Building Muscular Endurance and Work Capacity as a Backcountry Athlete

Muscular Endurance & Work Capacity

Virtually all backcountry sports and adventures are endurance-centric. Unless you’re getting heli-dropped straight to your final destination - and then camping in-place right there - odds are good that you’re looking at hours-to-days worth of relatively continuous physical activity. If your body isn’t being challenged in this way on a daily basis (IE construction worker, personal trainer, etc.) you’ll need to train it to handle this type of continuous demand.

If you’ve taken the time to increase your overall strength using the systems outlined in the previous section the good news is that you will have indirectly increased your muscular endurance as well! Think about it: if you’ve increased the amount of weight you can lift for a set number of reps, you’ve also increased the number of reps (or amount of time) that you can move a weight below that same threshold.

The bad news, unfortunately, is that’s likely not enough to prepare you for hours and hours of continuous physical output, especially if you spend most of your typical days sitting at a desk.

There are several ways that you can train your muscular endurance:

You can plan your structured training sessions in a way that specifically yields physical adaptations in line with muscular endurance and/or you can work to build more activity into your typical daily routine. Ideally, you’d do both.

For a structured workout, the following progressions have been scientifically proven to be extremely effective:

• Select 4-8 exercises (ideally, one variation from each of the foundational movement patterns. I like to add an extra pulling movement to help counterbalance all of the slouching over a desk that most people do.) 

• For each exercise, choose a load that represents about 30-50% of what you think you could lift 1 time.

• Perform 20 reps of each exercise in a circuit fashion (one after the other) resting 1 minute in between each exercise.

• Once you’ve completed each of the exercises 1 time, rest for 5 minutes before repeating.

• Each week, add 10 reps (week 2 = 30 reps; week 3 = 40 reps; week 4 = 50 reps.

The next month, begin eliminating rest intervals by pairing the exercises together:

• Complete 50 reps of your first exercise and then immediately complete 50 reps of the second exercise

• Rest 1 minute then move on to the next 2 exercises, and so on.

• Again, rest 5 minutes once you have completed all of the exercises 1 time before repeating the circuit.

After 2-3 weeks, again, eliminate a rest interval. Now you’ll be completing 4 exercises back-to-back.

After another 2-3 weeks you’ll be ready to complete all 8 exercises in succession without taking a rest. (50 reps per exercise x 8 exercises = 400 reps without an “official” rest.)

I also recommend supplementing this training style with a bit of heavier strength work in order to maintain the strength that you built during your previous phase of training. Typically 2-3 strength-focused exercises per session prior to beginning the circuit training that was just outlined.

I’ve used this exact protocol with competitive trail runners, marathoners, and multi-sport adventure athletes leading up to their own personal PRs and first-time podium finishes. I know it sounds tedious and boring, but it works. Full stop.

I already mentioned another technique that can be used, ideally in conjunction with the program outlined above: working more movement into your daily life. This is best done gradually, as with everything else in this program.

If you spend most of your day sitting at a desk, start by spending 1 hour per day using a standing desk. After a week or two, increase that to 2 hours per day, and so on until you are spending the majority of your day on your feet.

As a side note: research has found that standing desks are best used when completing routine or mundane tasks, while tasks that require a higher level of focus and information processing are typically completed more efficiently while seated. You can use this info to help guide you in when to stand vs. sit during your workday.

You can also build “trigger workouts” into your day. A trigger workout is where you attach a mini-workout to a specific trigger such as going to the restroom, getting a drink of water, etc.

As an example, you could decide that each time you go to use the restroom you’ll complete 40 bodyweight squats and 20 pushups before returning to work. Again, the idea here is to get your body used to performing more and more physical work on a daily basis so that when you go out into the backcountry the hours of effort you ask it to complete are not such a shock to your system.

PS. If you want to take the guesswork out of your Strength & Conditioning work, we take care of all of that for you (nutrition, and a whole host of other things) as part of our Backcountry STRONG coaching service.

Fill out our Coaching Application Form or Contact Us and we’ll set up a no-obligation discovery call to see if it would be a good fit for you.

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