 you are here today hello everyone with the glasses crew it's pretty sunny it's hot out today but unlike our content which is not full of hot air the Arizona is welcome welcome everyone to monday's live stream we've been doing these monday live streams for a little bit less than a month right now on monday we talked specifically about mount Kilimanjaro about the mountain prepare for the mountain everything you need to know about that mountain if it's an adventure that you are curious about so that's what we're gonna do today we're just gonna wait for a little bit here to see if we will have any folks who join in and then we'll go ahead and get started in the meantime i will show off my fancy shirt mm i hope it's not backwards for you it's backwards for me it's uh it's pretty nice t-shirt i made this one honestly we had no intentions to talk about the t-shirt today but since we're talking about it i had i had the pair um mine says i am here for the mountains and then alex says i am here for her which is pretty cool and then mine is orange and then his is blue we've got them on our website teespring in case you're curious and i had no intentions of sharing this part i was like oh he's wearing it so why not so shameless slash impromptu yeah amazon affiliate stuff or what is this it's a tea spring tea springs is a tea spring yeah i created a long time ago but anyway uh today we are going to talk specifically about how to prepare physically for mount Kilimanjaro there are so many other things that you have to prepare for to climb the mountain but we will focus about we'll focus on physical preparation to climb Kilimanjaro just a couple of things that we learned and a couple of things that we are doing and hopefully they are going to help you if it's an adventure that you are interested in or if you are interested on doing any big climb of that magnitude sure and i've already got a couple of extra bonus preparation things sneaking at the end so um just to get things started right here i already see one person joining and then hey mark i'm mark hello hello i see two thumbs up so thank you guys for that but we're gonna since we have 30 minutes for these on day livestreams we're going to try to keep this simple and we're going to break physical activity into three categories we will talk about strength training or yeah strength training endurance training and then cardiovascular training three main categories and then we would you know just give some examples of things that you should do definitely i guess we could start it with strength then in this case this is going to be unless actually let you define it so that i don't run wild with it but yeah so um basically um and last in one of our previous livestreams we talked about the mountain and we talked about the routes to get up to the mountain so typically in order for you to climb mount Kilimanjaro it will take a couple of days for you to get to the top of the mountain between five to six days sometimes longer sometimes shorter depending on the route that you are changing you are choosing but you're gonna be hiking for a long period of time for many days and it's day after day after day after day so really when we talk about strength we want to make sure that you can walk for an extended amount of time you can just keep going and keep going day after day so that would be obviously by either going on some long hikes um if you have hiking trails that are you know accessible to you or you could go to the gym and then just walk long hours on the treadmill to build that strength and for me with the strength stuff it's a matter of putting a lot of the bags and a lot of the weight that I have on there with me uh some of the stuff that I noticed most recently uh we tried out a couple of different bags because we want to make sure that when we're training we're still trying to recreate the situation that we're gonna have and we're on the mountain so even though we might be doing a smaller hike I'll have a pretty full bag hubby when I've been to the gym where we'll fill up and the other day uh we were taking a camera with a zoom lens and the zoom lens is pretty big and pretty heavy and we like to use these peak design um clips that you can put on your belt or you can put on your on your uh your backpack straps and it was really tugging down on the right side and that spot just knowing that that was there uh was something for me but we also started to wear bags and we know that you know the other day mine weighed 26 pounds when I was gone which let's be honest it is a little heavy but that's somebody on purpose but we have um all of our all of our stuff that we need when we go to the gym we'll make sure that we also are walking uphill we're trying to recreate some of that environment so that we can do uh leg workouts and then you've also got your other training things so so that's uh that's kind of Alex is touching here on the endurance training really making sure that uh you know not only you have the strength of walking for an extended amount of time but there will be a lot of stress on your lower back on your shoulders on your knees and you want to kind of recreate the situation that you're going to be in when you are in the mountain so if you go hiking outside you want to take a backpack with the same amount of weight that you're going to be carrying same shoes even same hiking clothes and um like I said if you don't have access to trails you could just go to the gym and use the the incline and just walk for a long period of time with your hiking clothes uh with your hiking shoes and with the backpack on with some weight I would definitely agree there with use the same clothing that you're going to use I've said it a few times kind of in a joking manner but really like the right socks the right underwear the right pants the right shirt the right hat everything uh if you walk in it for a while you will get familiar with the things that bug you and don't bug you about your equipment that might not be strength exactly but that's something that you can get while you're doing those other workouts yeah hey Mike just saw a comment from you so we're really just talking about how to train for Mount Kilimanjaro which touched on the importance of uh endurance training and then strength training and then lastly cardiovascular training sure and a lot of these mixed together uh for