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Butcher's Dog! Regular
outdoor fitness tips from the canine on creatine. Cold wet
nose and glossy coat guaranteed.
Walk Like The Sherpas
Do!
Altitude - weird stuff it is, and the key
to surviving up there where the air gets thin and cold is
acclimatisation. There are some excellent High Altitude
Medicine web sites out there if you want more details on how
to acclimatise - just
see our links section - but the
one aspect of high altitude trekking that no-one talks about
it is how to actually walk.
Yeah, right, one foot in front of the
other. No, what I'm getting at is the pace to walk at. Most
westerners' response to gasping in that thin air is simply
to plod steadily and slowly at a snail's pace, very low
intensity, relatively low effort. Get home after an extended
spell of this though and you realise just how little
stimulus your body's been getting. Try running or cycling
above a snail's rate and there's no va va voom...
Which is why it's interesting to watch
how Sherpas walk in the mountains and maybe - and you'd
better be fit to try this - give it a shot yourself. Sherpas
have adapted physiologically to altitude over thousands of
years, but they've also developed a few tricks to make their
lives easier.
Walking in bursts
Watch Sherpas walking on a mountain trail
and you'll notice two things - they walk much faster than
you and they walk in bursts, stopping after short distances
to catch their breath and then carrying on. We tried it and,
guess what, it works. Up a steep haul heading up to the
upper Khumbu valley, we walked in bursts - cane it till you
start to run short of breath, then stop, get your breath
back and repeat.
Rather improbably, even with the rest
stops, you soon overhaul and leave behind people walking at
a normal pace and guess what, it does hurt as much as that
slow, muscle fatigue build up. So what's going on? We're not
100 per-cent sure, but it seems likely that by doing this,
Sherpas are actually producing a training
stimulus.
What happens, maybe...
First, by walking hard and fast to the
point where they go anaerobic, the muscles start to work
without oxygen, Sherpas may well be raising their anaerobic
threshold and increasing their tolerance to working just
beneath it for longer. Next, walking like this at sea level
would probably build up lactic acid in the leg muscles, but
ironically, higher up, it might actually be a way to avoid
it as the limiting factor is lung performance rather than
muscle fatigue.
It's almost like interval training -
instead of building muscle fatigue by continuous use just
below anerobic threshold levels due to the lack of oxygen in
the thin air - the Sherpa's start stop regime means he or
she can recover almost completely between bursts. It's also
likely to be a more efficient method of moving over
multi-day treks as there's less likelihood of long term
general muscular fatigue building up. Strange but probably
true.
Plod on the other hand and your leg
muscles give way to aching agony before your lungs of heart
cry enough. We don't pretend to understand what exactly is
going on, but if you do find yourself at altitude and you're
feeling fit, try walking the Sherpa way and see how you get
on. Make sure you're fit to start off with though or you
simply won't be able to recover between bursts and your
bustst will be more like busts...
Yours barking
The Butcher's Dog
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