Mastering Training to Climb: A Practical Guide for Polar & Mountain Expeditions

Training for a major expedition is not about personal bests in the gym or looking the part. It is a quieter, more disciplined process of building competence long before you allow yourself to feel confident. Real readiness is a blend of specific physical conditioning, the mental fortitude to use it, and the technical skills to operate safely when you are a long way from home.

True preparedness starts months, sometimes years, before you set foot on a glacier or clip into a rope. It begins with an honest assessment of where you are right now versus what the mountain, or the ice, will demand of you.

This is a core principle from military planning, one that has been proven time and again in the world's most severe environments: competence must always precede confidence. A misplaced sense of assurance is a dangerous liability at -35°C.

Imagine checking your harness in a biting wind high above Templefjorden in Svalbard. In that moment, preparation is not an abstract idea; it is a survival discipline. The foundation of that discipline rests on three non negotiable pillars.

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  Endurance: This is the engine. It is the ability to move for 8-10 hours a day, often pulling a pulk weighing 45-50kg, for weeks at a time. This is about building a deep, resilient aerobic base that keeps going.

• Functional Strength: This is the chassis. It is the ability to perform expedition-specific movements under load. This means strong legs for ascents, a solid core for managing a heavy pack or pulk, and the upper body strength needed for everything from setting up a tent in a storm to a potential self-rescue.

• Mental Fortitude: This is the driver, and it is the most critical pillar. It is the ability to make clear, sound decisions when you are cold, exhausted, and under immense pressure. It is about managing group dynamics in isolation and understanding the fine line between determination and dangerous stubbornness a lesson Shackleton demonstrated with brutal clarity on his crossing of South Georgia.

A weakness in any one of these pillars compromises the others. Physical strength is useless without the mental resilience to apply it wisely. World-class endurance means little if you lack the technical skill to navigate treacherous terrain.

This is why our approach to training to climb goes beyond generic fitness advice. We treat it as a dedicated craft, essential for operating safely and effectively from pole to pole. To see how this thinking shapes our expeditions from day one, you can learn more about the detailed logistics and planning behind our expeditions. It is this disciplined process that ensures when you arrive at our Icelandic academy at 64° 25' 24" N, you are building on a solid, self-aware foundation.

An expedition, at its core, is a test of sustained output. It is not about short bursts of power; it is about having an engine that performs under relentless pressure, often at altitude and in extreme cold where efficiency is everything. Building this engine is not about chasing personal bests in a gym. It is about developing a deep, resilient aerobic base and functional, durable strength.

This process starts not with high intensity sprints, but with disciplined, steady state work. We need to get specific with Zone 2 training . This means long, steady sessions at a conversational pace, keeping your heart rate within 60-70% of its maximum. It feels almost counter intuitively easy, but this is where the adaptation happens.

This low intensity work builds mitochondrial density and teaches your body to become efficient at burning fat for fuel. That is a critical adaptation for multiday trips where you are covering 15-20km (9-12 miles) a day and cannot rely on simple sugars. A typical week should have one long Zone 2 session, where you progressively extend the duration, supported by two or three shorter ones.

Endurance is only half the task. You also need strength that translates directly to the demands of the environment. This is about compound movements that mimic the real world stresses of pulling a 50kg pulk or ascending a steep, glaciated slope with a heavy pack.

Your training has to be specific. We are building a robust chassis, one that is resistant to the repetitive strain of expedition life. The goal here is injury prevention and functional power, not just a higher number on a barbell. To build a truly resilient engine for high altitude, you need a smart approach that includes targeted strength training for climbing.

These movements should be the foundation of your strength work:

•  Weighted Step Ups: Find a box or bench that brings your thigh parallel to the floor. Load up a backpack with weight and focus on a slow, controlled ascent and descent. This directly builds the single leg power needed for climbing.
• Lunges with a Pack: Both walking and static lunges are effective. They improve your balance, core stability, and unilateral leg strength all vital when you are moving over uneven, unpredictable ground.
• Farmer's Walks: Simple but effective. Carrying heavy weights (dumbbells, kettlebells, water cans) for distance strengthens your grip, core, and back. It replicates the strain of lugging heavy equipment around camp after a long day.
• Core Stability Work: Planks, side planks, and bird dog exercises are non negotiable. A strong core is the link between your upper and lower body, providing the stability you need to haul a pulk without damaging your back.