the cardiovascular for me I would say nothing beats getting on the mountain for us one of the things we're trying to do is prepare for the high altitude in the way that we have to work hard while we're at altitude and you might see some videos online where they'll take someone's pulse ox they'll use a pulse ox hammer they'll stick a little thing on someone's finger they'll try to check your blood oxygen content really want to make sure that your heart can pump enough blood around your system to get oxygen to the parts of your body that need them so we're trying to make sure that we can do some high heart rate workouts uh something that we haven't checked into but we know people have them or oxygen deprivation masks that you can put on I think there's a little bit outside my budget yeah a little extreme yes but they're definitely something that can help prepare you for that as well but nothing beats being exhausted at at at elevation while doing the rest of this stuff so yeah so definitely um I mean to to keep it simple just on the treadmill try to run try to get some cardiovascular exercise to run because when you're gonna be up in the mountain not only you're dealing with the you know hiking for long periods of time but also high altitude thin air and you want to make sure that your heart is gonna be able to to handle all of that stress and I will say one of the things that I mean I've been concerned about myself and and we we got to address a little bit this weekend while we were out hiking uh you don't only have to go up the mountain you also have to go down yeah and to have ankle strength in that case knee strength or or for that matter your back strength is when you're coming down even having the right equipment via hiking poles and such and these are you know these are pieces of equipment that assist you in expressing the right level and strength and such it's kind of hard to divorce all of these things from each other but to have that uh that practice going downhill as well I found out the other day the treadmills in our gym actually do go at a decline um not as far as they go in an incline but then you can practice walking downhill as well and some of that stress on your on your knees and your ankles and even if you have on uneven footing to have the right shoes and such too and and to make sure that you've got this the mental sort of stamina to pick good spots to put to put your feet and be aware of where you're walking all the time you really only get by being exhausted or by doing some longer things and then testing yourself and then doing the workout but all different mentalities yeah definitely uh strength endurance and cardiovascular training are all important but like Alex said nothing beats being on an actual high mountain because talking about mountain climbing jar specifically uh you're pretty high up so if you're not used to being at high altitude I think it's important to take the time to travel somewhere with high elevation and do a little bit of hiking just to kind of understand how your body handle it because some people can handle the elevation pretty well some people start start struggling at 10,000 feet some people start struggling at 12,000 feet some people are okay with the elevation it really just depends it doesn't impact all people it's not like one rule for for everyone so really getting up in a high mountain is pretty important so on top of that I think the other important sort of training is mental training sure because most of the work in high mountains like that is your mental ability to to keep going and just embrace the suck throughout the way oh if I have any blue band friends I would be happy to see that for me at that point the the mental fortitude to choose to keep going is a very important thing to have I would say less often but still equally important and that's just because I usually want to push to the top but that you also have to know when you're done yes um and you won't really know where that line is where that limit is unless you kind of push yourself a bit beforehand but to know what to expect when you get up there and you are out of oxygen you're frustrated you're fatigued you can you can become more stressed very easily by little things that other people do and to have practice in that environment or to hike with the people that you're going to hike with or with the equipment that you're going to hike with and to be able to experience that stress and and and really kind of embrace it as a way to figure out how to deal with it in a reasonable manner is another thing that both you and the people you're hiking with will benefit from obviously people need to become aware of your tendencies when you hike and say that you need to become aware of theirs as well so I'd say having a little group of people as well that you hike with if you if you're also going to be on the mountain that you kind of keep those those people together and you you hike they usually say that uh at high elevation everything is amplified if you're happy your happiness level is extreme and if you are angry your level of being angry is also amplified so I think it's important to um you know make sure that you if you were hiking you're hiking with a group of people and you're going to stay together support each other just to know everyone's character and how they handle the elevation as well um I see that we have a couple of people joining us again and so thank you yeah a couple of thumbs up thank you guys so let's tackle some of the questions here before we get going we've got Mark hike with Mike Mike's the gut question is Kilimanjaro higher in elevation than Denali aka McKinley I gotta I gotta step back my understanding from last time we talked is no uh feel free to look this up here I don't want to say that I've prepared this but uh McKinley I thought was uh 20,320 feet if that sounds right I remember making a statement that they had the polite number patterns and Kilimanjaro's below 20,000 at that point no people will verify that for me here in a second but I'm quite positive that Denali is actually higher I can't see anything I'm totally blind sorry Denali elevation yeah I feel like it's uh something that I should know but uh they're very close in number I'd say in 20,310 but I mean come on I'm off 10 feet I'm I'm pretty sure the other one quoted maybe there's some snow and Kilie is what