How To Plan Your Training Hikes

When leading into a big hiking adventure, hiking will always be the foundation of any training plan. But most hikers out there don't put a lot of thought into planning these out. This is a mistake.

​Spending even a tiny amount of time and attention doing some longer-term planning can pay some incredible dividends in the effectiveness and safety of your training hikes.

In this video, I talk through a simple system of how to approach this:

Planning Your Hiking Training 

Inside, I cover: 

• Why it can be so valuable for a hiker to create a training hike plan
• A simple 3-step system to plan out your hikes leading into a big adventure
• A few frequently asked questions about training hikes 

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Need some help with your training for hiking?

Learn about the Online Summit Program here: ​https://www.summitstrength.com.au/online.html

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Chapters:

0:21 
Planning Your Training Hikes
0:31 
Importance of Training Hikes
4:06 
Common Mistakes in Planning
6:43 
The Process of Structuring Hikes
13:27 
Working Backwards from the Last Hike
16:32 
Practical Example of a Training Plan
18:30 
Frequently Asked Questions
24:59 
Wrapping Up and Additional Support


Video Transcript

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's video, we're going to be talking all about how to plan your training hikes when you're leading up to a big hiking adventure and how to actually plan out the hiking you're going to be doing as you're training in a way that's going to be effective, it's going to be safe, and it's going to get you where you need to be.

[0:22] So with that being said, when it comes down to preparing for a big adventure, one of the most important aspects of your physical preparation and your training

[0:30] are your training hikes. We all know this, it has to be part of pretty much everyone's preparation. Some people in certain situations may not do a huge amount of this if it's really not practical or realistic, but for the most part, we want to be fitting in training hikes. Now, when it comes down to it, this just involved getting you out on the trail and hiking. This is literally the most specific thing you can be doing for your preparation. And it's a really, really good place to expose your body to long durations of movement. So, get that out building up your aerobic fitness and your aerobic capacity, which is best developed through long periods of lower intensity exercise. It's great to expose the body to the uneven and undulating and even unpredictable nature of the trail and getting out on those sort of not managed surfaces, hitting the uphills, hitting the downhills, realizing what sections cause you a bit of stress. And also, it's really, really good just to get those specific hiking challenges. So, exposing the body to pack weight when you're actually out on the trail and feeling how that feels after an hour or two or three or four on the trail.

[1:33] Exposing the body, as I said before, to the ascents and descents, not just a nice steady climb like you might do on a stair climber, but uneven rocks and uneven steps and all of that. And also things like river crossings and rock hoppings and all of that weird and wonderful stuff that we do get exposed to out on the trail.

[1:50] This is also, on top of this, this is all pretty much common sense, but I just wanted to lay it out through here. But this is also a really, really good place for you to just practice your hydration, practice your nutrition, practice your mental preparation strategies, because all of these things are important to get right when you're leading up to a big adventure. And this is kind of where you practice things, trial and error, see what works for you, see what doesn't work for you, and all of that.

[2:16] But when it comes down to it and what we're talking about today, you know, while most hikers out there know this is important, most hikers out there are aware that, hey, I want to get out and do some hiking and slowly I want to build this out. Very few hikers out there, at least very few hikers that I speak to plan this out in any way, shape or form. And in all honesty, this is a mistake because a little bit of planning and just sitting down and putting a little bit of thought around how you're going to approach your training hikes, how you're going to structure out your training hikes can, number one, help manage your schedule. So instead of just trying to fit things in where you are, but you can actually look ahead and say, you know what, actually, I can fit things in around my life, around my commitments, around my social calendar, around my work calendar, and all of this. And it can definitely help reduce stress on that front because a lot of people, if you don't have a plan, it can be a little bit worrisome if you're just not getting as much hiking as you'd like.

[3:11] It can also ensure if you have a plan that you're actually going to be on track to get ready. A lot of hikers out there, if they're just doing random hikes, a lot of hikers fall short in their preparation. They never really get where they need to be in the perfect world to best prepare them for the trail. On top of that, a lot of hikers, when they're three or two or four months away from a trip, sometimes they can get really stressed out. They can get really worried thinking, am I going to be ready in time? Am I going to be doing enough to get me where we need to be? So if we actually have a plan and we know what track we need to be, this can really manage that stress and help with your confidence.

