Home Cardio Workout For Hikers

​Today, I share a simple workout structure a hiker can use if they want to work on their cardio at home (or anywhere indoors) but don't have access to any equipment. 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Right. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we're going to be talking through a simple way a hiker can approach their cardio training if they're stuck at home indoors.

[0:12] Now, this is a typical situation which will often come up when there's just something unexpected that gets in the way of your outdoor training. You know, the usual situation is weather if there's all of a sudden lots and lots of rain and we don't want to go out and hike in the rain. Or maybe it's just super hot and you're going through a bit of a heat wave, or maybe super cold, or whatever may be.

[0:32] Definitely common reasons that stop people going outside and doing their normal walking or hiking or whatever may be. It may be a situation where you're just stuck in a hotel room or at a family member's house or whatever may be. You don't really know the local area or you don't feel safe in the local area or whatever it is. But for whatever reason, there often does come the point where we are stuck indoors. Now, if this is a long-term thing and you're like, well, this is happening week after week or month after month, it usually makes sense to find an option where we can do cardio, which is going to be very similar to what we need with our hiking and our walking. So, the most simple option is finding a gym or getting some equipment, which is a treadmill, an elliptical, a rower, or a stairmaster, something like that, where we can do long steady state sessions and really work on that aerobic fitness. Or a more accessible option for people who are at home is maybe doing like box step sessions and having like an aerobic step where we do extended periods of stepping up and down, up and down and going through different movements and getting extended cardio there. And all of those options are good for kind of long-term things. If we're in the middle of winter for months and months and months, we probably want to look at something like that.

[1:44] All too often we're running in the situation where this isn't planned. We're just in the middle of the heat wave and we just don't want to go outside, but we're in a training plan and we want to keep our cardio moving forward. Like what can we do here? And at home, I just have access to absolutely zero equipment. I don't even have a step to do anything like that on, you know, what can I do? And I often get this question or I hear about this situation and usually the first place people sort of fall into and they're like, well, I've just got to train at home. I don't have any equipment. Maybe I'll just do like a HIIT workout, which I find on YouTube or find online where I do some short, sharp stuff and get really, really huffed and puffed and really sweaty and this and that. And this type of stuff, like it's not terrible in this situation because it'll give you a workout. It's, you know, the HIIT workouts are designed or a lot of them are designed just to be done in the space of your own home. You'll get sweaty, this and that. It works out well enough.

[2:34] But if you are a hiker and if you're building up to a particular hike or really want to improve your hiking, we can probably tweak this to make it just a little bit better. Purely for the fact that typical HIIT sessions and the ones that you're kind of doing, you know, online, you know, they'll be that sort of short, sharp interval training where we're doing 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off or 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off and really do that. And again, this isn't terrible in this situation. But if you're trying to dial this in a little bit more towards your hiking, we want to think about what are we actually trying to develop as a hiker. As a hiker, when we're out on the trail, typically what we are doing is more longer sustained efforts. We don't usually do 45 seconds, then have a rest, and then go and go and go. And we don't usually do 20 seconds, really, really high intensity and have a rest.

[3:26] But what we're usually climbing for you know, minutes at a time at the very least. And I'll admit not all training exactly has to look like what you're doing on your hiking, but when we're talking about cardio and we're trying to replace hiking or walking or whatever it may be, we probably want to get something that's going to be relatively close to that.

[3:44] On top of that, you know, not only are we just working cardiovascularly for longer periods of time, muscularly we're working for longer periods of time. Our legs do tend to get pretty burning as we're going up hills, so we can think about that. So sometimes when we're looking at this home training or this interval training, whatever it may be, there are a few simple things you can do, which can kind of just get it a little bit closer to the needs we want as a hike. Just a very, very slight twist, which can be a little bit more beneficial. Now, there are a million and one ways you can structure a workout like this. But today, I just want to share with you a really, really, really simple structure that you can follow. That if you do get stuck indoors and you're like, what do I do? I don't have any equipment, I just still want to get some cardio to help me on the hiking, you can follow this. Now, what you want to do here is essentially we want to choose three exercises. And we're just going to use three exercises through this workout. The first exercise we're going to choose is like a typical HIIT exercise. So an exercise which does get you quite huffed and puffed, does get the heart rate quite high, and something you can kind of go short and sharp, and it does get you bit out of breath. So examples of this might be mountain climbers or star jumps or high knee running or squat jumps or whatever like that. Something that in a very, very small amount of time can get the heart rate up pretty high.

[5:06] Exercise number two is we want to choose a kind of strength-based exercise for the front of the legs. So an exercise that's predominantly going to be working the quadriceps. So typical examples here could be bodyweight squats or could be lunges. Very, very simple. You could say step-ups, but if we had a step to do step-ups on, we'd probably be doing a box step session. Usually, we'll be falling into squats or lunges here. And then the third exercise is another strength-based exercise, but for the backs of the legs. So this might be glute bridges or hip thrusts. If you're confident with them, it might be like Romanian deadlifts or good mornings, or just something that's going to be on the back of the legs. So we've got a high-intensity exercise. It doesn't really matter what it looks

[5:49] like as long as it gets the heart rate up high. We've got an exercise for the front of the legs, exercise for the back of the legs. Now, when you're choosing exercises here, key things you want to remember is they should all be big movements. So what I mean by that is they should be movements which use quite a few muscles. We're not just doing like hamstring curls, which is just using your hamstrings, or we're not doing like bicep curls or isolation exercises, but these wanna be big movements. Number two, they wanna be simple. You don't wanna have to think about this. You don't wanna have to be balancing around or wobbling around, trying to stabilize yourself.

