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.

[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.

[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.

[Thomas Zhang · Rating 4 out of 5]

"On the grand scheme 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."

[Jean Dupenloup · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually read this baby cover to cover...
Not much to review as it’s a manual more than a book. The science is thorough and digestible, and I have obtained good results from the training programs in it. Of particular interest to me was the approach to Zone 1 training.