing chin ups, but mountain climbing will require a bit of strength to get you through the tough times – not just physically, but mentally too. You won’t just be dragging yourself up a mountain, but probably a big bag of your stuff too. You can start off simply with bodyweight exercises, like push ups, dips, squats, and lunges. You can then try adding extra weight when those exercises become easy, either with actual weights like kettlebells or by wearing a loaded backpack as practice. Deadlifts, front squats, bench presses, power cleans, and military presses are all good exercises to build strength in the gym, too. Once you’ve done this, you could have what it takes to climb Mera Peak!

 

Increasing Your Stamina

 

Stamina and endurance are huge when it comes to mountain climbing. You need to be able to keep pushing on for hours and hours, all the while staying alert. You should include aerobic endurance in your workouts as well as anaerobic training to get the best results. You could try running, cycling, and aerobics classes. Stair climbing with a loaded backpack will also help you! You should also realise that you’ll probably want to give up many times as you’re climbing the mountain…nobody said it would be easy. However, you need to remain focused on the end result, and that amazing feeling you’ll get once you’ve completed it!

 

Altitude Training

 

The higher you get on a mountain, the harder your body has to work. It can take the body days to accustom itself to as high altitude, and this can lead to altitude sickness. The best way to try to overcome this is to train at an altitude, although this might not be so easy. You’ll need to drink plenty of water to keep altitude sickness at bay; try not to let it dishearten you. Almost everybody will suffer with it in some form!

 

Climb, Climb…Then Climb Some More!

 

Even if you’ve prepared like Rocky getting in the ring with Clubber Lang, the real test and training starts when you set foot on a real mountain. You should go rock climbing regularly to give yourself some practice. Make sure you go on a regular basis, and work as hard as you can to get the full benefits of your training efforts. You could even go rock climbing indoors!

 

Providing you put your all into training yourself mentally and physically, you’ll show that mountain who’s boss!

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Irving

Wednesday 19th of February 2014

Great points you made especially building your strength by doing push ups, dips, squats, and lunges and increasing your stamina by adding aerobic endurance to your daily workouts. But i didn't think about altitude training, you're so right on that too! Thank you for a very informative post.

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