Uphill Athlete Podcast

Trail running, climbing, skiing, riding: can you train for all of them without getting worse at each? Steve House and Director of Coaching Chantelle Robitaille share the framework Uphill Athlete coaches use with multi-sport athletes. Pick one priority per season, run an honest gap analysis, and harmonize your sports instead of balancing them. They also cover the interference effect, layering sports through the year, when to set one aside, and why strength training is non-negotiable.

Steve House talks with Dr. Eliza Sampey, a Doctor of Physical Therapy specializing in brain injury rehab, former professional endurance athlete, and concussion survivor herself about why mountain and endurance athletes so often underestimate head injuries, and what science-backed recovery actually looks like.
Dr. Sampey explains that concussions are especially easy to dismiss in the backcountry because the injury is invisible and athletes are conditioned to push through pain. She walks through the neurometabolic cascade that occurs after a head or body impact — how stretched axons flood the brain with misplaced neurochemicals, disrupt blood flow, and trigger an "energy crisis" that takes three to six weeks to resolve, regardless of how mild or severe the initial injury seemed. She stresses why getting hit again during that window is dangerous, even life-threatening in rare cases of second impact syndrome, and can turn a six-week recovery into six to nine months.
The conversation covers red-flag symptoms that warrant emergency evacuation, why "rest in a dark room" is outdated and harmful advice, the real role of relative rest and sleep in the first 48 hours, and why low-intensity, sub-symptom-threshold exercise (not standard heart-rate training zones) is the cornerstone of active rehab. Dr. Sampey introduces the seven systems affected by concussion (autonomic, metabolic, visual, vestibular, cervical, cognitive, and affective) and explains why treating them in isolation fails — recovery requires integrating them back together. She also discusses the Buffalo Concussion Bike/Treadmill Test for gauging exercise tolerance, common mistakes endurance athletes make in returning to training too fast, how old, "resolved" concussions can resurface under new training stress, and how to vet a qualified concussion provider. The episode closes with practical guidance on symptom tracking, supporting a partner or teammate through recovery, and her core message: concussion is a treatable injury — most long-term problems come from how it's managed, not how bad it was to begin with.

Steve House sits down with elite mountain athlete Kílian Jornet, calling in from his home in Norway, for a wide-ranging conversation about what draws people to high-risk mountain pursuits. They explore mountains not as a destination but as a sense of home and identity, the fine line between earned confidence and dangerous complacency, and how fear and euphoria can each distort decision-making in exposed terrain. Jornet reflects on his upbringing; being "born into the mountains," his mother's nighttime forest walks, a family trek across the Pyrenees; and how he's now passing that connection to nature on to his own children with his wife, Emily. The two discuss the blurred lines between mountaineering, alpinism, and running as labels; the philosophy behind going fast and light versus slow and immersive; and the particular psychology of "accepting" mortal risk versus fighting to survive an emergency. The conversation turns deeply personal as Kílian opens up about the loss of his friend and climbing partner Stefane Brosse and how grief and loss reshapes friendships, risk tolerance, and one's relationship with death across cultures. They close on parenthood, legacy, and the freeing realization that, ultimately, no one will be remembered. What matters is being present, honest, and good to the people around you now.

Steve House sits down with Dr. Marco Altini — data scientist, physiologist, and founder of HRV4Training — for a deep-dive into one of the most misunderstood tools in endurance athletics: heart rate variability. With over 50 peer-reviewed papers to his name, Dr. Altini brings rare scientific rigor to a space crowded with oversimplified wearable metrics. The conversation opens by challenging the industry's obsession with single-number readiness scores, which Dr. Altini argues dilute nuanced physiological signals into deterministic assumptions that don't reflect the complexity of the human body.
The episode unpacks the fundamentals of HRV — what it actually measures, why morning is the optimal measurement window for endurance athletes, and how to interpret it as a marker of stress response rather than performance capacity. Steve and Marco also cover hardware accuracy across chest straps, optical sensors, and phone cameras; HRV research at altitude; and the broader question of how biometric data should support — not replace — the athlete's own sense of feel.
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In this episode, Alyssa sits down with Uphill Athlete Coach Ben Morley to discuss the ins and outs of skiing. Ben shares insights from his career coaching athletes from juniors to collegiate skiers and discusses ways to build durability, athleticism, and efficiency through ski training that translates into other mountain sports. The conversation explores the crossover between Nordic skiing, skimo, backcountry skiing, and trail running, highlighting the importance of technique, body position, and strength. Ben also breaks down preseason training, from aerobic base-building to ski-specific exercises like ski walking, bounding, and plyometrics. Above all, he reminds listeners that skiing is about joy, play, and the lifelong fitness it fosters.
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