oh Kilimanjaro is 19,000 Kilimanjaro elevation like 19,341 okay so Mount Denali is pretty high and I think uh it's not only that it's not about the elevation of Mount Denali but Denali is a technical hike it's not like Kilimanjaro it's there is a huge difference Kilimanjaro Kilimanjaro Kilimanjaro an average hiker like ourselves can go can train get the necessary gear and make it up the mountain with some determination and some preparation but on Mount Denali it's a very technical hike and not only that but you will have to kind of drug all of your equipment and they usually use sleds to haul everything up the mountain so it's a pretty difficult hike and you obviously want to know how to use ice axe, crampons, glacier travel, roping up and all that type of important stuff oh my god we've got a lot of people today so we're saying Mark's saying Denali is 20,000, 320,000, hey see I wasn't I wasn't wrong that's what I remember very cool in North America Kilimanjaro 19,340 yeah I think the stuff I looked up there was kind of hard to keep track of all of the numbers especially because they are very close so yeah that's all the type of training for Kilimanjaro just to talk a little bit about what we've been up to we try to go to places with high elevation can I get there's some things in there still if we're still on the topic Habib and I went on a hike the other weekend and forgive me if it sounds like a bad bit of and we just drove right up from where we live to that place there was about 11,000 foot difference between where we started and where the top of the mountain was and we definitely felt ourselves getting some headaches we were a little concerned at the time like wow if that hurts like we're only 12,000 something to feed like how are we going to make it to almost 20 and then we went on another trip this weekend this past weekend that was actually higher than that even and um I'm obviously not revealing anything if you hadn't said anything I don't know no that's fine I did actually share a picture earlier today we this weekend we submitted the highest peak in New Mexico wheeler peak and it was pretty amazing 13,000 180 164 183 something like that um but anyway but we uh climatized better for this we camped out in the area and then we hiked up we felt like a million bucks we had a great time on the site yeah and uh to have the ability when you go out to do those training hikes too we're already dealing with this we have jobs right and it's kind of weird if we're going to go out and do a big tall hike we're talking about doing another big one in a bit here uh we want to go out there at least a day in advance at least to go acclimatize and the the act of training for these things requires an extra day of prep we're trying to leave on Thursdays take Friday off so that we can get a day to prep then a hike on Saturday perhaps and then maybe commute home on Sunday that or you would give up your Monday yeah but um so that's that's kind of just to say that it's important to acclimatize on the mountain you just don't want to because on that on the trail that we did this weekend I talked to a couple of people who are flying from Texas and Texas is not you know just what 2000 thousand but we're at 1600 feet here in Phoenix so not better than Phoenix and they just try to climb the mountain and they can't do it it's a lot of effort because you don't take the time to acclimatize while if you go give it a day for us what we did we just drove to albuquerque it was albuquerque is like 4000 something and then Santa Fe it was like 6000 albuquerque I think was in the fives and 5000 so really just giving yourself the time to acclimatize before going on any um high elevation climb is uh is super helpful and that's the same as recreating the environment with your equipment etc you're we're not just going to start at sea level and hike all the way up to the top of the mountain in one day although it is fun to talk about the records that people have on how fast they can get up and down the mountain anyway yeah i'm not gonna do it anyway i'll save my bonus uh recommendation for later all right let's see do we have any okay no i think we're good can i do my bonus one sure all righty uh we like to watch youtube videos and tv shows about people doing hikes too i find here there are times where i'm sitting down i'm not hiking i'm sitting there being uh you know a dude it's not on the couch um and it's nice to watch some stuff like that from time to time to kind of get you in the in the zone or uh a bit excited about it and uh can definitely pitch out a few things we watched what was it the uh the toughest race what was it the other day it was the eco challenge tough race which was pretty good tv show alone uh where people go out there and survive in the wilderness for a long time but just like other outdoorsy stuff like that or we'll watch other youtube channels of people do and some stuff to get some good motivation for places to go uh hopefully watching this uh with us is is uh is a way for you to sometimes stay in contact with that community at large yeah so just to stay motivated to train because the training you know it takes effort and it takes time and it's sometimes difficult to make the time but we're feeling pretty encouraged and then and then the thing you've been uh really crushing down on here lately has also been diet i mean if you want to make sure you're going up the mountain one of the things to do is to not take that extra 20 pounds with you and if you can figure out how to shed some of your own body weight on the way up in a healthy way mind you not just through like malnourishment but uh that can be um to great benefit as well yeah i've definitely watched some other youtubers who talk about uh climbing and how your diets can affect your performance obviously and a lot of them a lot of these people would change their diets you know just to make it better before they win the climb and make sure that they get a lot of nutritious food and things like that so it's definitely it's been a goal of mine over the past two weeks or so to try to lose some weight and clean up my diet as much as i can that's another form of training you've been picking some different snacks on the trail too in order to kind of help facilitate that yeah um as i've been i've been trying those uh gupax a little like squeezy things and you know i know