5 ways to exercise your body for the mountains

It is essential to train our body for the mountains if we practice adventure sports such as mountaineering, trekking or hiking. Being a better athlete every day requires a lot of effort, dedication and attitude, but it is also essential that you train in the right direction to achieve your physical goals.

The mountain assumes a high level of performance because the effort intervals vary greatly depending on the section, the mountain and the weather condition. Therefore, you must be prepared to assume moments in which the intensity of physical activity increases, decreases and increases again.

The recommendation will be to develop resistance and prepare your physical condition with progressive training with intervals of intensity that varied between medium and high. This will help us to train the muscles and develop a better cardiovascular and respiratory condition. Don't forget that your body must withstand the intensity of the mountain!

PERFORM PROGRESSIVE TRAINING WITH INTERVALS OF MEDIUM AND HIGH INTENSITY

This is the key to mountain training! When we do these sports, the intensities vary greatly, which is why it is important to train our resistance to take on intense stretches and long stretches of travel. We achieve this with cardiovascular exercises, resistance and duration exercises, breathing exercises to improve our lung capacity, and muscle strengthening and flexibility exercises.

Don't forget that mountain adventure sports will always require you to be in top physical condition from head to toe, because you use almost every muscle in your body in the process.

WORK THESE FIVE AXES OF TRAINING THAT EXERCISE YOUR BODY FOR THE MOUNTAIN

The best thing will be to work on these 5 axes of exercise and strengthening. This will help you little by little daily to adjust your conditions in a positive way, and will allow you to get stronger every day to be a better mountain athlete.

1.RESISTANCE

Resistance exercises stimulate your physical endurance capacity. They will help you prepare when you are facing a sustained effort, and to withstand long journeys. You work this through two types of exercise to improve your resistance:

• Aerobic exercises

Aerobic exercise requires good breathing to be carried out, for a determined and constant time. Therefore, they are ideal for maximizing and improving oxygenation and respiration rates. Aerobic exercise will improve the capacities of your cardiovascular and respiratory system and will help you to make physical efforts for long periods of time.

• Anaerobic exercises

For its part, anaerobic exercises limit the supply of oxygen for a very limited time to your muscle tissue. These are exercises with high intensity rhythms and low oxygenation that do not exceed three minutes, which seek to enhance the muscular response to this demand, and along with this, fatigue slows down.

2. CARDIOVASCULAR

It is essential that we exercise our cardiovascular system, and aerobic exercises are excellent for this. Our blood vessels widen when we exercise. It is necessary to ensure that they do not widen too much, and prevent them from shrinking, preventing the passage of blood to the muscles. We achieve this with good breathing and hydration when exercising daily and also with food, preventing excess fat from clogging our blood vessels.

3. LUNG CAPACITY

Breathing is essential for all the processes of our body. It should be strengthened by combining aerobic and anaerobic exercises in your routine, which will help you develop better oxygenation in your body. Intercalate between low-intensity exercises for long periods of time, adding high-resistance, short-duration exercises that strengthen, slow down your fatigue, and strengthen your muscles.

4. MUSCLE STRENGTH

Strengthening your muscles is also key. The oxygenation of will help their formation and strengthening from within, but you must strengthen them by lifting the weight of the body and lifting additional weight according to your possibilities.

5. JOINT FLEXIBILITY

We must not leave joint flexibility aside. Remember that our body is connected to each other by mobile points, such as knees, wrists, knuckles, elbows, ankles and hips... Our joints are stabilized by ligaments that we must strengthen and take care of so as not to wear them out. It is these points of flexibility that help us with our mobility, so we must lubricate them with good hydration. In addition, we must pay close attention to the movements we make and the position of our body when exercising and playing sports. It must be correct and aligned so as not to deviate from its natural position and cause damage.

Remember that it is important to always have a positive attitude and a spirit of adventure and team spirit to help us train our minds for action.

And along with this, training our own physical condition will be key to achieving our goals, always depending on the difficulty and intensity that these entail. Exercising regularly and exercising your muscles will help you get the physical condition you need.

Avoid overexertion, the idea is to train and not wear yourself out or force your muscles in the wrong way.

Only with physical preparation will we be able to reduce the risks posed by adventure sports, because they generate confidence and also help us develop our ability. This way we will be more prepared to assume the challenges in the mountains!