Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete

by Steve House, Scott Johnston, Mark Twight (Foreword)

In Training for the New Alpinism , Steve House, world-class climber and Patagonia ambassador, and Scott Johnston, coach of U.S. National Champions and World Cup Nordic Skiers, translate training theory into practice to allow you to coach yourself to any mountaineering goal. Applying training practices from other endurance sports, House and Johnston demonstrate that following a carefully designed regimen is as effective for alpinism as it is for any other endurance sport and leads to better performance. They deliver detailed instruction on how to plan and execute training tailored to your individual circumstances. Whether you work as a banker or a mountain guide, live in the city or the country, are an ice climber, a mountaineer heading to Denali, or a veteran of 8,000-meter peaks, your understanding of how to achieve your goals grows exponentially as you work with this book. Chapters cover endurance and strength training theory and methodology, application and planning, nutrition, altitude, mental fitness, and assessing your goals and your strengths. Chapters are augmented with inspiring essays by world-renowned climbers, including Ueli Steck, Mark Twight, Peter Habeler, Voytek Kurtyka, and Will Gadd. Filled with photos, graphs, and illustrations.

Genres: Climbing, Mountaineering, Nonfiction, Outdoors, Sports, Adventure, Fitness

464 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2014

Reviews

[Andrei · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is really good to start mountain training planning, but I wouldn't follow the recommendations for exercises that are not mountain specific:
+ really good explanation of what the body goes through while climbing/hiking/exercising
+ really good explanation of the muscles involved in different exercises and how to correctly train them
+ good training program outline
+ good mountain-specific exercise recommendations that can be done at home/gym/flat
~ meh recommendations for gym exercises. Some of the recommended exercises are not recommended in gyms because they can cause injuries and are not good iatefficiently stimulating muscles. Overall there are better exercises than the ones given in the book, just ask PTs at the gym, they should have a better understanding of how you should train for whatever your goals may be
~ meh recommendations for running exercises. The running community has a much deeper understanding of how to correctly train for running, and those are better than the basics recommended in the book
- nutrition was basic, was expecting much more detailed information about nutrition while training and nutrition at altitude. The book has a lot of "sample size of 1" recommendations, which is usually not what you should follow
- no stretching. The book mentions flexibility as being important several times, but doesn't cover that area at all. Especially given that flexibility is important while rock/ice/alpine climbing, I find this is to be a big gap in the book
+ dealing with altitude: the sample size is small, but the recommendations I found to be sound, based on my limited experience
~ decent recommendations of how to toughen the mental aspect of climbing. This is highly subjective and mostly non-scientific, but I think this subject is so vast that it could've been it's own book

[J.D. Combista · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is aimed toward alpinists, but the principles outlined in it are pretty much applicable to most athletes. The book gives you advice on how to train, recover, and eat while training and recovering, and most importantly, it helps you develop a proper mindset when doing strenuous athletic undertakings.

I admit that I don't usually read titles on sports and the like, but Training for the New Alpinism is something I would definitely recommend, especially to mountain athletes and enthusiasts.

[Dmitry Khvatov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read.

[Aidan Napier · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing book full of a comprehensive understanding of Alpine climbing and mountaineering from experience and scientific literature. The book is well written, captivating and structured to inspire the reader to implement a structured training plan for long term goals. The training guidance is practical and proposed for beginners, amateurs and experts looking for that little bit which will make them better. A very good read, I will be keeping this book close while I train to climb the mountains for at least the next 10 years.

[John Poulain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is for the serious alpinist, there are parts where they mention that you can't make progress using high intensity training (example in Mark Twights Theres No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) and that you need to invest the miles. As they say "Intensity versus Duration The most common refrain used by amateur athletes about including larger volumes of easy training into their programs is that they do not have time. They have a limited number of hours to train per week. With this limitation, they are easily tempted into the thinking that they can make up with intensity what they are not doing with volume. Of course, adding intensity does improve your fitness quickly. However, without a strong base of aerobic support, training at higher intensity will never allow you to maximize your fitness potential. Our goal with this book is to explain how to maximize your fitness, not give you a quick- fix prescription" and they are committed to trying to raise the standard "As we write these words, maybe a few dozen people train for alpine climbing. What will happen to alpinism when 1,000 people are training daily? Or 20,000?"