[3:47] Also on top of this, if we have a plan which logically and safely builds up, it can reduce the risk of exhaustion, pain and injury. Now that may seem like quite a big statement, but one of the biggest risks of pain and injury is just doing too much too soon or just doing a big,

[4:04] big, big jump up into something that you're not ready for. So if we have a plan we can slowly build this out and also on top of this this can also help you plan out your other training if we sit down and figure out our hiking and we realize you know what there's actually going to be some gaps here maybe i can't get out and hike as much as i originally thought or maybe all the hiking i'm going to be doing is going to be quite flat or maybe you know x y and z or whatever may be then you can look at your other training and say hey i need to do these things to fill in these gaps here so it can go a long way so today what i'm going to do is just talk you through a really, really simple process on how to work through this and how to put together a structured training plan leading into an adventure.

[4:45] Now, a few common mistakes I want to run through first around people who are going about this type of stuff. Number one, as I said before, a lot of hikers out there just don't do any planning at all and they just kind of do random hikes or whatever it may be. On top of that, on the flip side, some hikers out there sometimes get a little bit too complicated with this. They get a little bit too detailed. And for some people, they may really, really love tracking every single little number and every single little thing. But a lot of people end up just getting a bit overwhelmed with this and they just get a little bit too in the weeds and it just gets a bit too much. And sometimes it can just get a bit too complicated.

[5:20] Another mistake I often see from people is being in too much of a rush in the sense that they think, okay, I've got to be at a certain point in 16 weeks. And what they end up doing is they actually get to that point within four weeks, within five weeks, within six weeks. And while that may sound good in theory, because if you're ready earlier, that sounds good, but sometimes if we're just in too much of a rush, this can end up leading to aches and pains, this can lead to burnout, this can lead to us just getting bored, and it can be a little bit tricky. So, we definitely want to be aware of that. Now, the process that I'm going to show you, it's not the only way to go about planning a training hike. There's a million and one ways you can go about this, but I personally believe this is a good balance between all of this. It's a good balance between not doing any planning, It's a good balance between getting too complicated and making sure we have the right speed of progression.

[6:11] This process I'm about to show you is designed to be relatively simple and also flexible. Simple in the sense that I know a lot of people don't want to get super, super, super complicated and sometimes hiking because it's the fun stuff. We don't want to end up being outrageously structured. We want a bit of structure, but we don't want to turn into a chore and also flexible in the sense that a lot of people have things that come up. Maybe you don't to have access to hills, maybe you have weather concerns, maybe you have time concerns or whatever it may be, and it's designed to be flexible to fit probably the vast majority of hikers out there.

[6:44] Now, this particular approach, it's not just something I make up, this is something that I use with all my clients, and when I first start working with a hiker or working with a mountaineer, I will literally sit down and go through this process for all of them as I plan out their longer term journey. So, I use this every single day.

[7:01] So, first step for this is what we want to be doing is figuring out the basics. The very, very, very first step in regards to this planning out our training hikes. So, essentially, before we start, before we get into things, we want to ensure that we are crystal, crystal, crystal clear on a few things before we even start planning things out. Essentially, you want to get a pen and paper and you just want to write down a few things. Number one, what is the longest day of the big trip that you're training for going to be in hours, ideally. So look at whatever trip you're doing. If it's in four months, five months, six months, whatever it may be, have a look at the trip itinerary or whatever you are expecting and just figure out what your longest day is kind of expected to be in hours. May not be exact, but roughly around that. Is it going to be five hours, six hours, eight hours, 10 hours? What is that going to be? Figure that out. Number two is figure out what your heaviest pack weight is going to be. So what do you think on the heaviest day of the trip, what your heaviest pack weight is going to be? Again, in the distance, in the future, it may not be 100% because obviously you refine your pack weight, you figure things out, you may be buying your new gear over time, but just have an estimate. What do you think your heaviest pack weight is going to be? Number three, we want to know exactly how many weeks you have between now and your actual trip? How many weeks do you have to build up and get you where you need to be?