you don't like cliff bars you're trying the rx bars i think which somebody had recommended here the other day we're cool so i think that's that's about it as far as the training for Kilimanjaro i don't think we have anything else that we want to touch on but uh we've been going for about 19 minutes and we'll just keep chatting if you guys have any questions about the the climb the last weekend or anything so we'll just stay here until we exhaust our 30 minute and then we'll leave you know i'm trying to think the other stuff we were thinking about looking into for the future if i'm just kind of kind of drift on topics here if that's okay um you know what next right like we're excited about all the other stuff we're going to do on this trip don't get me wrong but we're thinking like oh man like we're doing well on this we're excited about all the other preparatory hikes we're doing as a result of uh of Kilimanjaro being on our on our you know future docket here uh what next and i know you elberus was one that popped up and some other things like that or we're just always looking for uh where to set the bar after it's just exciting i like i'm just talking about nothing at this point it's definitely i'm feeling like uh i'm getting a little bit excited after we did Humphreys Peak and then Wheeler Peak this weekend i feel like i'm kind of on a roll to want to do the highest peaks of some of the states that are nearby so i think i don't know i'm just i don't want to commit to anything yet but i feel like before getting to Kilimanjaro if we get to do the highest peak of Colorado Nevada and Utah that will be pretty awesome sure i think i will be it will be great achievement thanks mark thank you mark we're super excited as well we're really trying to figure out how to uh not like make that the only thing we talked about when we go find other people sometimes we're very excited about it actually so no but i think for this uh the Monday live stream i don't i think it was mark but i don't remember someone suggested that we start doing live stream just about Kilimanjaro and i think i'm liking it it's uh it's very enjoyable you can come down to Florida and climb our highest peak approximately 280 feet oh my god what was the other one we heard it was like Louisiana is like something like that as well i was quite impressed by that actually that it was just that flat the whole way yeah it just seems like most of the difficult ones are on our side of the country right well i mean you got the Appalachians obviously uh going up north and Washington mount washington right way up north i just mean like the poking out other things like that too there's but uh but definitely smoky mountains blue ridge mountains west virginia yeah i definitely i'm really thinking about it i i'm not thinking about it just tell alex all the time i can you imagine if we just make it to the highest peak of every state but i i just don't have it in me to set that goal or commit to anything yet so we're just doing whatever we can do right now we're at 13100 i mean if we can get up to to Whitney you know i mean we're we're doing the tall ones at that point it's a matter then of expanding like you were saying earlier on that technical front of which we've taken some classes but it would just be when we commit to it we would want to follow through it's not something that i think we're going to take half heartedly so we're just not doing a lot of ice stuff yet etc etc awesome um the other thing is uh thursday uh we have our live stream for two thousand subscriber celebration yeah there you go when we were up on the mountain this weekend on wheeler peak in new mexico towards the end when we probably had 0.5 mile left i was checking my phone and i had service so i just did a quick live stream to say thank you but obviously i'm really excited because in this thursday's live stream we're gonna get together we're gonna do some giveaways like last time and then we'll just celebrate two thousand subscribers yeah she's a pretty nice milestone so say when we were outside of albuquerque then coming home we did another hike and i'm gonna talk about the comment mark that you have there um we went to uh what was it it was called sibola it might be the city of gold from national treasure there's like this place it started at 10 500 feet we drove our car way up there and then we hiked like a thousand feet and then we came back down and we had a blast wonderful view kind of an exciting drive and we remarked while we were up there hey there's this mountain down by us called mount graham that we've gone by and we saw when we were coming back from the healer wilderness which is a little bit closer to the southern route across from arizona new mexico and we definitely want to go up there we hear you can drive on top of that mountain and i'm guessing you could also probably hike up the side but even for you can bike you can bike to you sure i heard it's one of the most uh sought after bike rides in in the us really yeah holy cow it's like top five or top ten best bike rides okay yeah i'm thinking at the very least even just for a place close to home to do some cool camping at altitude mount graham definitely was on our list is that the same one you're referring to mark the the one in arizona i'm hoping so i'm i don't know you said it was kind of on the southern portion of uh i guess mid-southern portion of arizona in between phoenix and uh maybe there's another mount graham in new mexico uh mike i will be using the mountain house meal i won this weekend when i'm out camping in the back country awesome oh very cool yeah which one which one did you you got uh was that alfredo lasagna i got in the lasagna i think the lasagna lasagna okay yeah because the nishita was the vegan right i think nishita i sent her lasagna curry lasagna yes that's that's my favorite i was like you know what if you don't have any uh dietary restrictions i'm sending the lasagna that's my favorite one too i'll tell you we have learned though even when we were doing um uh humphries and such too that i can't say we do it all the time but how much longer it takes to wait for your food to cook at altitude like oh god those those mountain house meals and such take like 15 minutes already when you're down there and i like oh god i'm up at 12 000 feet i gotta sit here for a half an hour just to wait for my food to