Im personally unlikely to be able to follow the transition and base building portions due to a lack of time so this book might not be as relevant to me as someone dedicated to doing the work. There were some lines that made me feel very seen "Limit- strength was never an issue in the mountains but we wanted it to be, so that we could do that style of training." Or that "some rock climbers used hypertrophy- style training to increase muscle mass and push limit- strength higher. So we did that until I realized that mass had to be carried whether it was being used or not." The only real advice ill likely be following (the highest peak in East Anglia is 147m!) is "Tool Box steps are a bit like drinking castor oil: effective but unpleasant."

"We are going to assume that you work a regular job or attend school but have most weekends free to get into the mountains." If only, will spend a lot of time on Chrishall Common (147m if that might help)

Some of the information about elevation was really interesting "One of the most common mistakes first- time altitude climbers make is expecting their bodies, once acclimated, to feel as strong at height as down low; that never happens." that even with the acclimatisation (climb high, sleep low) you can expect to manage 600m elevation an hour at 5000m or less but only 50m an hour above 8000m. This also explains why the authours think oxygen is cheating, as you're essentially making 8000m peaks into 6000m peaks so why are you up that high. Personally im not convinced but its interesting to think about.

CHOICE NOTES
The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades.

20 percent of their overall yearly volume is spent doing training that specifically models the demands of an actual race.

Gaston Rébuffat in fact gave a step- by- step guide to this progressive approach in 1973 when he published The Mont Blanc Massif: The Hundred Finest Routes, which leads aspiring alpinists one step at a time through a progression of the skill- acquisition aspect of becoming an alpinist.

“Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” In the mountains, fatigue is the biggest controllable limitation that will come between you and success.

a few champion sprint track cyclists have been known to develop maximum power outputs in excess of 1,800 watts for a few seconds (Gardiner et al., 2007). But before you get too impressed, keep in mind that this is only a bit more than the power of a cheap blow dryer

“Training is not the work that you do, it is the value and the cost of your body’s response to that work.”

Occasional breaks of a couple of days are not much of a problem as long as they do not diminish the training load by more than roughly 5 percent in a month, but

The modern popularity of spreadsheet- type training plans— along with the Internet gurus who espouse them— that list what workout you will be doing on a particular day two months from today, show a lack of understanding of this notion of individuality, and of gauging the training to match the body’s response.


For less- active amateurs who get out for long, full days of climbing fewer than six to seven days a month, you will need to pay particular attention to this phase since your basic endurance and strength is likely underdeveloped.

for decades successful 800- meter runners have followed a training prescription that has a heavy emphasis on the Base Period with training volumes as high as eighty to one hundred miles of running per week. During this phase, 90 percent of these miles are run at less than the athlete’s lactate threshold (LT); in other words in Zone 3 or below.

“Everyone feels good at the beginning of a race.”

The big muscle in the calf, the gastrocnemius, contains about 1.5 million muscle fibers and about 500 motor units, meaning that one motor nerve controls roughly 3,000 fibers. Because of this rather crude electrical wiring hook- up between brain and muscle, we do not have much fine motor control over this powerful muscle used for propulsion.

Without doubt, technical ability and preparation is paramount in gymnastics training. However, technique can only be applied within the boundaries of physical fitness— be it strength, power, or anaerobic capacity. By developing a sport- specific base of strength, power, and flexibility proper technique can be coached and acquired more easily.

Most adult alpine climbers we know are obsessed with weight and are too busy cutting labels off of long underwear and removing the mosquito netting from their tents to consider adding bulk to their body.

We don’t recommend using a Stairmaster device because on that sort of machine the step is actually falling away beneath you and you do not have to raise your body weight with each step as you do in real uphill or on the box.

