Legs - Mountain Training

Climbers often overlook the importance of leg power and endurance in their overall fitness, focusing more on the bling-bling of pull ups and finger strength, rather than the boring old legs. Even alpine climbers - who this book is primarily aimed at - tend to focus too much on upper body fitness, when in-fact much of alpine climbing involves the legs. In rock climbing most of us only really notice our shortcomings when it comes to a hard rock-over and desperate one leg press, say on a gritstone climb, or when forced to stand on a tiny hold for twenty minutes fiddling in a wire.

The reality is that although we imagine that our climbing is limited by our ability to 'hold on', much of our ability is due to our ability to 'push on' - the legs propelling us up the rock, up peaks, and just as importantly back down again.

This short instructional book is designed to provide some basic guidance, ideas and work outs for all climbers, especially those that undertake leg intensive climbing such as Alpine and mountaineering.

The text is not designed to be exhaustive, and in many ways it should act as the first step in learning more about an area of training that you find works for you.