Strength Training as a Backcountry Athlete

Okay, so you’ve put in the requisite work towards achieving movement competency in the necessary movement patterns and you’re ready to shift your focus to building STRENGTH in those movement patterns. The principles that guide the building of strength are relatively simple, in theory: lift more today than you did last time you performed the same exercise. This is the principle of progressive overload.

It often helps to think of the fable of Milo and his bull:

When he was an adolescent, Milo’s father gave him a young bull calf. Each day Milo’s father would ask “how big is your bull today, Milo?”

When asked, Milo would go out into the field, pick up his bull calf, and bring him to show his father, exclaiming “my bull is THIS BIG today, father.”

As the days passed, the bull grew larger and larger. Each day Milo carried his bull to show his father, Milo grew stronger.

Of course, the bull did not grow to full-size overnight. The progression was very gradual in nature, which is what allowed Milo to recover and build the strength necessary to continue lifting the progressively heavier bull.

In practice, this simply means that at each strength training session, your goal should be to lift more TOTAL weight than at your previous session. This can mean moving a heavier weight for the same number of repetitions or lifting the same weight for more repetitions.

To effectively build muscle and strength, most people should complete anywhere from 9-18 total sets per muscle group each week. Those sets should each consist of anywhere between 6-20 repetitions. The lower the reps, the more sets you should complete.

Some examples include:

• 4 sets of 6-7 repetitions

• 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions

• 2 sets of 15-20 repetitions

Each set should stop with 1 or 2 reps “left in the tank.” The rationale here is that physical adaptation happens when we work near the edge of our current capacity, not beyond it. Ask any high-performance athlete how often they train to the point of true failure and they will all say the same thing: almost never.

If you find that after a few weeks, you are no longer able to add more weight or more reps, reduce your working volume for a week before ramping it back up again. It seems counter-intuitive, I know, but in the strength training world, this is what’s known as a deload. It’s kind of like making a small down-climb to a traverse in order to reach a spot where you can continue your ascent toward the summit.

A quick note regarding the 1-5 rep range: unless you’ve been consistently following a structured training plan for close to a year, you won’t need to use that range and, without that year-or-so of strength training under your belt (the research technically suggests a minimum of 9 months), the risk of injury far outweighs the possible benefits. 

I’ve worked as a professional coach for well over a decade and, unless you’re a competitive weightlifter, powerlifter, or Crossfit athlete, there is virtually no good reason to test - or even flirt with - your true 1 rep max.

At this point, you might be wondering how strong you need to be in order to set yourself up for success. 

Well, the answer is: it depends. 

It depends on what your athletic endeavours include. A trail runner who seldom carries anything larger than a 15L pack containing nothing more than The 10 Essentials doesn’t need nearly as much strength as a mountain hunter who has to be prepared to haul upwards of a couple hundred pounds of meat multiple miles over rugged terrain after a successful stalk. 

With that said, all Backcountry Athletes should endeavor to achieve a minimum standard of relative strength (their strength relative to their body mass.)

For example, being able to perform the following feats of strength with good technique is a solid benchmark:

• 25 goblet squats holding 50% of your bodyweight

• Carry 75% of your bodyweight (in your hands) for 90 seconds

• 5-8 Chin-Ups

If you can do all of that on-demand, you’ve got a solid foundation of strength to support your adventures!

PS. If you want to take the guesswork out of your strength training, we take care of all of that for you (plus conditioning, 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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