Endurance Training For Hikers (Without Steep Hills)

"How do I prepare for a big elevation hike if I don't have any mountains to train on?"

This is one of the most common questions I get asked.

And I can completely understand how concerning this situation is! Because preparing for a significant adventure in itself can be intimidating enough...

But when you are seeing pictures of these massive mountains you are planning to climb, but where you live is about as flat as a pancake, it can be seriously stressful!

Now in the past, I have recommended hikers go out and do a few things for this, such as:

• High resistance strength training
• Low resistance to muscular endurance training
• Hill or stair repeats

(You can learn the details of all of this in this podcast: How To Train For Elevation Gain Hiking (Without Any Mountains)

And this approach definitely works!

But what if you want some more variety? Or what if you cannot even find a short, steep hill or set of stairs to train on?

In this case, you might consider the 'incline lunge workout'.

All you need here is a very slight incline (this can be done on the street, on the trail or even in a driveway) and some serious self-determination.

And all you do is perform walking lunges from the bottom of the hill to the top.

And repeat!

The combination of the slight incline and the lunges is very similar to the demands of steep uphill hiking. And it can be a great method of training to prepare you for those mountains!

A few important points to make:

1. When lungeing, try to keep your reps controlled throughout. This means controlling your descent each rep (i.e. no dropping!) and a slight pause at the bottom of each rep (i.e. no bouncing!). 
   
   
2. Each time you do this workout, add another 2-3 minutes of lungeing
   
   
3. If you need to make this harder, try wearing a slightly loaded pack
   
   
4. Repeat for 4-6 weeks, and you will be amazed at the difference it makes!

*This workout is probably not appropriate for you suffer from knee pain while hiking)

Simple. And effective.

And while this workout probably isn't quite as effective as doing an overloaded hill or stair repeat on a steep incline...

It can be a great alternative if that simply is not possible!

So give it a go and see what you think.

If you want more help getting fit, strong and resilient for your hiking adventures, you can find the Online Summit Program here:

https://www.summitstrength.com.au/online.html

Yours in trekking, 

Rowan

*Originally published 1/6/2020