The hours listed here are hours of training with his heart rate in zones 1 and 2 (120 < HR < 160) and includes time for strength training. Even though his emphasis was on high- altitude mountaineering, he didn’t emphasize climbing very much in this early stage. Priority was given to training the aerobic system since it provides the base of support for climbing big mountains.

“A few hours mountain climbing turns a rogue and a saint into two roughly equal creatures. Weariness is the shortest path to equality and fraternity— and liberty is finally added by sleep.”— FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

you become more fit, you develop the ability to use more fat at a given exercise intensity which in turn allows you to stretch out those precious glycogen stores.

This is based on numerous studies that suggest endurance athletes perform best ingesting 1.0– 1.2 grams of carbohydrate per minute, which is the maximal oxidation rate of carbohydrate.

One thing that we’ve experimented with, that worked for us, is training while fasting. If your training day is going to be less than two hours, wake up, drink black coffee (or tea) and water, and go train. The idea is to adapt your body to preferentially burn fat. This is often used in cycling— road cyclists may have invented the idea. There is evidence that it works to adapt our bodies to oxidizing fat for energy, a process aided by the caffeine, as long as the duration of the exercise is less than 120 minutes and the intensity is low.

Each day you are training you’re investing between one and twelve hours in working out. That leaves up to twenty- three hours of the day where you can torpedo your training by making bad food choices or simply overeating.

He advised Mark that we should each consume one GU gel every sixty minutes. We packed 146 GU packages, assuming one per person per hour for forty- eight hours.

During the climb we fed entirely on gels except at a rest break where we consumed instant mashed potatoes flavored with olive oil and instant soup.

our experience we find that climbers can function very well on about four liters of fluids per day and can get by on two liters per day even above 23,000 feet (7,010 meters).

“Every alpinist who climbs 8,000- meter peaks searches for ways to prepare the body so that it will adjust to the variables. The environment at extreme altitudes is as alien as outer space; the dynamics play out in ways that we cannot fully understand. A mountaineer can only hope that a commitment to constant training will prop up his or her ambitions to explore the earth’s highest reaches.”— ANATOLI BOUKREEV, Above the Clouds

Anatoli Boukreev, who made his home in Kazakhstan, wrote: “To maintain a basic level of adjustment to altitude and to keep up endurance, my routine training includes rapid ascents on 10,000- to 13,000- foot (3,048- to 3,962- meter) high peaks all year.”

the most common rule of thumb is that you lose your adaptation to altitude at about the same rate as you gain it.

high- altitude climbing is like having the flu all the time: “If I felt this shitty at home I’d call in sick at work.”

Climbing is often viewed by outside observers as a selfish pursuit providing no visible benefits, and indeed frequent injury or death to the climbers themselves. These points are rendered moot if you take the position that the person who has not known him- or herself in a deep way has little to offer family, friends, or society in the first place.

The storied Polish Himalayan climbers painted bridges and smokestacks to pay for their expeditions in the 1980s. The Slovenes would drive overland to Pakistan in their own trucks.

We were somehow confident that we could climb whatever we found up there. We had to, because we did not have enough equipment to safely descend from this point. This confidence, and the calm emotional state that accompanied it, allowed us to commit ourselves fully to the climb and therefore succeed.

Three rules of thumb: Don’t retreat or make any important decision (1) in the dark, (2) with your heart rate over one hundred, or (3) on an empty stomach.

match or better Messner’s 1,000- meter- per- half- hour (3,281- feet- per- half- hour) uphill running time.

Alex Lowe was one famous climber who enjoyed training and who frequented the weight room. He even experimented with creatine when the craze hit in the 1990s.

discussing les droites: “The lower face is just like doing the north face of Mount Athabasca, and you guys have done that. Then you do Takakkaw Falls, you’ve done that too,” his hands mimed the swinging and planting of ice tools, “then you top it off with Cascade Falls.” His palms opened to the ceiling in a “so what?” gesture. “It’s just three pieces of Canada on loan to France! All you have to do is put it all together in one day; you can do it, lad!”

