Don't Fall Short With Your Training Hikes

​In this episode, I explore the number one mistake a hiker can make when preparing for a big hiking adventure (and what to do instead).

Mentioned in the episode:

How To Plan Your Training Hikes Tutorial

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Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking about probably the number one biggest mistake you can make as

[0:10] a hiker if you're training and preparing for a big adventure. And as much as in this podcast, I talk about a lot of things that I personally think hikers should be doing and hikers should be avoiding, this one pretty much trumps everything. And if you're leading up to a big adventure you need to keep this in mind and do everything you realistically and practically can not to fall in this trap and the biggest mistake we're talking about today is falling significantly short with your training hikes in your preparation, so to give you a bit of context on this and to kind of talk you through why i'm talking about this because i think i have talked about this recently on the podcast um and social media a little bit, but we want to get into it again today. Because in the last couple of months, we've had a few different conversations with hikers who've kind of fallen into this kind of mistake.

[1:08] Now, the first example, and I think I talked about this the other day, was someone who reached out to me, and they were about six weeks out from a very big mountain climb. And this was a big, high-altitude, challenging climb. And this particular mountain required them to do eight plus hours of movement, getting up to very, very high altitude, carrying a pack, I think getting up to about 20 kilos at certain stages. It was a big, big, big challenge. And this particular person, they were about six weeks out from their trip. And when they were talking about their training, turned out they hadn't really done any training hikes on elevation.

[1:46] They hadn't hiked with a pack, and the only amount of heavier pack work they'd done was only for about a 60-minute work, and even then, it was nowhere near what they needed for their trip. And as much as this, you know, they were asking for advice and this and that, I had to say, look, there's not that much I can really help you with right now. Like, you know, six weeks out from this, really, really, really far behind of where you need to be, and it was really, really unfortunate. it. Now, another situation was another hiker I was having a conversation with, similar kind of thing. They were preparing for a hike, which wasn't quite as extreme, but they were leading up to a hike, which required a full pack, about six hours on a certain day with lots and lots of climbing, lots of elevation. And it was going to be a five or six or seven day hike, I can't remember exactly. And they're about five weeks out from their trip. And at this stage, the longest hike they had done in their lead-up was three hours with a pack which was significantly lighter than what they needed. And in the conversation we were having, they were saying, look, I need help with my strength. I need help with my endurance, but I'm feeling pretty confident with my cardio.

[2:56] And I was like, oh, I don't really think like I understand maybe feeling confident, but you're really far short of kind of where you need to be at this stage of preparations. And it's a very tricky thing to say you're feeling good about your cardio when you're nowhere near kind of what you want to be training at or another hiker and this has all happened in the last uh last couple of months who was in a similar situation they had a kite coming up which required a seven hour um seven hour day with about 15 kilos they were about six weeks out again and the longest hiker they were hike they'd done was about four hours and in the conversation they were saying they were really

[3:34] hesitant about doing any longer hikes. And they were really, really nervous about doing more than that.

[3:41] And you can kind of see a bit of a pattern here. In each of these situations, they were well, well, well short of kind of where they needed to be. And they were well, well, well short on their hiking, on their pack work, of kind of where they need to be in that type of situation. And this put them in a bit of a position because each of these hikers are about six or seven weeks away. And they had one of two options leading up to their adventures. Either they needed to use these next six weeks to ramp up dramatically quickly in their final training and ramp up their hiking distance and ramp up their pack weight and do that really, really quickly. And anytime we do that significantly quickly and we just do red hot, just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, that puts us at significant risk of picking up aches and pains and injuries and things going wrong.

[4:30] Or the other option is they could keep on the same track, keep this sort of slow and steady build or stick in their comfort zone. But then they'd enter their trip and they would just be really, really, really underprepared. They would never have hit the length of walking that they needed to do. They would never have hit the pack weight they needed to do. And again, that leaves a massive risk of things going wrong. Some people admittedly can do barely any training or can get nowhere near their training metrics and go out and hike and be fine. But it's kind of leaving a lot of things up to luck, which is not great. Neither of those situations are good.

[5:03] And neither of these situations are something you as a hiker want to be in. And I want to use this episode just to highlight the fact that if you are training for a big adventure, if you are leading to a specific endpoint, you do not want to fall into this situation. You want to make sure that by the time you lead into your trip, you have built up your hiking to a point where the jump to your actual adventure isn't dramatic. It is going to be a challenge, obviously, but it's not going to be a massive jump where you have a massive risk of things going wrong.

[5:36] So, how do you do that? Well, first of all, the best thing I can recommend, the first thing you want to know is whenever you book in a big adventure, a hike, a climb, a trip, whatever it may be, you want to be really, really, really crystal clear on what you actually need to build up to in your training. You want to know what the end goal is. You don't want this airy-fairy. You don't want this kind of out as a really, really vague thing. You want to be crystal clear about this is my end point with my training that I'm building up to. Now, I fully understand this can be tough sometimes figuring out for yourself, because you may be leading up to a five-day hike with lots of, you know, on a mountain, and maybe you live on the flat, and you might be like, well, how the heck am I supposed to, yes, I need to prepare for this amount of hiking, this distance, this elevation, this amount of days. How am I supposed to do that in my training? If I don't have any mountains, I don't have access to that. I can't travel here. I can't access altitude. I can't replicate three or four or five days hiking in my training or whatever it may be.

