How To Train Your Kids For Hiking

​A few times a year I get asked by a hiker "I am going on a big hiking trip with my kids. What can I do to help them prepare"?

Inside this episode, I explore my thoughts on the subject, and where I believe is best to put your focus"

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking about how to train with your kids when you're leading up to a hiking adventure.

[0:10] Now, this is a topic that does come up quite a few times in a year for myself. And I often have hikers and clients asking me, look, I'm trying to get my kids involved in hiking and we're actually going out on a big adventure. I know for myself that I'm taking my training seriously. I know for myself, I'm doing the right things, but I'm not really sure what my kids should be doing. So today, I want to explore this in a little bit of detail. Now, when I'm talking about kids, realistically, the advice I'm going to give today, it covers most age groups. It covers, you know, from your very younger kids who are sort of first stepping out to adventures, whether it's seven, eight, nine, 10 years old, depending on what you're doing and all of that. Obviously, early teenagers, even mid-teenagers as well. This advice is going to be pretty generic, but it can be pretty useful. Now, quite often when people are listening, at least to my content, they often hear me talking about the structured way we approach training, the structured way we approach our sessions, how we apply strength training and hiking-specific conditioning and recovery mobility and hiking training and putting everything together in a nice, good structure. For the hikers who are listening to this podcast, and obviously you're listening, you know who you are.

[1:28] That's good advice. For your kids, for 95% of the kids, 98% of the kids are, probably don't need to be doing this. And sometimes it can be a little bit of short road to failure, trying to get your kids to do structured training and try to make them really disciplined about something that should be ultimately just fun for them. And sometimes the biggest battle for you as a parent, when it comes into this lead up, is just to try to help them see this as a positive experience, to see these hikes as something that they want to go on, as opposed to something that's a bit arduous, a bit of a drag or whatever it may be.

[2:04] And I know for myself, when I was younger, you know, I really, really did enjoy bushwalking with my dad and my family. We did a lot of that. But when I did my first overnight hikes, I didn't particularly love them.

[2:16] They didn't instill a huge amount of joy in me. I didn't really want to go out on them. And that was just because, you know, we approached it in, you know, not the best way. And I was with scouts and it was just like throwing a crazy heavy pack and out you go and see how you go. So, but if you do have a kid who is leading up to an adventure with you and you want to make it as positive as possible for them, a few really, really key pieces of advice. Number one, you can probably forget about strength training. If you can convince them to do a few workouts with you here and there, great, but in all honesty, most kids probably aren't going to do it, aren't going to stick with it, you know, it might be a bit of a losing battle. Number two, trying to get them to do specific cardio sessions. You can probably throw that out as well. Again, it would be good if they could do it because it won't be harmful and probably will be beneficial. But again, most kids aren't really going to enjoy that and they aren't really going to be into it. And you want to pick your battles. The best place you want to look at here is trying to convince them and get them in the habit of coming out with you on some load of packwalking sessions and also on some training hikes as you go through.

[3:23] Realistically, as a kid, regardless of age, the biggest issue they're going to run into is just not being comfortable with the pack. And just getting tired legs after hours of movement. Those are the two things you really want to try to expose them to in a way that's controlled. Now, if you are just going out and your adventure is just a nice long day hike, maybe you've got a sort of a younger kid and you're like, look, I just want them to do something nice and long. They're not really going to be carrying a heavy pack. I would still recommend getting them to do just some walks with you, whether it's around a park, whatever it may be, wearing a pack which just has their water bottle, their snacks, or whatever it may be. That literally only may be a kilo. That literally may only be like a kilo and a half or something like that, depending on the kid. But just getting exposed to that, getting them used to that, getting them comfortable with it, it can go a long way.