Your body only adapts when it is consistently challenged. The principle of progressive overload is simple: you must gradually increase the difficulty of your training over time. This can mean adding weight, doing more repetitions, or extending the duration of your sessions.

A 16week cycle is a realistic timeframe to see significant gains. We have laid out a sample structure below to give you an idea of how to build that expedition level endurance.

This is a sample structure for building expedition-level endurance over four months. The key is balancing a steady increase in volume and intensity with proper recovery.

Remember, this is a template. Listen to your body and adjust as needed, but the principle of gradually doing more remains the same.

This process follows a clear path from self assessment through to developing competence and, finally, earning real confidence in your physical readiness.

As you can see, readiness is a deliberate progression, not a sudden switch. Competence is the bridge between knowing what is required and being confident you can deliver when it counts.

This kind of specificity removes guesswork and builds practical, real world conditioning. For anyone looking to put this theory into practice under expert guidance, our Expedition Training Course provides the hands on experience needed to translate this work into true expedition capability.

Physical fitness is only half the story on any serious climb; technical skill is what keeps you and your team alive. An expedition engine, no matter how powerful, is useless without the craft to navigate complex, dangerous terrain. This is not just a box to tick, it is a non negotiable part of any genuine training programme.

These are not skills you learn once and file away. They are perishable, demanding constant, hands on practice. The goal is to turn theoretical knowledge into instinctive action. When a simple mistake could have dire consequences, you need your response to be muscle memory, not a moment of fumbling panic.

At its heart, ropework is about managing risk when gravity is against you. It starts with fundamental knots. You must be able to tie a figure eight on a bight or a clove hitch with cold, gloved fingers in a blowing wind. Consider that the baseline, not the ambition.

From there, you build into creating solid anchors in snow, ice, or rock. Understanding how to equalise forces across multiple points, what a solid placement feels like, and when to back it up are decisions that carry real weight. These are not things you can properly learn from a video; they must be drilled in the field until they become second nature.

For anyone serious about building these foundational abilities, our winter mountaineering courses offer intensive, practical training in exactly these environments. You can learn more about our winter mountaineering courses and forging practical peak skills to see how we build this competence from the ground up.

The skills you need change dramatically with the environment. In polar and high alpine settings, proficiency with an ice axe and crampons is everything. This goes far beyond just learning how to walk with them.

You have to practise and perfect the full range of techniques:

•  French Technique (Flat footing): Your primary method for moving efficiently up low to moderate angle snow and ice. It conserves a huge amount of energy over long distances.
• Front Pointing: The direct, powerful technique for climbing steeper ice. It demands lower leg strength and precise placement.
• Self Arrest: Arguably the single most important skill you will ever learn. You must drill self arrest from every conceivable fall position, on your back, head first, sliding sideways until the motion is an immediate, automatic reflex.

This focus on high quality, standardised skills is central to safe mountaineering. In the UK, organisations like Mountain Training set the benchmark for competence. Their qualifications framework underpins the expertise required for everything from local hill walking to leading major international expeditions.

Mountain Training UK & Ireland's Strategic Development Plan 2025-2030 lays out a robust framework for climbing qualifications, which in turn fuels the skills behind high end expeditions. As the body administering key awards like the Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor and International Mountain Leader, MTUKI coordinates numerous schemes nationwide. You can read more about the future of UK mountain training standards here.

Here is the final, crucial lesson: these skills degrade without use. Tying a prusik knot in the comfort of your living room is a world away from doing it on a windswept ridge with the temperature plummeting and your anxiety climbing.

Consistent practice, ideally in challenging conditions, is the only way to maintain a high level of readiness. This process of skill refinement is a core part of effective training. It is about building a deep well of competence you can draw from when the mountain demands it. Without this craft, all the physical fitness in the world is just potential waiting for a bad decision to render it useless.

