Some of you live where the terrain is flat, and you want to run the Spartan Race at Killington, VT, or Lake Tahoe, CA, or Big Bear, CA, or Palmerton, PA, and many other mountain courses. What we all know, but we don't often think about, is that running/hiking up mountains is SO MUCH HARDER than running on flat terrain.
If you want to perform well on a mountain, and you don't have a mountain to train on, you need to do the following things (order doesn't matter - prioritize as needed).
NUMBER 1: Build Lower Body Strength Endurance
If you have been weight training for a while, perform super high repetition with lighter weights of Dumbbell Walking Lunges, Squats, Reverse Lunges, and Step Ups. The weight you use, and the reps you perform will depend on your fitness level, but even a beginner can start with bodyweight work and scale up in reps and weight over time. This is a must. You need to make your legs stronger and build up their endurance to handle the sheer volume of work they'll encounter from running and hiking up and down the mountain.
We've designed a great starter training program for OCR athletes who want to take on a Spartan Race course on a mountain, but don't have mountains to work with. It's called, "Mountain Training For Flat Landers". It's a 4 Week program that will help you build strength and endurance in your lower body and give you more skills and experience for steep mountain climbs. The program is FREE OF CHARGE, however, we have set a 50 program download limit, so CLICK the program title above and enjoy the free training from us!
Number 2: Plyometrics
Things like Jump Squats, Jumping Lunges (Plyometric Split Squats), and Box Jumps will help build up strength, a little power, and also the ability for your muscles to handle the eccentric loading forces that come from RUNNING/WALKING DOWNHILL. Everyone thinks of training to go up the mountain, but your legs take a MASSIVE BEATING when coming back downhill.
Number 3: Replicate LONG-DURATION incline work.
This is where treadmills become so useful. Most treadmill goes up to at least a 10% incline, and the majority are likely to hit a 15% incline. Occasionally you'll find some that go up to 30%+. However, if you start training on an incline treadmill, you'll prepare your legs for the taxing work of climbing uphill. The great thing about a treadmill is that you can simulate hills and continual elevation gain that you can't get on most mountains. Start low on the incline, but as you do more sessions, gradually increase the incline over time. If you can build up to walking at a 3.5mph pace for 60 minutes on a 15% incline, you'll climb several thousand vertical feet in that time. If you can go longer, faster, or on a greater incline, even better.
Number 4: Hill Repeats
You may not have a big hill, or even a really steep hill. But if you can find any hill, I HIGHLY recommend going out (after warming up), running up the hill, walking back down the hill, and repeating this for a long time. If you're just starting out, don't go crazy, but if you have a running background or have built up to this, there is no reason why you can't do 50+ rounds of hill repeats. Keep in mind, these aren't sprints. It's running up the hill, and walking back down. Your body gets all of the same stresses that it will on a mountain from doing this work.
Everyone is different, and everyone is starting at a different fitness level, so the nuance comes in with the specifics of reps, distance, time, incline percentage, speed, weight, and so on. That needs to all be programmed and planned appropriately to your fitness level and race goal.