[Vidyasagar Darapu · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is more useful than readable. This is more a manual than long prose that you can read and forget. This is for people who want to do endurance sports for leisure. This book helps in structuring your training for your specific goals. Kind of like a dictionary that you can keep coming back for clarity and answers. And, like a dictionary, it is boring. 3 stars for the content

[David W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Equal parts training manual and picture book. A worthwhile read for alpine athletes. But, if you don’t feel like reading it, I can basically explain it in 4 words: do more steady state.

[Andreas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book caught my attention because of my interest in endurance (see Endure... or The Pursuit of Endurance) and a newborn desire in trail running and maybe mountaineering.

The book is well structured with tons of information. I was already familiar with the physiological aspect of endurance training and must say that the overview here is one of the best I have ever read. It never stops to amaze me how the human machinery is orchestrated by rather simple biochemical processes.

When it comes to training it was revealing that 1) a strong base is the foundation for everything else, 2) that base training doesn't have to be specific and 3) that there is no shortcut. CrossFit for instance allows for quick results, especially when you have never done such kind of exercises before, but sooner or later you will plateau. As Phil Maffetone and others have already figured out, the only cure is to work on your aerobic base. What I missed though was the fact that to benefit from training at a low heart rate you have to train frequently (5-6 times per week) and from time to time go long (1 per week).

Besides the many tips how to build your own plan I loved the stories and photos. From outside one usually only sees the final triumph but rarely the years of preparation that went into it. I also loved the insights from a coaching point of view. Science will often rediscover or validate what coaches already know from their work with athletes. These nuggets of wisdom are priceless.

The author has a new book in stock that might be better for people like me who are not climbing rooks but just want to move in the mountains or in hilly terrain: Training for the Uphill Athlete.

[David Petersheim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best book on sports training that I've ever read- ahem... the only book on sports training that I've managed to finish. I've tried to read other sports training books and I've never completed one. That's because the books, while great books, were aimed at coaches and trainers, never at me, the person being trained. I've read the book and have reread some chapters more than once. The information has been enlightening.

If you want an easily digestible explanation of performance-centered physical training, this is a good book. This is not a book full of training "recipes". There are example routines and logs presented in the book, but these are meant as guides. After reading the book, you'll be able to create your own training programs.

Although the book is focused on alpine climbing, the basic sports training information it contains is applicable to any sport. The book is about training to climb mountains in an alpine environment, so there's a ton of climbing related information in the book. Most of the climbing anecdotes are side-barred and highlighted though, so if you have no interest in them, you can skip them.

[Tamara Covacevich · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of useful knowledge and inspiring material.
"The consequences of falling short made training important. I realized early that controlling the things that I could control gave me greater freedom to address the things that I could not control. And the mountains offered those in spades"
"Twenty years of consistent training squeezed wretched mental weakness out of me and built a vast foundation of accumulated fitness"
"We can respect the gulf that separates alpinism from a running race and still appreciate that the physiology that accounts for endurance is the same if you are running a foot race in the city park or front pointing up the second ice field on the north face of the Eiger"
"CONTINUITY, GRADUALNESS, AND MODULATION"
"Tiredness sows the seeds of doubt. The one phrase of negative self-talk, “Maybe I’m not ready for this today,” will rob all your motivation"
"Own your fears. As with emotions, fears must be acknowledged and examined before they can be managed. As Danika Gilbert eloquently describes, they can be touched and played with"
"Legendary Slovenian alpinist Tomo Cesen once said that after every great challenge he has accomplished he would always pause, draw back, and rest his mind for some time before he took on a new task. He did this so that he wouldn’t get carried away by success and lose the fear and respect that comes with a worthy challenge. When you have accomplished a task, you normally want more of that task. You get confident and probably remember that which was hard as being easy, and then you risk pushing it too far. On the grand scale of the game, cycles serve us with the contrasts that are life defining. Without darkness we wouldn’t see light, without a pause from what we love, we wouldn’t acknowledge how much we love the things we do"
"Rule of thumb: Don’t retreat or make any important decision (1) in the dark, (2) with your heart rate over one hundred, or (3) on an empty stomach"
"Maybe you will decide to read the newspaper before going to the gym. Or maybe you will decide to watch TV, check your Facebook page, or call a friend. After this, you might feel tired and decide to go to sleep. Tomorrow comes and you go through the same thing. This can go on for months or years. Constancy of aim and effort, and not being lazy, is the key to developing as a climber"

[Ray Klucik · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is informative, inspiring and captures the love of climbing big mountains. What started as my fathers hobby quickly became my own as I scaled mountain after mountain in Colorado. Thanks Steve House, I will be a lifetime fan after reading this.