Genuine mental resilience is a skill you have to drill, just like any other. It is a disciplined process, not something you are born with. It is forged through deliberate practice and an honest look at your own psychological limits.

Picture this: you are navigating a glacier in Svalbard when a whiteout hits. Visibility drops to five metres. Your GPS is acting up in the cold. Do you push on to camp, or do you dig in and wait? The right answer is rarely simple, and this is the reality of training to climb for serious objectives.

Making the right call in that moment takes more than knowing navigation theory. It demands an ability to stay calm, assess risk without emotion, and communicate clearly with your team. This is the core of what we teach, whether to our expedition members or in our corporate leadership programmes.

Pressure narrows your focus, often leading to fixation or 'target fascination'. A disciplined mind, however, can step back, run through a mental checklist, and make a calculated decision instead of an emotional reaction.

One of the best ways to build this resilience is through stress inoculation . This is a technical term for practising your essential skills in increasingly uncomfortable, but still safe, conditions. It is about deliberately exposing yourself to the friction of the real world.

Here are a few drills:

• Set up your tent in the dark, in pouring rain, with gloves on. This simulates how much harder fine motor skills become when your hands are numb.
• Practise your navigation in poor visibility. Do not wait for a perfect day; get out when it is foggy or overcast to force yourself to rely on your map and compass.
• Intentionally create small problems to solve. Work through a simulated stove failure or a broken tent pole at the end of a long training hike.

These drills slowly build your tolerance for discomfort and chaos. They inoculate you against the initial shock and panic that can derail an entire trip.

 Another powerful tool is routine. Rigid, non negotiable routines. In a chaotic environment, routine creates a small pocket of control and predictability. Your tent routine, your cooking routine, your morning pack up sequence these should be so ingrained they happen on autopilot. This frees up precious mental bandwidth to focus on the bigger, dynamic problems you will inevitably face.

History is full of case studies in high stakes decision making. Shackleton’s leadership during the Endurance expedition is a masterclass. His choice to abandon the push for the pole and focus entirely on the survival of his men was the ultimate act of clear headed leadership, not a failure.

This highlights the critical difference between determination and stubbornness. Determination is the will to pursue a rational goal, adapting your plan as the situation changes. Stubbornness is clinging to the original plan long after the facts on the ground have made it a bad idea.

Knowing when to turn back is a strength, not a weakness. It requires you to suppress your ego and make a call based purely on the safety of the team. This is the mindset that separates seasoned explorers from reckless adventurers, and it is a lesson that has to be learned long before you set foot on the ice.

You can train for a year, but an expedition is often won or lost at the stove. Your body is an engine, and no matter how finely tuned, it runs on fuel. It is a common and dangerous mistake to treat nutrition, acclimatisation, and recovery as luxuries on a multi day trip. They are the absolute pillars of sustained performance.

In the cold, your body's energy expenditure skyrockets. Your basal metabolic rate increases simply to keep you warm, and that is before you have even factored in the effort of skiing for 8-10 hours whilst pulling a pulk. To sustain that output, you need a meticulous focus on caloric density.

Standard backpacking food will not cut it. The game is all about high fat, high carbohydrate meals that deliver the most energy for the least weight and volume. Dehydrated meals are your foundation, but they are just the start they have to be supplemented.

Think of it as a constant battle against a calorie deficit. Small additions make a huge difference:

• Add a generous amount of olive oil or butter to every evening meal.
• Keep calorie dense snacks like nuts, salami, and dark chocolate within easy reach for the day.
• Never skip a hot, high energy breakfast. It sets you up for the entire day.

One of your most vital daily chores will be melting snow for water, a task that eats up a surprising amount of time and fuel. Getting efficient with your stove, something like a lightweight MSR XGK , becomes a critical skill. This is not just about cooking; it is your lifeline for hydration, which is every bit as important at -20°C as it is in the desert heat.

When you are operating at altitude, patience becomes your greatest asset. Pushing too hard, too fast is a guaranteed way to get acute mountain sickness (AMS), which can shut down an expedition in an instant. The guiding principle is simple and proven: climb high, sleep low.