[8:27] And then ask yourself, how often do you think you can hike between now and then? Now, this won't be exact. This won't be perfect, but just have a real think about your life. Do you have commitments on the weekends? Do you have social events coming up? Do you have whatever may be? Have a real think and just come up with a realistic answer here. Do you think you can hike every single week? Awesome. Write that down. Do you think you can probably hike maybe once every two weeks or once every three weeks or once every four weeks or whatever it may be? Be realistic here. It's not going to be exact, but it's important to get a rough number. So those are the four things we want to figure out. So an example here is, you know, maybe I've been looking at a trip I've got coming up and I'll sort of say, look, my longest day is probably going to be about nine hours of hiking. I'm aware my heaviest pack weight is probably going to be like eight kilos. I've got about 16 weeks to build things up. And looking at my schedule, I can probably hike once every two weeks. I've got a bit going on, I've got commitments, I've got weddings and this and that. I can probably hike once every two weeks. Important to get these numbers to start.

[9:29] Number two is what we want to do from here. We've got those numbers. Step number two is essentially we want to pencil in our very final training hike. So we don't start from the beginning. We start from the end. And we're going to work backwards from that. And essentially, we want to pencil in the final hike that we need to get ready for. Typically, what this looks like is what I usually recommend is about two to three weeks before you go on your adventure. So two to three weeks before your actual big thing. You want to pencil in a date, put a big cross on your calendar, and you want to penciling your final long training hike. Now, the idea behind this hike is this ideally should be the equivalent of your longest day on your adventure in hours and your heaviest pack weight. So, for example, in the last example, I sort of said, you know, my longest day was going to be nine hours. My heaviest pack weight was going to be eight kilos. So on this day, I'm going to schedule in a day hike, which is going to take me about nine hours, and I'm going to carry an eight kilo pack. That's what we want to be looking at. That's going to be our longest training hike we're going to tick off.

[10:31] Idea behind that is we can be sure that two to three weeks before we go, if we can put this in the calendar, we can be confident, we can nail these things. That tends to be what we need to hit to be confident that we're going to be fine on the trip. That's what we want to look at. Now, you may be looking at this and be like, okay, this is fine, but why are you saying hours? Why are you saying figure out hours for hiking? because obviously there's lots of different hikes. There's ups and downs, there's elevation, there's all of this different stuff, different terrain. Why are you looking at hours? The reason why I use this is because I feel like it is the most flexible approach for the vast majority of hikers. Because when it comes down to it, some hikers have the luxury of having lots and lots of trails nearby. And they can go out and choose hikes which have a certain amount of elevation, then another amount of elevation, then another, and this and that. And they can really, really, really track this stuff and that works well for them. For the most part, most hikers don't have that luxury. Some people have lots of elevation, some people have a lot of flat stuff, some people have a mix or a variation or whatever may be. The reason why I like hours is ultimately it ends up balancing out. In the sense, if we program out with hours and say we want to go out and do a nine-hour hike, this nine-hour hike, if we have lots and lots of elevation change, this could be a relatively short distance, but you're doing loads and loads and loads of up and down.

[11:54] Alternatively if you live relatively flat this may be flat and not a huge amount of up and down but it might be lots and lots and lots of distance and you're just going for nine hours you end up going double the distance or something of that more elevation height so it ends up balancing out for the most part on top of that is if we are scheduling out hours as opposed to distance and elevation i like this because it kind of gives you a bit of flexibility week by week in regards to how you are actually feeling. Because sometimes if we sort of schedule out distance and elevation, and on some weeks we'll schedule easy hikes, some weeks we'll schedule really difficult hikes, sometimes our energy just doesn't line up on those days. Maybe we have a really, really, really difficult hike scheduled in and we know we need to hit these numbers if we're going to stay on track with our plan, but it ends up we've had a really stressful week of work or we're just coming off the back of a bit of sickness or whatever it may be. Our energy is a bit low. Sometimes that's not ideal in that situation. If we're doing hours, this gives us a little bit of flexibility because you may come to this weekend and you're like, you know what? I'm not feeling great. Maybe I'm just going to choose a hike, which is really easy, really casual. And I just cruise along just to accumulate the time. Or the flip side, if you get to a weekend and you're like, you know what? I'm feeling really energetic. I want to push things a bit more. You can choose hike, which again, fits within the time period, but has a bit more up and down. So I like hours personally. I feel it's very flexible. However, you can make your own choice there.