Some of my favorite excerpts;

"The most important thing is that you come back—with or without summiting."

"The ancient Greek maxim, “know thyself” is very relevant in climbing. Knowing yourself allows you to know what you should and should not be doing."

"
Traits That Deliver Success
In 2008 an article was published in the Harvard Business Review in which the author reported studies of commonalities between Olympic medalists and successful businesspeople. The author, Graham Jones, a former sports psychologist turned executive coach, delineated the following characteristics and common motivations that contributed to the successes of his subjects:
Self-directed
Very confident of their abilities
Focused on excellence
Internally rather than externally focused
Not distracted by others
The ability to psychologically manage pressure Meticulous attention to goals
Careful planning of short-term goals
A relentless focus on the long-term attainment of goals An ability to shrug off their own failures
Masters of compartmentalization in their lives Celebrate their wins
Analyze the reasons for success
Reinvent themselves following a success An unstoppable striving for success
"

"
It’s important to make survivable mistakes. They say that good judgment comes from bad experience and that the huborous that comes with being a foolish 20 somethings pretty much guarantees such an education. Going hungry or freezing your ass off is necessary and invaluable. After a lesson has been emphasized with suffering you’re grantees to never make that mistake again.
"

"
Soccer players can retire from the field if they have pushed themselves too far to their limit, they can be carried off to rest immediately. Alpinists cannot stop at any time. If you are at the limits of your endurance you must endure. Endure or die.
"

[Artas Bartas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Jon Krakauer's superb memoir Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster has left me with a lot of questions, so I started looking for a book that would help me get to the bottom of high-altitude climbing. I hit the jackpot with "Training for the New Alpinism". Steve House and Scott Johnston start with the fundamentals of training, eating, and exercising and then show how to translate that knowledge into a proper methodology for getting your body and mind ready to hit 5,000+ meter peaks.

Even if you are not planning to climb Denali or Annapurna anytime soon, I strongly recommend this book for the amount of valuable advice it has on building your strength training routine and devising the right nutrition and regimen to go along with that. For example, Steve and Scott's advice on increasing the number of pull-ups you can do is brilliant and immediately actionable. And their stories on the challenges of maintaining proper calorie intake at the high-altitude - eye-opening (and downright scary).

But of course, there is more! The book is choke-full of gorgeous climbing pictures and personal stories of celebrity climbers. And, you know, reading about how all these people caught their mountain bug; the type of gruelling training they have to put up with for a chance of spending a few weeks in the mountains; learning about the tough situations they face when exposed to the elements and how much ingenuity goes in surviving these - all of that puts the daily grind we - regular mortals spending their lives at the sea level - in a perspective.

I felt inspired to reach for more and challenge myself to do the things I would never dream of before. And for that, I thank you Steve and Scott!

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extensively well-researched book for anyone (at all skill levels) who wants to scale mountains. The best part about the book is that it is a training manual that teaches you to be your own coach, and that first starts with self-awareness of yourself as an athlete and where your base foundation or starting point is. This book (similar to running’s “Lore of running”) trains you how to design and adapt an appropriate workout regimen for your alpine goals.

What I really enjoy about the book is that there is no single “best” exercise program or technique that applies for everyone, and the author makes sure to highlight this. To present the reader with choice, he features Olympic and seasoned climbers of different nationalities and their different training methods. However, the featured climbers are overwhelming white men, and it only features one woman. It would be more balanced to feature alpinists of different physiques, such as women, and how their bodies adapt to acclimatization and training methods.

