Perfect Breathing

ED VIESTURS IS DRIVEN. He has climbed all fourteen of the world's 8,000-meter peaks, recently adding the supreme peak of Annapurna to his list.

Viesturs is also gifted. He climbs these intimidating spires without supplemental oxygen, an impossible feat for most climbers. Over the years many have summited one or some of these peaks, including Nepal's oft-climbed Mt. Everest. Even in the best of conditions these are treacherous undertakings requiring extraordinary willpower and stamina. At those supreme altitudes, air is scarce. The deprivation can cause hypoxia with a severe loss of mental ability. Well before the summit, the human body is, bluntly, beginning to die.

For Viesturs, the required willpower and stamina come from knowing his own breath.

"When I first set out to climb the big mountains, my rule was I wouldn't use supplemental oxygen," says Viestures, whose exploits were chronicled in the breathtaking Imax hit Everest. "For me it was more of a challenge and more pure to see if I could train myself to get to the top of one of these peaks without it. I was never going to use supplemental oxygen just to climb a mountain."

PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES

Viesturs started his climbing career in the Cascade Mountains near his home in Seattle, Washington. As he began ascending higher and higher on mountains like North America's Mt. McKinley and the peaks of South America, he realized that he was suffering much less than most other climbers, recovering faster, and staying stronger through the whole trip. He began to wonder if there was something helping him be a stronger, better climber at high altitudes. There was.

Physiology plays a significant role. Testing showed that Viesturs was blessed with an unusually large lung capacity. Where the average person might hold five liters of air, he holds seven. More important is his cardiovascular system. The attributes that control the blood's ability to absorb and utilize oxygen (anaerobic threshold and VO2 Max) are extremely efficient in his blood system.

While these factors afford him a definitive edge on the mountain, it takes more than that to stand atop an Everest or K2. "That is something I was born with and you can't develop it," he says. "You either have it or you don't, and even with training you can only modify these things slightly. Even if you find out in the lab that you've got that going for you, it doesn't mean you are going to be a good climber. You need climbing experience and need to know how to climb efficiently. There is a lot of mental will power that is necessary when you are climbing those peaks in order to keep pushing yourself up the mountain."

TRAINING IS KEY

Training is what builds his endurance in order for him to have the strength and ability to keep going up so arduous a journey. To train, he typically runs seven miles six or seven days a week and focuses on building his aerobic capacity. He prefers long endurance runs, running hills, and forcing himself to keep pushing once he has crested the hill even though he might be short of breath or struggled to make the crest.

To take advantage of aerobic capacity, you have to breathe correctly. For Viesturs, different breathing techniques are dictated by different climbing situations. On mountains such as Rainier in Washington state, Viesturs teaches pressure breathing. "With pressure breathing, you are forcefully blowing out during your exhale to get as much breath out as you can," he says, "and at the same time pressurizing the air in your lungs helps you to absorb more of the oxygen. This also helps to compensate for the lower pressure at high altitudes."

As you climb higher fast breathing is required, and the effort needed to pressure breathe becomes excruciating. At this point, Veisturs uses a fast, deep panting, but still continues to count the breaths between each step. "This prevents you from standing there breathing for 10 minutes and forgetting to climb," he says.

BREATH & RHYTHM

The breath also serves another important purpose: It helps develop a rhythm between your walking and your breath, helping you focus on the climb and putting you into "the zone." For example, Viesturs counsels, "You breathe twice and take a step, breathe twice and take a step, exclusively focusing on your breath and your step. The next thing you know you are an hour up the climb."

"It gets so hard at those altitudes," he continues, "and you have to say 'After 10 breaths I will take a step, then after another 10 breaths I have to take another step.' That's what keeps you going, You have these little goals that you are setting for yourself, because when you look at the summit that's 12 hours away, it's too large of a goal. You have to break it down into short segments, like climbing to the next rock, which is 20 minutes away, and then take a break. But to get to that rock you've got to focus on just moving and keeping some sort of rhythm. It's like a meditation. And that's what you focus on as you as you are climbing, and that way you nibble away at the big picture."

Finding a rhythm is critical. If you get out of step or if you are moving too quickly, you easily run out of breath and have to sit down to recover. Viesturs adds, "It's almost like becoming very claustrophobic. Here you are gasping for air and you are not recovering like you do at sea level. Normally, you run up a hill, stand there and breathe and breathe, and in a few minutes you have recovered. But up there, you gasp and gasp, and nothing is happening."

A climber has to find a speed that he or she can maintain long enough to get to the destination, but not so fast that it requires stopping and recovering every few steps. "You slowly keep moving at a pace just below the level of hypoxia," he says, "but as soon as you increase your pace you lose it, start gasping for air, and have to sit down to rest. It's trying to find that pace that is kind of fun."

On the mountain, Viesturs is comfortable and confident. Still, as a precaution, he takes at least minimal time to get used to the altitude. He knows he must acclimatize because it's not uncommon for people to suffer a serious loss of mental ability at high altitudes. However, he says, "I think I lose a lot less [mental ability] than most."

The more frequently you go to higher altitudes, the easier it is for your body to adjust, he says. There are no shortcuts for experience. You have to be keenly aware of and familiar with how your body feels and reacts. Altitude neophytes are easily overwhelmed. Their bodies react severely with headaches, nausea and loss of mental function. Climbers frequently ask Viesturs how it is possible to have fun while enduring such severe symptoms. "It doesn't happen to me," he says. "I have fun when I go up there. I get to the summit of a peak, sit down, enjoy the view, eat a Cliff bar and look around. I'm not on my last legs. I always try to be aware of my 'awareness,' and if I ever feel like I am losing it I will turn around. So far, it's never happened."

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Don Campbell and Al Lee are the authors of Perfect Breathing: Transform Your Life One Breath At A Time (Sterling Publishng/2008) and write, speak, train, and blog tirelessly on the subject. Discover more ways you can improve your health, performance, and wellbeing at www.perfectbreathing.com. Reach them at info [at] perfectbreathing [dot] com or call 1-888-317-6718.