Research

By Rob Shaul There has been little research completed on mountain athletes in general and even less on “Alpinists.” We will work to change that over two days of testing in May or early June and are naming this effort “The Alpinist Project.” We’re starting with two studies. The first study focuses on professional and […]

  By Rob Shaul   Background With this Mini-Study, we were interested in developing the most efficient method for rapidly egressing from a patrol vehicle to get into a firing/protective position. Think of a patrol officer having to exit his vehicle to return fire and/or give chase. We want to take a deep dive on […]

by Jordan Smothermon In the previous report three weeks into our study, we outlined the stark risks female adolescent athletes face in suffering knee injuries, causes of these risks, and the methodology and reasoning of our Athena training program. Now, after completing 6 weeks, a final reassessment and analysis of the results are being conducted. […]

By Jordan Smothermon   We’ve begun investigating the relationship between strength and strength endurance required for different types of holds in climbing. Our question was simple: does the strength endurance for one type of hold correlate to another type of hold?   Mini-Study Design In our first investigation of a small sample size, we looked […]

By Rob Shaul In November 2015, I began working with two groups of alpinists on pure climbing events. I designed “event-specific” training plans for each, including initial assessments, and this started me thinking about what an “Alpinist Fitness Assessment” would look like. By “Alpinist” I’m speaking here in terms of an athlete who climbs high, […]

by Jordan Smothermon and Rob Shaul Lactate Threshold heart rate, commonly known as LT, is the rate at which an athlete’s body switches from mostly relying on their aerobic energy system for fuel, to mostly relying on his/her anaerobic energy system to fuel the effort. This is a high heart rate, around 88% of max […]

By Jordan Smothermon   Female adolescent athletes are three times more likely, on average across all high school sports, than their male counterparts to suffer an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear. The severity, cost, length of recovery, and emotional and mental toll ACL tears (and other knee injuries) take on young, developing athletes provide considerable […]

By Jordan Smothermon   ACL injuries are an epidemic for young female athletes. Female adolescents are eight times more likely, on average, to suffer an ACL tear than their male counterparts across all high school sports – an injury that take 6-9 months (a whole season) to recover from. This statistic is the confluence of […]