so this is a follow along beginner leg strength workout done with absolutely no
equipment I am out in the park it is -6 degrees so it's gonna be a
short one I'm gonna be gradually taking clothes off as I warm up
but speaking of warm-ups you want to be moving for about 5 or 10 minutes running
up and down some stairs to push up some general movement get your heart rate up
get that body temperature up a little bit before you get into this workout but
I'm gonna get straight into it let's do it
welcome back to the channel my name is chase I like to share things that can
help you prepare your mind your body and your gear for the mountains whether
you're a hiker or a mountaineer or a skier this workout is going to help you
this is all bodyweight stuff I'm out here in Oslo in Norway freezing my butt
off to show you guys some of the most crucial bodyweight movements to produce
uphill power to stabilize your hips and to strengthen your legs in general for
the outdoors so our first move here is a slow step down this is essentially a
pistol squat as hikers we spent a lot of the time on one leg so this is a really
useful move for producing stability through the knee you can tell by my knee
shaking all over the place they're just fixing my shoes here you want to press
through your heel here it's important that we're driving through the heel onto
the bench we don't want to have the heel come up if you do you've probably got
some issues with ankle mobility if that's the case I've got a whole series
on ankle mobility that I'll link up above so I'm doing it pretty quickly
probably because I want to get this over and done with but you want to really
slow this down as much as possible this is too difficult for you what you can do
is lower the height of the step maybe start with something that's just you
know the average height of a step and work up from there
so our next move is more focused on the posterior chain so in this case the
hamstrings and this is essentially a deadlift and I think it's probably one
of the most useful single leg lower body moves because the hamstrings often get
forgotten unless you're doing a lot of Romanian
deadlifts and if you're a hiker you're probably not into going in the
gym so this is a great move that you can use to build stability in the knee to
build confidence in your knee by strengthening the hamstring and that
whole posterior chain so want to kit again keep the heel on the ground
maybe grip through your big toe if you're doing this barefoot it's
obviously not the day for me to do it barefoot but great to try this out their
foot you can see them I got my hands behind my back there that sites
forcing me to keep my chest open and roll my shoulders back and that's a good
indication that you're going a little bit too low in the move mobility and
depth in this movement will come over time but just go as far as you can
whilst keeping your back straight thing out for now until you build some more mobility
and you'll eventually be able to get much lower down so they are our first
two moves that A1 and A2 and you can repeat these two four to three or
four rounds working with the rep ranges that I've given you before we move on to
the next set group B but if you want to follow along all the way to the end and
repeat this whole video that's totally cool as well let's jump into our next
move this is a Bulgarian split squat so if you've been following these videos
for a while you might notice that I've changed my tune on this exercise a
little bit I used to have my front foot really far out but I've since learned
that's much better to keep the foot closer to the bench so we can really
focus on developing the quadriceps in that working leg and not have to feel
the hip stretch that happens when you really step out too far
so again this is another single leg move really good for balance with that back
foot you can either choose to have your toes up like I've got mine here or you
can have them flat really just up to you and what the situation is what you're
more comfortable with doing the main focus here is that we're building
strength through the quad and we're building that stability and balance
through this single leg move the next exercise is a half tuck squat this is a
regression of the side-to-side squat which I showed in one of my other videos
this is a great way to get used to being in this lower position really far out
lunging laterally can be really challenging for the hips initially and
it's also great for building strength in the legs without having a squat rack or
doing any weighted squats because we're really relying on one leg it's demanding
so much more than just a regular squat now I'm not going very deeply here
because I just wanted to demonstrate to those of you who are beginners that you
can get a lot of benefit from this movement just by going that partial
distance until you have built the mobility to go deeper check out this
view over looking over the oslo fjord this is such a great place to do a little outdoor workout
so again you can repeat exercises b1 and b2 for a two
three maybe four rounds let's get into group C now we're working on time under
tension which is one of the key principles of building strength so here
you've probably seen this move before but what we're doing is really slowing
it down I'm taking about three seconds so at least I should be to do the
lowering phase of this exercise and that means we're getting a longer time where
our muscle is under tension so this is one of the key things if you don't have
weights that you can simply extend the time that the muscle is under tension in
the move so in essence what I'm saying is that you can still build strength
without weights just by slowing down movement and being under tension for a
longer period of time now I didn't notice this at the time but
I'm getting some weird looks these Norwegians or like who is this
Australian guy wearing shorts working out in the snow what is he doing yeah I
get some weird looks when I'm in Oslo because I do stuff like this I love the
cold being Australian I've had to get used to it but I've done a few things
that have allowed me to be much more comfortable in the cold and honestly