[13:17] If you do prefer the distance and elevation, get a little bit more honed in, absolutely go right ahead. It's not wrong. I just like hours personally. So that's step number two, scheduling your final training hike.

[13:27] Then number three is we want to work backwards in your calendar. You've got your last training hike and we want to work backwards from there. So first thing you want to get out your calendar, get out a pen and basically just pencil in all the dates you think between now and your actual hike where you think you can hike. All the dates. Can you do every two weeks, every three weeks, every four weeks? Whatever you figured out before, pencil them all in and then just cross-check that with anything that you know is in your calendar. If you have weddings or holidays or things clearing up, just make sure it doesn't line up. Now, this long-term scheduling, it will change. It always does change due to scheduling, due to weather, whatever it may be. And that is absolutely fine, but it's important just to get a rough idea right now. And then once we've scheduled out those dates, essentially we want to work backwards through these hikes, starting from the longest one and work backwards. And essentially what we want to do is work slowly, but surely backwards, making sure that we are slowly, but surely building up packway and building up our hours over this time. So take you from your longest hike and slowly pull things back until your first hike. And that's kind of what we're looking at. And I'll give you an example in a second to make that make sense.

[14:37] Ideally, when we're doing this and when we're working backwards on all these hikes, what we want to end up with, this isn't always possible, but ideally what we want to end up with is each hike you go out on, you will either increase your hours or your pack weight for each hike, but you're not doing both in the same week. So essentially, if we're making things more difficult week by week or hike by hike, we want to choose one of those metrics. So for example, if you were trying to increase your pack weight, you may do a three-hour hike one week with a five kilo pack, then a three-hour hike the next week with a six kilo pack, and then maybe do a four or five-hour hike with a six kilo pack. As opposed to going three-hour hike with a five kilo pack up to five-hour hike with a seven kilo pack, that's just a recipe for a little bit too much too soon. Ideally.

[15:24] On top of that is when we aren't looking at our hiking, we never really want to be pushing ourselves to the absolute limit in the sense that we never want to be pushing to exhaustion. We never want to be on the very, very verge of our capabilities. Hiking is the fun stuff. We don't want to turn into an absolute ordeal, an absolute slog or whatever may be. So what we want to do is when we're looking at our earlier hikes, we want to be starting as conservative as we can. And if you can figure out a plan where it's kind of easy the whole way through, but it still gets you where you need to be, that's the dream. And it won't always be possible but that's what we want so start with targets which are very very doable, and on top of that is what we want to do is we want to take the slowest possible build over the time that you have while it still gets you where you need to be so you don't want to be hitting your maximal metrics halfway through this journey you want to take the slowest possible build the idea behind that the slower we can go the more time the body will have to adapt to create uh, get stronger, to get more resilient, and the less chance you'll have of picking

[16:29] up aches and pains or getting overly exhausted or whatever it may be. So three things to keep in mind now.

[16:35] So, to give you a practical example of this and sort of how it looks in real time, let's just use those examples of things before. And I think this was an example I originally used when I was talking about my training for a trip going on to Kokoda Trail a few years ago. So, in this trip, I had 16 weeks leading up to that trip. My longest day on the trip, I was aware, was going to be nine hours. And what I was going to be doing is carrying an eight kilo day pack. On that trip, I was using a porter. I didn't have to carry a full pack. And that's what I was looking at. On top of that, I hadn't really done a huge amount of hiking recently. I was pretty out of condition at that stage. So I was like, I need to be relatively conservative. I had a bit going on. So I was aware that, look, I can hike once every two weeks or so. So those were my metrics. So let me just bang out the plan here and you can have a look. 16 weeks, we've got the hike scheduled in. One week before we go, don't have a hike. Two weeks before we go, that's my maximal day. Eight to nine hour hike with an eight kilo pack. That's what we're going to fit two weeks before we go. And then essentially in this schedule, I just work backwards to see where we got.