The author is an accomplished alpine climber and world record breaker; he writes with passion, transcendence and knowledge. Alpine climbing is risky - it requires extreme planning and rational judgement, and the author shares methods on how to mentally train yourself and suppress your ego prior and during climbing.

[W · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is the “New Alpinism”? The subtitle implies that it requires climbers to treat themselves as athletes.

But what does it mean to be an “athlete”? What does it mean to “train”?

How can these ideas be applied when the core skills required for a mountaineer are not only hiking and climbing for days at a time, but also dealing with extreme weather, rigorous logistic planning, and mastering your emotions in the face of death?

The authors argue that, despite the unique extreme of mountaineering, any mountaineer must have a rigorous and informed foundation of physical training.

Thus, this book is both a meditation on what it means to climb mountains and a comprehensive manual on how to construct a body capable of climbing them. It is essential reading for anybody who seeks to move up long, steep hills quickly without dying.

This book is also good for anyone who wants to get more fit. Frankly:

1) We know how the body works. We know how to improve physical performance.

2) “Training” is just a word for systematically applying that knowledge to yourself in pursuit of some clear goal.

3) If you don’t read this book (or another one like it) your workouts are probably ineffective & inefficient.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first book I've read on exercise science, and it's an eye opener. There's a lot of complexity there.

I put this book off for a while because I figured reading a long nonfiction book would take me months & months. And it did. It was a strange reading experience. The book iterates over the same principles repeatedly, but adds more complexity, ultimately talking about chemical processes in the body. Personally, I felt like the descriptions seemed to change each time, and I came out of the book not quite understanding a heck of a lot of what I'd read. Maybe there was too much information without clearly making a few simple points. Or maybe I'm in poor health and unable to concentrate properly. Or some combination of both. It's hard to say. As for the actual data in the book though, it's difficult to imagine a book on the topic doing a much better job collecting it, so this is a four star book. I really did come out committed and inspired.

[Matt Person · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid! I'm definitely an egghead when it comes to any sort of outdoor adventure and was hoping this book would be like a fully data-driven work with highly detailed workout regimes down to the interval length and effort level and it's not; but rather it's a solid overview of the different areas of alpinism to be familiar with: nutrition, transition/base/specific training, and mental fortitude intermixed with awesome photography and generally effective anecdotes. To be honest I'm not sure what I was hoping for actually exists; training for alpinism is a developing and nascent science.

Similar to reading mountaineering adventure books, it's sad to hear about how many world-class climbers have died in accidents.

Definitely have had the point drive home to me multiple times that the key to just about any sort of endurance activity is base training in the primarily aerobic second heart rate zone. Steady state.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Training For The New Alpinism is on one hand something so obvious it’s staggering it’s not been done before - taking the well trodden principles of training by overload, periodisation, etc from running and cycling training and applying them to alpine climbing. That said, there’s a lot here that’s interesting and it’s good to see a different approach to training than “climb lots”.

There are a few areas where authorial bias creeps in and unsettled scientific theories are presented as fact - the authors have strong opinions and are not shy about sharing them - but overall it’s an excellent book and essential reading for anyone interested in the subject (and by specificity of focus of almost no interest to anyone else.

[Pat Janes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thorough and consummately well researched manual for ostensibly, the alpine athlete.

While not the primary audience for the book, there is also much in here for other endurance mountain athletes. Trail runners, skimo athletes, and cross country skiers can all benefit.

I submitted this book to my local library as a purchase suggestion, and was delighted to see it approved. I hope others find it of as much interest as I.

Since the acquisition of this book, the authors have teamed up with Kilian Jornet to write a book specifically for Uphill Athletes - geared more for the runners/skiers. So I hope the new tome can sometime soon, join its mountaineering equivalent.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful and well researched guide for climbing in the mountains. Having read it over the span of two months and taken just a hair of 12,000 words of notes on it. I’ve found this book eminently helpful in my own journey to better myself as a climber and potential alpinist. While the book is best suited for those looking to climb the faces of mountains and ascend to high heights. I got more than enough out of it as a simple sport climber (for now) looking to train more efficiently. The prose is simple and effective, full of helpful charts and diagrams and stories to motivate you on the way. An extremely helpful guidebook.

