14ers.com

Ha ha.

"In Bruges" is near the top of my list of favorite movies no one seems to have watched.

Right up there with "Men & Chicken".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3877674/

Just saying, we all have a few minuets for watching tv, right?

Is there a Thread here to be fleshed out? Not climbing related, necessarily, but just films to pass time while not climbing?

Who's Next?

https://www.thewho.com/music/whos-next/

Wentzl wrote: ↑Sat Apr 11, 2020 9:49 pm Not climbing related, necessarily, but just films to pass time while not climbing?

This one's topical:

www.imdb.com/title/tt0114746/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

A London man climbed Everest barefoot on the stairs in his apartment building. After 24 hours 30 minutes, he had ascended and, of course, descended, the mountain. “Basically,” he said in a phone interview from his suburban London home, “I went up and down eight steps 6,506 times.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2 ... 7lECH1ihno

I think I've just about ridden to Denver in my apartment using my stationary bike these last 7 weeks.

NordicTrack X22i Incline Treadmill

i just got this thing delivered today. total gamechanger. living out here on the east coast, with at least a 3-hour drive to reach a mountain of any significance, i've always depended on using a stepmill for any kind of incline training. i could get a good aerobic workout in without the pounding of running, so it made for great cross-training, while somewhat replicating steeper hiking. when gyms shut down in spring, that option disappeared for me, and my training this year has definitely suffered for it. even when gyms opened back up, i wasn't willing to take the risk of going back, and had already made the decision to shift to home and outdoor workouts permanently anyway. i've been slowly building up my home gym with weights and equipment, but the stepmill was going to be difficult to replace. they're huge, expensive, and require more headroom than i have anywhere except my garage. i didn't exactly relish the idea of dedicating a large area of the garage to a piece of exercise equipment, but was resigned to that likelihood. then i found this thing.

it's basically just a treadmill with a 40% top-range incline. so simple, but so effective. when a typical treadmill only goes up to 12% or 15%, it's a lot harder to get into higher aerobic zones without hitting jogging speeds. but with the higher incline on this one, i can basically get the same workout at a walking pace that i could get on a stepmill. but even better than a stepmill, i can vary intensity based on incline alone, or some combination of incline and speed, whereas a stepmill only has one grade of incline and only the speed can vary. on this, the incline can be adjusted in increments of 0.5%, with a total range of -6% to 40%, so you can really dial it precisely. and i'd say the treadmill style probably mimics typical hiking more closely, instead of stairwalking, since at higher grades it puts your feet in a more dorsiflexed position. i feel like my posterior chain, calves/hamstrings/glutes, get more engaged instead of relying mostly on my quads on a typical stair climber. there's probably a bit of a tradeoff for straight treadmill running, since the deck is a bit shorter, but for my purposes (i mostly stick to running outside anyway) it's a worthwhile tradeoff.

it's definitely not inexpensive, but at $3000, it's about half the price of any of the cheaper stepmills available, with more utility, and can take the place of two different exercise machines in one. and the monthly payments are still cheaper than my old gym membership, so i look at it like i'm saving money in the short run, and really saving money in the long run. of course, i just got this thing so stuff like long-term reliability still remain to be seen. but i'm really excited to finally be able to get back to the kind of workouts i was able to do when i was still hitting the gym.

In the same boat as you, I was literally just looking at stairmaster alternatives, specifically one that can fit moving it down the stairs, etc. without the need for a 10ft ceiling and not wanting to spend as much as a Denali expedition.
I see the dimensions of the X22i is 39" wide - do the arms/supports come off to be able to get this through doorways in a partially unassembled form?

nyker wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 9:46 pm In the same boat as you, I was literally just looking at stairmaster alternatives, specifically one that can fit moving it down the stairs, etc. without the need for a 10ft ceiling and not wanting to spend as much as a Denali expedition.