[17:35] Hike before that, five to six hour hike with an eight kilo pack. Hike before that, three to four hour hike with an eight kilo pack. Hike before that, five to six hour hike with a six kilo pack. Yada, yada, yada. As you can see, starting off very, very easy, two to three hours with a four kilo pack. For me, that was very, very doable, but you can see build up, build up, build up, build up. Now, this plan in itself, it's not perfect because there's probably like big jumps, like two kilos per hike in pack weight, you know, a bit quicker than I would usually like. There are some bigger jumps in distance, but you can kind of see the logical progression there, which starts very, very easy. Each time we either increase hours or pack weight and I'm confident it will get me where I need to be before I head off. That's kind of the plan. Now, this will vary for a lot of people depending on your timeline, depending on your pack weight, depending on obviously how often you can sort of fit hikes in, but that's the general idea.

[18:31] Now, a few frequently asked questions around this process. And because that's relatively simple, it does take a little while to sort of figure that out. Like for me, I can, if I get someone's plan, I can bang this out and like relatively quickly because I've done it, do it every single day. For you, it may take four or five or six or seven different attempts where you are scribbling things in, going backwards and this and that until you find something that's going to look reasonable and going to work out. And I will do this the same thing when I'm working with people and I'll put together a plan. I was like, that doesn't work. That's way too quick.

[19:04] Go back to square one and I'll just adjust, adjust, adjust until I kind of get it right. So, it will take a bit of trial and error. So, frequently asked questions. What if I can't dedicate much time to hiking? So, if you're in the situation, maybe weather restricts your hiking. Maybe you have a young family, can't get out a huge amount of time. Maybe you don't feel confident going out and doing long hikes or whatever it may be. If you can't dedicate a huge amount of time to hiking, just fit in what you can. If you've got your maximal trip date, it's going to be six hours, but you can only really do a three-hour hike. Use that maximal distance as much as you can. Build up your pack weight, and probably here you may want to just compensate by getting a little bit heavier with your pack weight than what you expect. It's not ideal, and you want to get as close as you can in regards to hours, but if it's not realistic, you're just going to work with what works for you.

[19:55] Number two is what if my longest day is super, super, super long? So for some hikes, if you're doing, say, a mountaineering expedition, maybe have a 15 or 20-hour summit day, or if you're a hiker and you're doing Kilimanjaro, for example, and maybe a 12-hours or 14-hour summit day, the thought of doing that as a training hike, it's probably not going to happen. It may just be way too much. It may just be way not realistic, and it's just a little bit difficult. So again, what I would say in that situation is just fit in what you can. Ask yourself, realistically, what is the longest day I think I'll be able to do while hiking, while training?

[20:36] My summit day is 15 hours. That's not going to happen. Realistically, how long do I think I can go? Can I go for six hours? Can I build up to eight hours? Can I build up to nine hours? Whatever it may be. Use that longest distance as a target. And again, you can compensate a little bit with pack weight. So if you were sort of falling relatively short on your distance, you could train up to carry an extra kilo, an extra two kilos, an extra three kilos compared to what you need on the trip. So if your day is super, super, super long, just do what's realistic.

[21:06] What if I hike, can I only hike every once in a while? If you're in a situation where you can only really hike maybe once a month or barely all of that, then in that situation, fit in what hiking you can, put together a plan either way so you have a bit of a ramp up, but then you have to lean into your other training. And I have a lot of hikers that I work with who fall into this situation. They can't regularly get out hiking due to weather, due to seasons, due to whatever may be. So we have to lean into the training. So that's where you sort of focus on your strength training, your other cardio sessions, and make sure all your other training is absolutely on point.

[21:37] And then a lot of people will often ask, what about overnighters and multi-dayers? In general, even for my hikers who are training for overnighters and multi-dayers, in general, I will probably do almost all their training as training hikes anyway. I found that works well enough if we can hit those metrics and this and that. But if you're looking at overnighters and multi-dayers, you can absolutely fit them in. I would just sort of say, just fit them in wherever you can, wherever it makes logical sense in regards to your plan. Obviously, if you are going to go do a overnight training hike and you need to carry a full pack and you've only actually trained up to six kilos, probably not a good time to do that. But once you're confident carrying that pack, then just fit in where you can. General rule of thumb, I would sort of say is if you are doing an overnighter or multi-dayer, just use the longest day as your longest day on that overnighter or multi-dayer. Make sure the other days are a little bit shorter than that actual target week. It doesn't have to be like that, but it works out well enough. But realistically, you just fit in wherever is logical for you and making sure that you are ready for that pack, whatever you need.

