What Mountains Actually Taught Me
My first mountain climb almost killed me, and that’s when I learned everything I thought about getting stronger was wrong.
November 27, 2023, I was breathing so hard halfway up a mountain that I thought my lungs might explode. Other people walked past me like they were taking a Sunday stroll. They looked so slow, but they never stopped moving. I kept having to sit on rocks and gasp for air every few minutes.
The realization came slowly: I was doing this completely backwards.
I thought getting better at endurance meant pushing as hard as possible, like lifting the heaviest weight at the gym.
Mountains work differently though. They reward people who are smart with energy, and they punish people who waste it.
My ego was making me stupid.
“Your body gets really good at whatever you ask it to do most often.”
Over the next 19 months, I climbed eight different mountains, and each one taught me something new about how my body actually works.
The weirdest part was watching my body change itself without me even trying.
My steps got shorter on steep parts and longer on easy parts.
My breathing matched my walking rhythm.
My heart learned to work steadily for hours instead of racing and crashing.
During one really tough climb, I noticed my feet were landing differently than before, finding better grip automatically. My body was solving problems I didn’t even know existed, like a computer updating its software in the background.
This wasn’t me being smart or disciplined—my nervous system was literally rewiring itself to be more efficient.
Mountains don’t lie to you the way mirrors or scales do. If you haven’t built up your endurance properly, you’ll find out real quick. There’s no faking it when the air gets thin and every breath matters. Either your heart and lungs can handle it, or they can’t. The mountain becomes this brutally honest teacher that strips away all the stories you tell yourself about your fitness.
The Red Line Problem
Your body has this invisible line called the lactate threshold. Think of it like the red line on a car’s speedometer. You can get close to it, but if you cross it for too long, your engine starts breaking down.
When I pushed too hard past that line, acid would build up in my muscles faster than my body could clean it out. My heart would race beyond what it could handle. Then I’d completely crash and have to stop.
Most people treat this line like something to beat instead of something to respect, which explains why they get exhausted halfway through anything that takes real endurance.
Think of your body like a car engine –
you want maximum power without overheating.
The successful climbs happened when I started slow and stayed controlled. I learned to dance with that red line without crossing it. When you push past it for too long, your body basically goes into emergency mode and starts shutting things down just to survive. The mountain taught me that
Endurance isn’t about proving how tough you are
—it’s about sustaining whatever you’ve got for as long as needed.
The 80% Secret
The magic happens in what athletes call the “conversation zone” – where you’re working hard enough to get stronger, but not so hard that you couldn’t talk to someone next to you. This sounds too easy, but it’s where your body learns the most important skills.
In this zone, your body learns to burn fat for energy instead of just burning through sugar.
Your heart gets stronger and pumps more blood with each beat.
Your muscles get better at clearing out waste products.
Your lungs become more efficient at grabbing oxygen from thin air.
These changes happen so slowly you barely notice them.
Then one day you realize that climbs that used to destroy you now feel easy.
Scary parts that used to terrify you become fun.
Your body learned to generate power without the metabolic waste that used to stop you cold.
“Getting really good at endurance is boring,
and that’s exactly why most people never get good at it.”
Building real endurance means doing moderate effort consistently over months, not heroic weekend sessions that leave you wrecked for days. Your body responds to how often you do something and how long you keep doing it, not how intense you make it occasionally.
This goes against everything the fitness industry teaches,
but mountains don’t care about marketing strategies.
What Mountains Actually Teach
Every mountain I’ve climbed has added another layer to something I can’t see but definitely feel.
My heart gets more efficient.
My muscles learn to work with less waste.
My nervous system develops better movement patterns.
Each trek compounds on the previous ones, building this foundation that becomes more solid with time.
The mountain becomes like a really honest teacher.
It shows you exactly what you’ve built and what you’re still missing.
There’s no lying to yourself when you’re gasping at 10,000 feet.
No participation trophies or feel-good feedback.
Just pure, honest information about
whether you’ve done the work or just talked about doing the work.
With another trek coming up this month, I know these lessons will get tested again. Each new peak brings different challenges and different chances to see what my body built during the quiet months between climbs.
The real training happens in between the big adventures, during boring weeks of building your base fitness.
Mountains just show you what you actually learned
versus what you thought you learned.
The climb that destroys you this year becomes your warm-up next year.
What seemed impossible becomes normal terrain. Your body keeps finding new ways to be efficient and generate power without waste. The person who struggled up that first peak in November moves completely differently than the one preparing for Sandakphu now.
That’s what keeps me coming back – not the photos or bragging rights, but those moments when you catch your body solving problems you didn’t know existed.
When you understand that endurance isn’t built through force but discovered through patience.
When you realize your body already knows how to adapt, and you just have to stop getting in its way long enough to let it do what it’s designed to do.
The mountain will always be there, waiting to teach the next lesson about what your body really knows when you give it time to learn.
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