Home Workouts For Hikers

Is your gym closed? Are you stuck at home? Need a few home workouts to keep you going?  

This article will tell you exactly how to create an effective, efficient and fun home workout for hiking.

Home workouts can be an effective way of training for hiking. With a little bit of thought and a little bit of creativity, you can do everything you need to get fit, strong and resilient for the trail.

However, where most hikers go wrong here, is when they are faced with a home workout, they revert to what they know best...  

Endless squats and lunges.

Which can do some good...

But there are MUCH more effective and time-efficient ways of training at home, then this 'traditional' hiking approach.

So today, I want to teach you how to go about this.

Now in creating this article, I didn't want to just share with you a few random home workouts to complete and send you on your way...  

That can do you some good, but more than likely the workouts will get stale, boring and ineffective very quickly.
 
Instead, I want to teach you a dead-simple process to create your own workout, with which you can adapt for your personal preferences.   

So you are not just stuck with a couple of sessions you do on repeat, but you will have endless possibilities for workouts, to get you fit, strong and resilient for the trail!

Using Workout Templates 

Templates are one of the easiest and most time-efficient approaches to creating your own workouts. Using a template, you can leave all the science and deep thinking to the professionals and instead have a simple framework to use. 

Below, are three simple home workout templates any hiker can use, whether you want to work on your strength, endurance or your conditioning. 

How It Works

To keep these workouts as time efficient as possible, these templates use something called sequencing.

When looking at the templates, you will see they contain the letters A, B and C with numbers next to them. You complete all the A exercises in a row then repeat for the number of sets. Then, you move onto the B's following the same process. And then, C.   

The magic of this formula is your 'rest' periods are filled with either core or mobility exercises. This layout allows you to give your muscles the rest they need in between sets, but instead of just sitting around playing on your phone, you are using this time productively! 

Three Simple Templates For Home Workouts For Hikers

Strength Workout

A1: lower body push exercise (8-10 reps)
A2: upper body pull exercise (8-10 reps)
A3: any core exercise (60 sec)
A4: any mobility exercise (60 sec)

*Complete 3-5 sets. Your rest is the mobility exercise

B1: lower body pull exercise (8-10 reps)
B2: upper body push exercise (8-10 reps)
B3: any core exercise (60 sec)
B4: any mobility exercise (60 sec)

*Complete 3-5 sets. Your rest is the mobility exercise

​C: any conditioning exercise (30 quick/30 rest x10 rounds)

Endurance Workout

A1: Lower body, two leg, push exercise  (15-20 reps)
A2: Lower body, two leg, pull exercise (15-20  reps)
A3: Lower body, single legged, push exercise (10 reps)
A4: Lower body, single legged, pull exercise (10 reps)
A5: Any mobility exercise (60 sec)

*Complete 3-4 sets. Your rest is the mobility.

B1: Any core exercise (60 sec)
B2: Any Conditioning exercise (30 sec)
B3: Any conditioning exercise (30 sec)

*Complete 3-6 sets, no rest. 

Conditioning Workout

A1: Any conditioning exercise
A2: Lower body push exercise
A3: Upper body pull exercise
A4: And core exercise
A5: Any conditioning exercise
A6: Upper body push exercise
A7: Any core exercise
A8: Any conditioning exercise
A9: Any mobility exercise

*Perform each exercise for 50 seconds, with a 10 second rest between exercises. Repeat 3-5 times.

B1: Any mix of conditioning exercises

*Repeat for 4-6 minutes with no rest

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From here, the next steps is to plug in the exercises you want to use...

Here is a list of the best exercises to choose from each category you can use

*If you have access to dumbbells or a barbell, any of the 'pack' exercises can be replaced with there.

Lower Body Push Exercises
Step down
Eccentric pistol squat
Box pistol squat
Bulgarian Split Squat
Split Squat
Lunge (reverse, forward or walking)
Back Squat (back or front)
Prisoner Get Up

Lower Body Pull Exercises
Romanian Deadlift (pack)
Single Leg Deadlift 
Hip Thrust
Single leg glute bridge
Straight leg glute bridge (off couch)

Upper Body Push Exercise
Push ups
Pack press
Dips
Shoulder press (pack)

Upper Body Pull Exercise
Bent over row (pack)
Single arm row (pack)
Banded row 

Core Exercises
Side Plank
Dead bug
Plank  
Bird dogs
Pallof press
Hollow hold

Mobility Exercises
Worlds greatest stretch
Knee to wall
Seated glute stretch
Frog stretch
Wall angels

Conditioning Exercises
Step ups
Mountain climbers
High knee running
Star jumps
Lateral hops
Skipping

*If you are not familiar with any of these exercises, YouTube is a great source.

Now you have a simple 3 step process to creating your own home workout for hiking:

1. Choose which type of workout you want to complete
2. Grab your template and plug in your exercises
   
3. Find some space at home and get training!
   
   

It really is as simple as that!

Need Some Extra Help Putting together a home training plan for hiking?

Check out our
online training programs
for hikers