Ice Mountaineering - Tips to Excel
To become an excellent ice climber, you can opt for either of the following two ways. You go on mountaineering as much as possible but this process will give you very slow result or else you follow the three step approach. That is −
- Set your goal
- Analyse the current strength and weak areas of your training
- Focus on improving on the areas where you are weak
Setting Goals
It is important that the goal must be specific, that means you should focus on only those areas upon which you want the improvement. Secondly, it should be measurable and assignable. It should not be unrealistic unless you will find yourself in a loop hole of failure even after N number of tries.
Categorise your goals into short term, middle term, or long term wise. This will help you in getting a clear picture of what and how you want to achieve details. Develop your own tactics and formula to excel in every stage of the sport. This can be only achieved by properly understanding your sport and goal.
Analysing Strengths and Weaknesses
Analysis on the strength and weakness should be done individually by both the athlete and the trainer. Find the weak points, list them down and work hard on them to improve. For example, if you want to compete in world cup level then you should be more serious about your timing, count movements, foot placement etc.
Similarly, you should also keep a track upon the performance of top players and should use it as a benchmark to improve yourself. Try to work hard upon high foot placement and one arm pull ups. Strength of your muscle, legs and shoulders matters a lot while aiming for a top spot.
Planning
For your mid-term and long-term goals, plan some training schedules. Divide each training schedule further into various cycles. Fix some deadlines to complete each cycle and monitor your progress. For an example if by nature you are very good at mountaineering then try to excel in enhancing your muscle power and if by nature you are excellent in that too try to improve your speed.
As we have discussed many times over here that leg power and shoulder power are much important, hence one should do core exercises such as daily jogging of 30-45 minutes, doing push ups and pulls ups to increase the back strength etc. Stretch your lower and upper part of your body thrice in a week to make your body more elastic.