This means ascending to a new high point during the day to expose your body to thinner air, then descending to a lower altitude to sleep and recover. This process stimulates the production of red blood cells, helping your body transport oxygen more efficiently. A typical ascent profile might involve gaining 300-500 metres in sleeping altitude per day, with a rest day every third or fourth day to let your body catch up. There are no shortcuts here.

Recovery is an active process. It is not just the absence of effort. On a multi day trip, it is about diligent self management to push back against the cumulative effects of fatigue and muscle soreness. To get your training schedule right and avoid overtraining back home, it is worth consulting a muscle recovery time chart to understand the science behind it.

Sleep hygiene inside a tent is paramount. A good night’s sleep is your number one recovery tool. This means having a disciplined tent routine, making sure your sleeping system is up to the conditions, and managing moisture to stay dry and warm. Even simple stretching routines before bed can work wonders on tight muscles.

This holistic approach to preparation echoes the community spirit you see in UK hill walking. The BMC Hill Walking Programme's review in numbers, for example, captures a vibrant training landscape that inspires our own immersive experiences. Across regions like the Lake District, which welcomed around 90 participants many on their first hill walks the programme delivered adventures summiting Scafell Pike and Skiddaw. It is this same ethos of building skills progressively that we apply when preparing for the world's most demanding environments. You can discover more about the BMC's community training initiatives.

Over the years, we have heard just about every question there is from people getting ready for their first big trip. Here are the ones that come up time and again, with straight answers drawn from decades of leading teams in the harshest places on earth.

This is always the first question, and the answer has nothing to do with how much you can bench press. Forget the gym numbers. The real question is, can you keep going?

Can you haul a 15–20kg pack for six, maybe eight, hours straight, find your rhythm, and hold it? Then, can you wake up the next day, stiff and tired, and do it all over again? And again the day after that? That is expedition fitness. It is about building a deep, seemingly bottomless well of endurance. That is what your training to climb should be focused on.

Simple: self management . It is not glamorous, but it is the bedrock of a successful expedition.

This means handling all the small, personal jobs that keep you functioning. It is the discipline to melt enough snow for your water bottles for the next day, even when you are exhausted. It is forcing yourself to eat when you have no appetite. It is putting on another layer before you start to feel the cold bite. Your first and most important job out there is to not become a problem for others. Get these personal routines dialled in, and you become an asset to the whole team.

You cannot really ‘train’ your body to withstand cold better, but you can absolutely train your mind and your systems to master it. This comes down to one thing: practice. Deliberate, uncomfortable practice with your equipment.

This is not just our philosophy; it is a growing movement. Mountain Training Scotland, for instance, is seeing a huge demand for practical skills courses. They are already delivering 78,631 guided days on the hill each year and aim to grow that by 10% by 2026. People are realising that real world practice is everything. You can read more about the growth of mountain skills training in Scotland.

No. Not even close. The best kit on the market is dead weight if you do not know it inside and out. That top end Hilleberg tent is a liability if you are fumbling with the poles in a blizzard. Your perfectly planned Fjällräven layering system is useless if you do not actively manage the sweat you are producing.

Think of your gear as a set of professional tools, not a suit of armour. It is your skill with those tools that keeps you safe, not the price tag. Practise with your kit until using it is pure muscle memory.

Fear is part of the deal. It is a healthy, rational response to being in a high stakes environment. The aim is not to get rid of it, but to manage it so it sharpens your focus instead of shattering it. And the best way to do that is to build unshakable competence.

When you have practised your self arrest on a snowy slope so many times it is an automatic reflex, you earn your confidence. When you trust your navigation skills because you have tested them in a whiteout, a sudden storm becomes a problem to solve, not a reason to panic. By focusing your training on building these deep, verifiable skills, you slowly but surely replace loud fear with quiet confidence. That is the real goal.

At Pole to Pole , we know that true expedition readiness is not bought, it is built. It is a craft honed through disciplined preparation, expert guidance, and time spent in the elements. Our programmes are designed to forge the physical, technical, and mental resilience needed to not just survive, but thrive.

Find out what you are capable of. Start your journey with us at https://www.poletopole.com.