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High Rep Calf Raises
I was talking to a friend a couple weeks ago. He was doing off-season training for ice climbing and mentioned how his calves would get tired while leading. In leading ice you normally stand on your front points and lower your heels to lock in your knees and keep your weight on your bones, or…
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Bodyweight Exercise One Legged Band Sissy Squat
I like to do some type of bodyweight exercise for warming up. It’s also great for working the smaller stabilizing muscles that I think shouldn’t be trained under heavy load. Unilateral bodyweight exercise is particularly good for the stabilizers and core. In this example, the one legged band sissy squat, it takes a lot of…
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Core Week – Standing Side Abs with Barbell
You need to work your obliques, including the abs on the side. Bending side to side is a pretty good way to train your core and improve strength that applies to mountaineering, like picking up your really heavy pack, lifting a sled over a crevasse lip, digging out a tent platform. The instructions for this…
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Core Week – Standing Band Ab Curls
The Standing Band Ab Curl is a pretty cool exercise for your core that works a lot harder than you would think. Gravity really doesn’t give you a boost, since you’d be pulling against the resistance from above and/or to the rear. Typically you’d use a little over-the-shoulder yoke hooked to a cable and a…
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Core Week – Inverted Situp
So you want a set of six-pack abs? Or at least a strong core, which is probably more meaningful for ice climbing and hauling around an 85 lb pack while dragging a 45 lb sled (standard fare in Alaska). I really like this exercise – the inverted situp. I do it a few different ways,…
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Core Week – Rotation Planks
Very simple and very effective – works your entire core, including your abs and obliques and the QL. I like to use something to take the stress off my wrists when I do planks. In the video below I’m using the Perfect Pushup handles to allow my wrists to stay in a neutral position and…