[6:23] They wanna be really, really, really simple that you can just kind of just do and do and do without a huge amount of thought. And then number three, we definitely don't want anything that causes you discomfort. So if there's an exercise that you're like, well, this gets my heart rate up, but it hurts my knees, well, that's not for you. Or you're like, well, I really like lunges, like this is good for this situation, but again, it hurts my knees. No, not for you. So big movements, simple movements don't cause any discomfort. And as I describe this workout, as I get into it, I'm going to use the examples of my high intensity exercise are going to be chair mountain climbers. So mountain climbers, but instead of having our hands on the floor, we're just going to have our hands on a chair. so it's a slightly different incline. For our front of the legs exercise, we're going to do bodyweight squats, and for the back of the leg exercise, we're going to do glute bridges. So this is how the workout's going to go. First of all, have a little warm-up, get a little bit of blood moving around, do some stretches, whatever it may be.

[7:13] Then we're going to start with our high-intensity exercise, with the quick exercise, and we're going to do this for 30 seconds and really, really, really, really push the intensity. We're going to aim for speed, we're going to try to get the heart rate up, and we're really going to push it. So typically, similar to what you may do in a traditional HIIT session. 30 seconds of this, really, really quick. So in my example, I would do these mountain climbers, 30 seconds, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. By the end, I'm pretty half-tumped.

[7:40] Next up, immediately, without any rest, we're flowing into it straight away. We're going to go into one of the leg exercises. And we're going to do this for 90 seconds. But what we're going to do is concentrate on two things. Number one, we want a steady output for the 90 seconds. So there's no rest. It's not like, hey, do a few and then rest and then do a few, then rest. But we're constantly doing this exercise for 90 minutes. You can go as slow as you want, totally fine, but we want constant movement. So we're not stopping. And then number two, during this 90 seconds, you're really going to concentrate that while you are moving and while you were doing this exercise, that you bring the breathing under control. So again, we're not stopping and catching our breath, but we're trying to bring the breathing under control. So in this example, you know, for me, 30 seconds of mountain climbers, then I'll do 90 seconds of squats. And instead of just doing really, really, really quick squats, where we're getting really huffed and puffed and we're still pushing the intensity, I'm going to slow it down, take it a little bit steadier and really try to control my breathing. And then immediately after that, So we do 90 seconds of that. We go to the next leg exercise. And again, we focus on 90 seconds of constant movement, really squeezing the working muscles and try to get a good burn out of it. So in my example, I would do glute bridges very, very, very steadily, 90 seconds, squeezing the glutes through.

[9:07] Then we're going to rest for about 60 to 90 seconds and repeat it about four to five times. That's the workout we're going through. So in my situation, mountain climbers, 30 seconds, quick. 90 seconds of bodyweight squats, 90 seconds of glute bridges, rest and repeat. Now, the idea for this workout is very, very simple. To start with, we're going to be getting the heart rate up. So we're going to get a good cardiovascular response, get the heart rate up like we've just hit an incline on a hill. Then we're going to accumulate longer periods of movement. So we're just repping, repping, repping, working on our muscular endurance.

[9:44] So we should be getting a good burn through the muscles as we work through. And on top of that, as we're going through that super high heart rate and hopefully pulling our breathing down throughout, we're going to be working on breathing control. In the situation, if we're out on the trail, we hit a steep incline, all of a sudden we're like, oh my gosh, I'm really out of breath. And we try to pull the pace back a little bit and keep on moving without actually having to stop.

[10:06] So that's kind of the idea around. Now, by no means is this workout perfect. And it's not going to replace, like, say, a proper interval session. If you had access to a stationary bike or an elliptical, you know, you would get much better benefits out of doing, what's this, 90 seconds, 90 seconds, 30 seconds. That's three and a half minutes of movement. You would probably get more benefits of being on a bike and going really, really quick for three and a half minutes and then resting.

[10:32] That's probably going to be better. and it's definitely not going to be as good as going out for a hike if you have that opportunity. But if you are stuck at home without any equipment and you need an option and you're looking at these online HIIT sessions, you're like, I'm not really sure about that. This can work pretty well. It can dial things in for what you need as a hiker just a little bit more and it can definitely get you through those situations. So if you're looking for an indoor home option to do with barely any equipment

[10:57] or no equipment at all, give this a whirl and you may potentially enjoy it. So last thing I will sort of say with all of this is if you are a hiker and you did need help with your training, maybe you're in the middle of winter or the middle of summer and you need workout ideas to work around the seasons. Maybe you do lots of travel and you're like, I just need a flexible plan to help work around being in hotel rooms or being in out of state or whatever may be. I would love to chat with you. If you want to learn a little bit more about our online personal training for hikers, you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash online. Now on that page, there's a big video, talks a lot about our programs. And if it sounds like something you want to explore a little bit more, there's a link on that page. You can book a free call with our team. We can have a bit of a chat about you, your needs, your goals, and your hiking, and ultimately see if we may be able to help you out. So if you want to find out more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online, and we can take it from there. So with that being said, thank you so much for watching, for listening, I should say. Hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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