Honestly, a stationary bike of some sort does a good job with both giving you an aerobic workout and roughly being the same movement of walking up a hill. A variety of lunges using bodyweight will help fill in the gaps - for example doing a lunge with your leading foot on top of a box/stair step/bench/etc and then lunging up. If you can walk, walk. If walking is too easy, run. Much like the stationary bike, an inclined treadmill doesn't help much with the load bearing fitness you need to go down a hill. Running - real running, will. Some things could help if you want to keep things in a small area - perhaps split squat jumps or just skipping rope. Lots of ways to skin the cat

justiner wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 11:49 pm

nyker wrote: ↑Tue Dec 08, 2020 9:46 pm In the same boat as you, I was literally just looking at stairmaster alternatives, specifically one that can fit moving it down the stairs, etc. without the need for a 10ft ceiling and not wanting to spend as much as a Denali expedition.

Honestly, a stationary bike of some sort does a good job with both giving you an aerobic workout and roughly being the same movement of walking up a hill. A variety of lunges using bodyweight will help fill in the gaps - for example doing a lunge with your leading foot on top of a box/stair step/bench/etc and then lunging up. If you can walk, walk. If walking is too easy, run. Much like the stationary bike, an inclined treadmill doesn't help much with the load bearing fitness you need to go down a hill. Running - real running, will. Some things could help if you want to keep things in a small area - perhaps split squat jumps or just skipping rope. Lots of ways to skin the cat

Agree, I have a stationary bike as my main cardio the last several months, but I want to mix that up with something else and am trying to relieve the strain on my shoulders/seating position which I can't seem to get right. Actual running/road riding around here now is tough as everything is iced over or slush or closed due to snow and not really any dedicated bike trails/bike paths. Cutting, carrying and splitting wood has become somewhat of a cardio workout now.

If you literally ride all day, definitely. When I lived up in Fort Collins and biked a lot, I found that my body gradually got used to longer and longer periods of sitting. If I hadn’t ridden in a while, even “short” 20 mile rides would bother me some. As I increased my riding durations, that seemed to help. There is a point though, where I was pretty sore no matter what. On some 100+ mile rides, I sometimes took breaks every 15 or so miles to give my backside a break (despite my legs being fine). Definitely not sure how pros do it with super long rides. Maybe even better conditioning? Maybe better seats, too.

Nowadays, there are tons of different seat options you can experiment with that are more comfortable than most stock seats, especially those super hard/narrow carbon fiber seats.

bdloftin77 wrote: ↑Wed Dec 09, 2020 8:25 am If you literally ride all day, definitely. When I lived up in Fort Collins and biked a lot, I found that my body gradually got used to longer and longer periods of sitting. If I hadn’t ridden in a while, even “short” 20 mile rides would bother me some. As I increased my riding durations, that seemed to help. There is a point though, where I was pretty sore no matter what. On some 100+ mile rides, I sometimes took breaks every 15 or so miles to give my backside a break (despite my legs being fine). Definitely not sure how pros do it with super long rides. Maybe even better conditioning? Maybe better seats, too.

Lots of "tricks" to it. Get a good fit on your bike, if you can afford it there are companies/people who do professional bike fits. It's really a one-time thing unless you mess with the settings, e.g. change components. Amazing how many riders have too long a handlebar stem, or set their saddles too high. Good riding shorts help (padded seat section), and some people like chamois cream for the tender areas, helps with friction, etc. I use it for longer (100+ mile) rides. Occasional off saddle pedaling helps as well, just a few seconds every so often. But yeah, it's like anything, do it often enough and your body adapts.

-Tom

There are lots of comfy bike seat options out there. My current one is ok for short treks, but I'll need to upgrade if I go much further. I use padded bike shorts. They help, but its not the end all be all. A friend of mine had a crazy looking GINORMOUS bike seat that looked ridiculous. He swore by it. But if the seat is bigger than my ass I'll either switch to a recumbent bike or eat more cheeseburgers!