Balancing Training For Hiking & Other Fitness Classes

“I am struggling to put together my training plan because I do some *odd* forms of fitness that I absolutely love. How can I figure out how much and what type of additional weight & cardio I should do to help my hiking?"

Training for hiking involves a few fundamentals for most people. We want to go hiking. We want to build up our strength and endurance. And we want to fit in other areas of hiking-specific fitness (such as pack carrying, stair climbing, etc).

However, not everyone wants to dedicate their entire week to specific training for hiking... which is fair enough!​

Inside this video, we explore a simple way a hiker can plan their week to balance out their specific training for hiking, and any other type of fitness they enjoy. 

(It will be useful for any hikers who like to do things like yoga, pilates, dance classes, pole fitness or anything else which doesn't fit 'neatly' into a 'normal' fitness category) 

Video Transcript:

[0:00] In this video, we're talking through some simple ideas around how you can balance out specific training for hiking with some other more unusual types of fitness which you may enjoy.

[0:12] Now, this particular video was inspired by a question I got sent through the other day. They were basically asking, I'm struggling to put together my training plan because I do do some odd forms of fitness which I really enjoy. I do things like aerial arts, suspended poopy lira, yoga hammock, pole dance. I go to my studio twice a week and do two one-hour classes. And I've had trainers in the past say this type of stuff doesn't count, which doesn't really make sense. But in the planning purposes of creating a plan for my hiking, it's hard to figure out how much and what types of additional weight and cardio I should do, especially as it changes what I do week to week with my classes. And this is a pretty common situation a lot of people fall into. Because when it comes down to specific training or hiking, we may be wanting to fit in particular things to help with us on the trail. We may want to be doing pack walking or stair climbing or specific strength training or hiking or whatever may be. But then we look at what we're doing in the week and we're like, well, there are certain sessions I really enjoy. I don't want to give up and I kind of want to see how it all fits in. And it can be sometimes a little bit tricky.

[1:15] So a really, really, really simple way of going about this is basically just ask yourself the question, how often in the week do I want to train in total, including your classes, including your training for hiking or whatever that may be? And then depending on your answers, whether you say six days a week, five days a week, four days a week, three days a week, or whatever it is, we use this as a bit of a basis.

[1:37] We essentially want to look at a hiking specific stuff and just sort of say, whatever days we have available, we want to make sure we're nailing our basics and getting fundamentals. And then for the classes that you're doing, we're not going to count the them as training for hiking, but we're just going to count them as bonuses. That way, you can free up the mindset of thinking, okay, what does this class do to work this and this and this? You just go and enjoy your classes and then nail the other heroes. So a couple of simple examples here. Maybe you may say, okay, I've got a big hike cover. I want to train five days a week.

[2:09] Maybe i just want to keep up two classes a week i want to make sure i'm covering that and going through then he may say in the other days a week okay one of the basics i always want to fit in as a hiker is some specific strength training something that's structured something that's nailing the muscles that i need for my hiking and something to sort of control so we're going to do one specific strength session on top of that we might do one specific hiking cardio session which may be a path walk or a stair session or a tempo walk or something like that and then the last day we're going to do something that's a little bit longer.

[2:39] Maybe we'll do a hike, or if we can't get a hike, just a bit of an extended walk. And as you can see, with these three things, we kind of cover the basics and the foundation of our specific training behind it, and you also get the classes which would be a nice bonus on top. Or another example, you may sort of say, hey, I'm going to do four days a week. Maybe I'll stick with my two strength sessions, and then maybe I'll do one specific strength session, or I'll do one hike, or hike in specific cardio, depending on the days. And again, that can be a pretty good week. Another way of looking at this, if you're looking at four days a week, you may sort of say, I'm going to do two classes. Maybe I'm going to spend 60 minutes in the gym and maybe I'll do 30 minutes of strength training and 30 minutes of pack walking on the treadmill or hiking specific cardio. And then when I'll do one hike on the weekend or whatever it is.

[3:25] So it's very, very possible to balance these things out. So ultimately, if you're in this situation where in the planning stages, you're trying to figure things out and you're not really sure how it all works, I would just sort of say take whatever aspects of fitness you're doing which is more general or more odd and just treat them as bonuses and then just build out those foundations of training for hiking to strength the hiking specific fitness and the hiking and walking itself and that should work out pretty well so hopefully that helps a few people and hopefully that gives a bit of direction.

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