Schoellkopf Muscle Resistance Facilitator training program

Some folks can climb mountains quite successfully without physical conditioning. If I don't give my body advanced notice, then after a big hike I can't walk down stairs or bend over to tie my shoes. Moving a computer mouse around, walking to the office cubby next door to score a piece of candy, or even carrying the cat around the house isn't enough.

After years of experimentation, I have developed a physical training program to prepare for climbing mountains. I call it Oxygen Constrained, Dynamic Schoellkopf MUscle Resistance Facilitator, or OCD SMURF training. It has helped me get up some pretty fun places.





High on Mt. Chimborazo, Ecuador

The program is based on a phenomena, widely accepted by scientists, doctors, physical therapists, yogis, and personal trainers, that I call gravity.

It goes like this: I run* down the hill from my house to the Cornell University campus about two and a half miles away. Sometimes I'll run* (or hike with a weighted backpack) the Cascadilla Gorge Trail before arriving at my main training facility on campus.

The Cascadilla Gorge Trail is an Ithaca gem.

Cascadilla Gorge Trail,
photo by others

It's a path of ledges and steps that follows a waterfall cascade through a rock walled gorge from the Cornell campus to downtown (such as it is) Ithaca. Some folks are lucky enough to walk through this natural splendor as their daily commute.

The gorge also provides further evidence of this phenomena I call gravity. Every once in a while, large chunks of Devonian Shale break away from the rock walls. The rocks always fall down! And as if that isn't enough proof, each spring, Cornell Outdoor Education workers gather bags of beer cans, beer cups, and construction cones that have been thrown down from the surrounding Fraternity Houses.

My training facility is the Schoellkopf Memorial Stadium.  Sometimes it looks like this

Sometimes like this



And occasionally, it looks like this


I have two routines. For cardiovascular training, I run* up as fast as my lungs, legs and resolve allow. The invisible effects of gravity restraining muscle. Then I walk down as my heart and respiration rates sink below tachycardic levels. Sometimes I pause to clean up the bleachers by picking up trash as I descend. My goal is to arrive at the top of each of the 14 gradually increasing and then decreasing stairways puffing like a locomotive and with heart pounding. This forces the body's Oxygen Compensation systems to Engage **.

For strength training I lug a backpack loaded with some combination of batteries, bricks, a sand bag, or free weights, and climb the stairs at the 50 yard line as many times as I can stand the boredom. Enduring boredom actually provides training for the mental strength to slog up a glacier.




Try OCD SMURF training so you'll climb like the first guy
and not feel like the second guy

For the 10 last years before I retired, I commuted to my office almost exclusively by foot, often lugging that backpack. It turns out, if you do something long and often enough, people become habituated. As I walked past a neighbor on my slacker days, he would ask: where are the batteries?



* One part of the definition of run is "move at a speed faster than a walk".


** Imagine my surprise when I searched the Internet for Oxygen Compensation and found this article in the book Quantitative Human Physiology


Bonus references: My stair climbing is pathetic compared to the guy I met in the Illiniza Refugio. Or compared to Greg Cummings who climbed the Manito Incline in Colorado 1,825 times in a year. According to one follower, that means Greg averaged about 10,000 feet of vertical elevation gain every single day of the year! They estimated that Greg spent an average of eight hours a day, seven days a week, for twelve months climbing these stairs!!! Think of him the next time you step onto the stairmaster.