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a strength athlete it was very interesting to read how the training is done for an endurance based sport.

The section on adaptions for altitude was particularly interesting as it's something I've never read about before.

The biggest takeaway I got from the book is the commonsense thought that when going into the mountains speed is safety. This doesn't mean rushing. Rather it means having the fitness to move continually at an optional speed. This is shown in most of the personal accounts in the book.

[James McCulloch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Required reading for aspiring alpinists

Phenomenal book. The structure is great and there’s a lot of helpful information in here. I’ve been a long distance runner for most of my life, and this book really helped me transition from purely road work into mountaineering/alpinism.

Like any book, there’s only so much information an author can put into the pages of one volume. If you’re really interested in this stuff, go read the other titles mentioned. There’s a ton of great stuff in this space.

[Maxim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Takes training for mountaineering and climbing to a new level, with a thoroughly scientific approach. Great guide to develop your own training plans and understand the basics of an approach that works (continuity, gradualness, modulation). In addition there are many short stories from some of the best alpinists (including, somewhat tragically in retrospect, from Ueli Steck).

For a broader applicability to other endurance sports, and an updated view on the training science, the follow-up book from the same authors ("Uphill Athlete) would be the better choice though -- or read both.

[earthshattering · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's not much of a plot here, because this book is not meant to be read straight through. It is more of a reference book. I thought the training recommendations were excellent, the stories entertaining, and the advice sound. It really made me think differently about my own training. The only gripe I have is the occasional tone of conquering the mountain, pushing to be the best and fastest, doing what nobody else has done, etc. It just doesn't seem to match with the humble approach the authors advocate in other parts of the book.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

In TRAINING FOR THE NEW ALPINISM, Steve House shares a detailed approach to preparing and surviving days on a mountain.

He does an excellent job of sharing his considerable experience and mapping out a program that will prepare an athlete for an experience that likely does not include the option to DNF. The most important lesson to learn is that there are no short cuts - “no free lunch.”

Unless you have an alpine specific objective, there are better options to read for physical preparation.

[Eme Morato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have read this book twice. It is the absolute bible of structured training for big climbing, athletic and mountain objectives. Extremely well written, backed by all the necessary science and a great mix of theory with practical exercises and applications to daily life. Steve House and Scott Johnston took the sport to a whole new level by having written this book which profoundly changed the way I experience and approach my training for going out to the mountains.

[Ricky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal book. I feel hesitant to put this in my "read" list because I find myself constantly coming back and glancing over chapters. There is so much information contained in this book that is valuable for any athlete. I am not a mountaineer, though I dream of possibly becoming one someday. So for the time being, I am a low altitude hiker and jogger, and the advice/methods in this book are for the most part very applicable to my fitness goals.

[Lukas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a long review for this amazing book typed out and then Goodreads, that ol‘ trashcan app, crashed on me. Fix that piece of %%*#?*, Jeff!

Anyway, book is 5/5 for anyone moving around in the alpine. Focus on your base training before anything else and most importantly, run more slowly: Most of your training should be below your Aerobic Threshold, a pace you should be able to do while easily breathing through your nose only.

[Zachary Rudolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There are three principle adaptations that result in increased ATP production in the muscles: increased mitochondrial mass, increased aerobic enzymes, and increased capillary bed density. ... By the time you get over 20,000 feet (about 6,100 meters) your will be a mere shadow of your sea level self with only about one half of your aerobic power available.”

[Iain Macfarlane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in understanding the fundamentals of endurance training. I read it as a distance runner and not a climber. I found that this book, more than any other, gave me the tools I needed to create a training plan that was tailored to me. The personal pictures and anecdotes throughout the book are just icing on the cake.

[Kemp]

Can’t say I’m going to finish this book. Started it but never really connected with it.

Thought I might return to it but now I’m not so sure its worth the time. I’m starting to think its important to be selective with the books I give my time to. Even though I’m retired there still a finite amount of time I’ll be available to read. This book seems less and less worthy of my time.