[6:37] Realistically, replicating things exactly that you're doing on your hike, it's not really possible. But the target that I recommend and the target that I use with my hikers is essentially what you want to do is you want to look at your upcoming trip. You want to figure out the longest day of hiking that you have in hours. So if you're doing a five-day trip, find what the longest expected day is in hours. And you want to figure out your maximal pack weight, the heavier it's going to be on your trip. And essentially the target that I recommend people work up to is two to three weeks before your trip, before your big hike, you want to make sure you can confidently do a day hike, which is the equivalent of your longest day in hours and your maximal pack weight. So if your longest day is going to be six hours and your max pack weight is going to be 20 kilos, two weeks before your trip, you want to schedule in a day hike where you're doing a six hour hike with a 20 kilo pack or whatever it may be. Now, why do I recommend this? Well, for kind of a few reasons. Number one, using hours as opposed to distance and elevation, it can balance out in the sense that if you have a big elevation hike coming up and lots of up and down, and you live somewhere where you have hiking lots of up and down, well, you can go out and do a hike, which has a lot of that, and it equals out.

[8:02] Alternatively, if you live somewhere really, really flat, then you can go out and do a hike, which is the equivalent amount of hours, but it may be flat, but you'll end up just doing way, way, way more distance. It's not exactly the same thing, but it kind of balances out because you just end up being on your feet for the same amount of time, moving for the same amount of time. The same thing with the pack weight. Just making sure you're having that heaviest pack weight, even if you're not planning on carrying that exact pack weight for the entire trip, doing this on a day hike is really, really, really valuable. And you may be asking, okay, well, if I'm hiking for seven, eight,

[8:37] nine days, why am I only doing a day hike? Well, in this situation, you can do an overnight or whatever it may be, but realistically, a lot of people just don't have time for that before a trip. So a day hike tends to work pretty well. Over the years, I've kind of found this is a really nice target that if you can hit this before your trip, this equivalent amount of hours and maximal pack weight, that is a really good jumping off point. That means your body's ready for this, your body's prepared. And when we jump up into your actual hike, it's not that dramatic to end up doing two or three or four or five days of this, the body's kind of ready.

[9:15] That should be your long-term target when it comes down to your training.

[9:20] Now, there are some situations where this may not be practical. I fully understand. Say, for example, if you're doing Kilimanjaro and your summit night's expected to be 12 hours, and you're like, well, how the heck am I going to do a 12-hour training hike? Well, in that situation, yeah, you're probably not going to do that. So find something that's realistic for you. can you do six hours can you do seven hours can you do eight hours maybe what is practical that you can fit in do that and maybe just add a little extra pack weight or whatever may be, the other typical barrier here is weather if you're in the middle of winter or in the middle of summer and you're like hey how the heck am i supposed to do six hours when it's boiling hot.

[10:03] At the crack of dawn or it's snow and it's just not safe to be out there. Well, then you have to get creative. You have to think about, okay, can I do a two to three hour hike and then go to the gym and go on the treadmill for two to three hours? Or do I do this entire thing on the treadmill or whatever? Boring as anything, but that's kind of necessary.

[10:22] This is the end point we want to build up to. May not always be a hundred percent practical, but you want to make sure you do everything you can to build up to this. And then on top of that, to use this, once you have this endpoint, you want to sit down and chart out a plan of attack to slowly build yourself up to there. You want to make sure you have a draft plan of saying, okay, over these next 16 weeks, I can hike once every three weeks, once every two weeks, once a week, or whatever it may be. And this is what I'm going to do to slowly build up. This week, I'm going to do two to three hours of the five kilo pack. The next week I'm going to do three to four hours with a five kilo pack. Next week I'm going to do three to four hours with a seven kilo pack and then slowly build things up or whatever. And I've done a podcast. I've done videos on this before going into a full tutorial on this. So I will leave a link for a tutorial on how to plan this all out in the show notes below.

[11:13] But the main thing is this, have that end goal, have a draft plan. So you just don't fall into this situation where you kind of think you're going okay and you think you're in a good spot, but you're actually really short of where you need to be.

[11:28] Yes, I will admit a lot of people get away with their hikes with never building up to these metrics, but if you want to give yourself the best chance possible of being comfortable, being successful, being safe, this is the most important thing you want to hit with your training. Yes, everything else with your training will complement this. Strength training, standhill climbing, pack walking, all of that will help fill these gaps and build you up. But this, if at all possible, you want to hit.

[11:55] Don't fall into this trap where you're like four or five weeks away and you're nowhere near where you need to be. I've seen it so many times recently, I've seen it so many times over the years, and it's just something you want to avoid as much as you practically can. So, coming off the back of this, if you have a big trip coming up and you haven't sat down and done some planning, figure it out. Figure out your metrics, chart out a plan for your remaining time, see if you can build up in a slow and steady way. If you're in the situation where you have a height coming up and you chart that plan out and you're well, well, well short of where you need to be, well, that's a sign you need to get serious with your training. You need to have a bit of urgency. You need to maybe start doing a little bit more than you were doing before. Or if you chart that out and you're like, hey, I'm actually in a really good spot. I'm right where I need to be. I'm well ahead of where I need to be. Awesome. Cool. Take a breather. Keep on moving forward, but you're in a really good spot. And if you don't have a particular trip coming up right now, just keep these ideas in your back pocket. So if you do book something in, figure this out early, get ahead of yourself so you know what's coming up because it really does make a massive difference.

[13:05] So with that being said, I'm going to wrap things up here. I see this mistake so many times and I really, really, really hate seeing it. So please take it seriously, put a bit of thought behind it and check it out. And as I said, if you want to learn about that, see the full tutorial on about planning out your training hikes over a long term to kind of hit this type of stuff, I'll leave a link in the show notes below. You can check it out. So with that being said, I'm going to wrap things up here. Thank you for listening. I hope this is a wake up call for a few people. I hope it's useful for a few people and we'll talk to you soon. Bye.

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