that's really helped with mountaineering and just becoming more comfortable in
the higher mountains especially during the winter definitely planning on
sharing with you guys some cold tips in the future so hang out for that a video
I'll link it up here when it's done this is a reverse hyper you may not have seen
it before this is a move that feels pretty easy the first time you do it and
you might be inclined to do more reps but I'm telling you if you haven't done
this move before don't do more than sort of 10 or 15 reps because tomorrow your
lower back is going to be seized the fuck up you're not gonna be able to get
out of bed believe me so if this is your first time just go easy on yourself
maybe test it out and be like eight to ten reps and start slow because this is
training your posterior chain in a way that it probably hasn't been done before
if you're game you can hold for that extra 5 10 15 seconds at the end of the
rep to really solidify that position I couldn't make a hiking strength workout
without throwing in some calf raises obviously these are important our calves
get absolutely toasted especially if you're a mountaineer wearing crampons
on vertical ice it's all about how much endurance you have in your calves
so this is a really basic calf raise exercise I'll throw a couple of other
more difficult ones into the PDF that you can check out if you like but here
we're just going into deficit so I'm standing on the edge here trying to push
my heels low so that we get a nice stretch through the calves as well then
I'm coming up as high as I can great for balance as well
and building stability in the ankles by doing your calf raises on
a step with no suppor t personally I do way more calf stretching than I do
strengthening just because the way I'm set up but there's loads of different
variations okay I'm gonna add a little finisher here I didn't plan on doing this
this is something that I just come up with on the spot I'm calling it a
squat jump hold ladder if you're not super comfortable with squat jumps yet
we wouldn't recommend doing this on a big box like this you can do it with
smaller steps honest maybe on a set of stairs essentially what I'm doing is I'm
doing ten squat jumps but each time I'm holding an isometric pause at the top of
the box a little bit longer so right now I'm doing you know for five seconds and
now each time I come up onto the box I hold an extra second at the bottom and
at the top as well so now this is starting to get difficult
I'm only probably just clearing the step as they come up but yeah I don't know
why I chose to do this this is definitely biting off more than I can
chew I actually kind of have a fear of squat
jumps when I was a kid I jumped up onto this brick ledge I was trying to
challenge myself a little bit I landed on my shins and broke both my shins
since then I've had to kind of rebuild my confidence and maybe taking a few
less risks when it comes to jumping up on stuff but yeah I go through that
trauma okay it came out the other side last one trying to flap my wings to get
to the top of this depth there and last 10-second hold and now we're done
okay alright let's check out this overview you can screenshot this tab
and get a clearer idea of what we're doing in the session here so there is a
lot of information that I couldn't squeeze into this video such as extra
progressions things I did on the day and then more detailed videos and
progressions for all these movements with the help of this PDF you can really
take this one session and develop a very solid leg strength program if you're a
hiker or a mountaineer you don't need to be able to deadlift 700 pounds you just
need to be confident and capable of carrying your weight and the weight of
your backpack through some tricky terrain and doing that for a long
distance if you want hang out with me for a few more minutes I'm gonna head
home and answer one of the most common questions that I know is going to pop up
in the comments section of this video just one on the way home here I have to
answer the inevitable question which is "how often should I be doing this workout?"
well, the answer to that is you should do this workout sort of two or
three times a week for about six weeks and let's call that like a strength
phase so it's better to think about your training in phases because that allows
allows you to progress and the whole reason you're doing this is to progress right?
so in order for you to progress you need to be going through different
phases from strength to endurance, to power. so yeah it's less useful to think about
you know how often you're doing some session and more useful to think about
the phases in which you're going through in your training you know if you
continue to do this workout for the next six months you're kind of constantly
working on strength which is good but if you're trying for the mountains probably
want to transition to endurance at some stage so this workout is not something
that you would want to do you know three or four days a week for the rest of the
year this is something you want to kind of phase in and out and progress this is
a fairly basic bodyweight workout and there is progressions for these
exercises to make this stuff much more difficult so you want to think
not just about how many times you want to do this workout but how can i
progress past this workout so that it's no longer really like difficult for me
once you have developed some some more strength and you've you know done this
for six weeks and you've proven to yourself that you've gotten stronger
then you want to move into doing more endurance based workouts so those
endurance based workouts they're going to involve a lot more reps you'll notice
in this session we were only doing sort of eight reps for most exercises so that
means we're in that sort of strength building rep range. Woop. legs feeling a
little wobbly on the downhill after that session say you know it's good I am a
walk home and enjoy this little walk through the forest thanks for following
along with me if you liked the video hit the like button and I hope to makes more
videos like this probably at home back in Barcelona so if you want to see some
more stuff like this, let me know. I'll see you on the summit!
you