Some women completely believe in challenging themselves and setting new, ever higher benchmarks for others to follow and mountaineer Kamal Kaur is one such inspiring individual. Affectionately known as ‘the Kam Lady’, her love for the mountains started with the modest Three Peaks 24 hour challenge which she undertook to raise funds for charity. Kamal Kaur has lived by these words all her life. Fondly known as the ‘The Kam Lady’, 36-year-old Kamal had a rough adolescence and losing her mother at the tender age of 15, she managed to follow her dreams and emerge victorious. Kamal started off her career by pursuing fashion designing at Leicester College. Ever curious, she wanted to try her hand at different gigs, from a sales assistant to bartending. However, the mountains called and she had to answer. Chasing her love for adventure and adrenaline, Kamal became a mountaineer. In the last few years, Kamal managed to conquer five of the Seven Summits, including Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, Aconcagua in South America, Mount Meru in Africa, Mount Elbrus in Russia, and Denali in North America. She has also tackled 10 high-altitude mountains across the globe: Machu Picchu and Mount Misti in South America, Cho Oyu in Tibet, and Ama Dablam in Nepal, among others. In 2019, Kamal decided to take on the highest mountain on the planet—the Mount Everest. Her journey to the top was not only treacherous, but also tested every aspect of her physical and mental strength.
For those who don’t have access to the gym or outdoors for whatever reason there are some basic and easy ways to start training at home any time of day.
Some of the key foundations of any exercise is to ensure you have a strong core, healthy spine, good posture and recovery. Just like yoga it is important to connect the mind, body and soul.
So Pilates and core workouts are amazing to really strengthen up, engage your stomach muscles and for stability. For pilates you can look at you tube videos for beginners to start however it is better to find an instructor within your local area.
A great way to warm up is to do some rounds of sun salutations, if you want to use the sun salutations as a workout just do more and advance the pace and movements to make it harder.
- Body weight exercises such as
- Jogging on the spot
- Jumping jacks
- Air squats
- Push ups
- Walking lunges
- Mountain climbers
- Triceps dips
- Calf raisers.
These exercises are a great way for a whole body workout. The squats, lunges and calf raisers can be down with weights or just by holding water bottles as weights in each hand if you want to. The best way to formulate the exercises are by doing sets. For example 10 repetitions repeated 3 times for each movement. Depending on how much time you have these self tailored exercises can be done for as long or as little as you want. Your time your workout, it is good to push your body and mind but also listen to the body if it hurts stop as most likely it may the wrong form you are doing and ask for advice.
One of the most important part of working out is at he end by stretching, taking time out to meditate or focus on some breath work to calm the mind and nervous system and followed by hydration and good nutrition.
When it comes to mountaineering or training for a trek then there’s nothing better than getting the miles in those legs by walking, Running or jogging long distances would really help getting used to long time on your feet and mindset to those long days in the mountain. If running is not your thing then try combining it with cycling as getting up the heart rate will help with increasing your cardio training to help with your fitness.