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  • Weekend Warrior: A Weekend in The Alps

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    Mark Twight discusses how his training opportunities have decreased as his career and life commitments have increased. He now trains for around 450 hours annually compared to 1000 hours previously. However, his Gym Jones training program allows him to maintain a high level of fitness through short, intense workouts that build both physical and mental confidence. This was demonstrated during a weekend trip to the Alps where he climbed difficult routes in Chamonix despite only training for under twenty minutes most sessions. The hybrid program combining short high intensity sessions with longer low intensity efforts gives Twight a broad fitness allowing him to participate in high-risk sports spontaneously.

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    Mark Twight discusses how his training opportunities have decreased as his career and life commitments have increased. He now trains for around 450 hours annually compared to 1000 hours previously. However, his Gym Jones training program allows him to maintain a high level of fitness through short, intense workouts that build both physical and mental confidence. This was demonstrated during a weekend trip to the Alps where he climbed difficult routes in Chamonix despite only training for under twenty minutes most sessions. The hybrid program combining short high intensity sessions with longer low intensity efforts gives Twight a broad fitness allowing him to participate in high-risk sports spontaneously.

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    63 views2 pages

    Weekend Warrior: A Weekend in The Alps

    Uploaded by

    john
    Mark Twight discusses how his training opportunities have decreased as his career and life commitments have increased. He now trains for around 450 hours annually compared to 1000 hours previously. However, his Gym Jones training program allows him to maintain a high level of fitness through short, intense workouts that build both physical and mental confidence. This was demonstrated during a weekend trip to the Alps where he climbed difficult routes in Chamonix despite only training for under twenty minutes most sessions. The hybrid program combining short high intensity sessions with longer low intensity efforts gives Twight a broad fitness allowing him to participate in high-risk sports spontaneously.

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    WEEKEND WARRIOR

    A Weekend in the Alps

    BY MARK TWIGHT

    As a professional climber I was quite dedicated to training and had the time to do as
    much as I felt necessary but when life and career changed my training opportunities
    dwindled. These days I can manage about 450 hours of training (and sport) annually, in
    contrast to the 1000 hours I used to enjoy. Happily my ambitions have evolved in
    concert with my ability to prepare for them though I still take advantage of any chance
    to get after it in the mountains. To that end my training program must make me fit
    across diverse energy pathways such that I can participate in high-risk sports at a
    decent level on a moment's notice, and it must give me the confidence to do so.

    The upper half of the north face of the Aiguille des Pelerins, Chamonix, France

    The program we have developed at Gym Jones works and we have the results to prove
    it. The benefits that are specific to me, a guy working lots of hours a week running two
    companies derive from the program’s time efficiency. In terms of cardiac output I can
    achieve a relatively high volume in a short period of time due to the intensity demanded
    by most of the workouts. When I combine these short, intense sessions (95-97% of
    MHR) with one or two efforts per week of long duration at very low intensity the broad
    spectrum fitness obtained allows me to do what ever I choose without tailoring the
    training beforehand.
    In April 2004 I flew to Italy, worked for three days and then took the weekend off. The
    weather in the mountains was perfect. Saturday I drove to the Valsavaranche to ski up
    and down the Grand Paradis, a 13,320-foot peak that dominates the national park of
    the same name in the Aosta Valley. The tour begins at 6430 feet, gaining 6725 feet in
    approximately 5 miles. I made the roundtrip in 5 hours, which, after the late season ski
    mountaineering racing I'd done in the US was not a surprising time. That said the
    majority of the workouts I’d done during the preceding five months lasted less than
    twenty minutes.

    I spent the afternoon eating and napping so I could go out again the next day. I
    borrowed climbing gear and early Sunday morning drove to Chamonix in France to
    catch the first cable car to the Plan de l'Aiguille with my friend Manu Ibarra. We post-
    holed up to the base of the Col des Pelerins and climbed an 1800-foot high ice and
    mixed route of some difficulty. Even after the big effort of the day before I felt like I was
    jogging. I had not been on a route of that difficulty for three or four years and comfort in
    such a place does not return as easily as riding a bike. I have some experience on that
    face as I had made the first ascent of another big route right next to where Manu and I
    were climbing 12 years prior. The two ascents were shockingly dissimilar: one an all out
    26-hour battle, the other a 6-hour romp. Granted, the levels of difficulty are different,
    my experience now greater, equipment now more evolved, and certainly, my level of
    fitness now better as well.

    But it was the confidence engendered by this level of fitness that surprised me the
    most. Despite my desk driving it seemed perfectly natural to hop on a reasonably hard
    route right off the couch. The benefits of fitness are not merely physical. Successful
    completion of a series of difficult, short-duration, high-intensity efforts builds self-
    assuredness in a way that few other activities can. Tough workouts that push an
    individual to the very limit of his or her capacities may become the gateway to higher
    consciousness. And that awareness often leads to confidence.

    I have never felt such a sense of accomplishment after a mere workout until I began
    training at truly high intensity. I never used to feel butterflies in my stomach on the way
    to the gym but I sometimes get them now when a benchmark workout (a test) is on the
    schedule. And because my old workouts were merely physical, with little psychological
    benefit they did not generate the self-confidence that comes from the training I do now
    – I had to actually go climbing to earn it back then.

    In everyday life and for my chosen sports my dedicated participation in a hybrid training
    program that combines short, high intensity sessions with endurance and ultra-
    endurance efforts (strictly avoiding the middle ground of moderate intensity) gives me a
    foundation of fitness from which I can do anything I choose. And that’s what Gym Jones
    is talking about.

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