[22:40] And then what if I miss a week? So this often comes up, hiking always happens. If you miss a week, then you just need to pick things up where you can. And you either need to sit down and readjust your plan and say, you know what, actually I'm missing this week, so I need to tweak all my targets moving forward. Or if it's just one week, sometimes you can just skip it and just move up. So, in this situation, if I sort of like came up, did week two, week four, week six, I kind of missed and I was looking at five to six hour hike with a six kilo pack, I would sort of say three to four hour with a four kilo pack up to five to six hour. That's probably too big a jump up. So, I'm going to readjust this plan and maybe I might pull this down to three to four hours and do the six kilos and see how that goes and then move up to that or whatever it may be. So, you just again, look at the plan, readjust as necessary. Thank you.

[23:27] So in summary, when it comes down to this, spending a little bit of time and effort planning your training hikes can go a long, long, long way. This type of thing will likely change over time, but it is really, really incredibly valuable just to have a rough plan in front of you. So when you're going through it, figure out your metrics, plan out your longest day and your final training hike and just work backwards from there. It's pretty simple, but it really does go a long way. You know, beyond this, obviously hiking is important, but in your training, you definitely want to build this out with your strength training, very, very essential for hikers, your hiking-specific cardio, so packwalking, stairs, hills, stuff like that, and even a bit of mobility and recovery work. All of my hikers work with that type of stuff in their weeks to complement their hiking. It really goes a long way. And as I said before, if you can't get out and hike quite as much as you would like, then you need to lean into these things more. And if you identify, hey, all the hiking I'm doing is great, but I'm kind of missing things compared to my trip, such as elevation, such as this, such as that, whatever it may be, then this is kind of where you make it up and you say, okay, I can't do too much elevation with my hiking, so I need to find something like that in my hiking-specific cardio, find some stairs, find some hills, find a stair master, do some box step workouts, stuff like that. So this is where you fill in your gaps with everything there.

[24:44] But ultimately, if you can put this all together, have that nice, well-rounded, nice structured hiking plan, and then build this out with your strength training, hiking specific cardio and your recovery mobility work, put it all together and you have a well rounded training plan for your hiking.

[25:00] So with that being said, I hope that does make sense. This whole process, it does take a little bit of trial and error to wrap your heads around it, but it is well worth your time. And I promise you, if you can do it, it'll make such a difference as you lead up into a trip. Hopefully, it does give you a decent overview, but I fully understand come out the other end. Some people are like, hey, I just need some help with this. Or you know what? I've got a big trip and I like the sounds of just having this well-rounded program. I like the sound of doing everything I can to get ready for it and if you were in a situation where you would like a little bit of help with this i would love to chat with you um if you didn't know already what i do every day is help hikers all around the world prepare for their hiking adventures and essentially i offer personalized online training programs for hikers to help them get fit strong and resilient for their adventures essentially what our packages typically include is we will create a custom and personalized workout program to get you ready for anything the trail may throw at you covering all those things I mentioned before, putting together a hiking plan, putting together a strength training plan, putting together a cardio plan, putting together a recovery mobility plan, and doing it all in a way which will fit around you and your life.

[26:05] On top of that, we also do put a big emphasis into education around all the different peripheral factors which can make or break an adventure. Things like nutrition, recovery, self-care, mental strength, dealing with extreme environments, and a bunch of other things. And on top of that, we give you the coaching, support, and accountability to keep you on track throughout. Now, if you did want to learn a little bit more about this and check it out, what you can do is go to summitstrength.com.au slash online. On there, there's a nice video which kind of talks through our packages in a little bit more detail around how we go about things. And if that was something you want to learn a little bit more about, you can basically just on that page, there's a link where you could book a call with our team and we can have a bit of a chat. Just learn about you, your situation, your goals and your hiking and see if and how we may be able to help you out. So if you did want to check that out, go to summerstrength.com.au online and we can take it from there. But with that being said, thank you so much for listening today. I really do hope you've enjoyed it. I really do hope this helps a few hikers out. And any questions, please reach out and let me know.