[4:12] Now, if you have got someone slightly older and you're going on to an overnighter or multi-dayer, this is where you want to start thinking about, okay, what are we packing? How heavy are they going to be building up to? And then you want to, together, try to build up to that pack weight through loaded pack walking and follow the same structure, same advice we often talk about on this podcast, slowly but surely building up the pack weight. So if you can convince them to do one or two of these a week, that can be really good. Now, same thing with the hiking. Realistically, you want to get them out hiking as much as is reasonable and as much as it's not going to turn, again, into a negative thing. And as much as you can get them out, that they're still going to enjoy it and they're going to be excited about this trip coming up. And again, you want to have think about how can we over time build up this pack weight make sure they're comfortable with it so they can get both the exposure to the legs moving for hours and hours and hours depending on how long you're going to be hiking which is priority number one and then also get exposure to wearing that pack for hours and hours and hours which was priority number two realistically when you're looking at the grand scheme of things they're the two things you want to be aiming into when it comes down to training they're the two things you want to really really hone in on and the more comfortable, the more familiar you can get them with it, probably the more enjoyable they're going to have on the trail.

[5:30] Now, the extra thing that I would add on top of that, and this is what I say to every single one of my hikers who asks about this, is please make sure that you are just stock full of snacks. The worst thing you want is your kid, again, regardless of age, being on that trail, just being tired and exhausted and not having a good time and just wanting to go home and all of that, because obviously, there's not going to be much fun for either of you. One really simple way you can help with this is just making sure you have a good spread of snacks. Now, obviously, if you've been listening to this podcast, you know that snacking regularly, is really, really beneficial for helping your energy, minimizing fatigue, and going like that and having a nice spread of snacks where you've got sweet and savory and different things going on this can be a really really good thing just to kind of get them having a bit more fun i suppose where you can stop at different sections have a nice snack take in a view or whatever may be and keep on going now obviously the exact makeup of the snacks is going to vary from kid to kid but it's something to be really really on top of because the last thing you want is them getting hungry and getting annoyed. And then finally, on top of that, you really, really, really want to make sure, and you want to practice this in your training walks and practice it on the trail and apply it when you actually go on your adventure. You want to make sure that you both stay on top of hydration and the snacking.

[6:55] Because, you know, some kids are okay with this, but as a whole, I would sort of say, most kids are probably not amazing about knowing when to drink water, particularly when we're doing these long things leading them to you know potential risk of dehydration them getting tired them getting fatigued them feeling uncomfortable them not having a good time and the same thing with hunger some kids will be starving on the trail and this will be easy enough but some others may just not get that hunger response when they're actually moving when they're in the heat or in the cold when they're moving out there they may just forget to eat and again this can be a little bit tricky so you want to take charge of this you want to basically sort of say, okay, every hour or so, I'm going to remind myself, we're going to stop, we're going to have a sip of water, we're going to have a snack, and we're going to do this continually all the way through. Or maybe every hour is just a little bit too soon for you, maybe every 90 minutes or every two hours or something like that. But staying on top of that, it just goes such a long way. And practicing this during your walks, practicing this during your training hikes can go such a long way and just turn it into sort of habit. So the kids, when they're out on the trail, they can know that this is coming up. They can think this is just normal. And also they can get these little micro goals along the way where they're like, hey, actually we stopped every 90 minutes. So if I'm getting tired.

[8:10] It's not that much further. And when you tell them, ah, we'll have a rest soon, they'll actually believe you, which goes a long way. So when it comes down to training with your kids for an adventure, I personally believe just keeping things simple. Some people I have seen who have convinced their kids to do some strength training with them and to do some cardio sessions with them, which is great. But for the most part, I would sort of say, pick your battles. Load of pack walking getting exposure to moving with that pack weight and then getting those training hikes where you can slowly build that up with the ultimate goal that when you actually hit that adventure your kid is comfortable with the pack weight they've done it a bunch of times their legs aren't going to cook out after an hour or two you're going to continually refuel and replenish and make sure hydration stays on top and that will give you the best chance possible now on top of that you know obviously there's all the extra stuff around you know making sure they're entertained and having games

[9:06] and this and that, depending on your kids. I've heard a lot of cool things of how people go about this, but that's a bit beyond today. But that's what I would recommend. It isn't rocket science, but sometimes the advice that I need to give is actually simplifying things down as opposed to saying you should be doing five, six, seven different things. Realistically, in my experience, this is the best way to go. So if you've got a big hike coming up with one of your kids this year and you're doing your solid training, which is great.

[9:33] See if you can get them involved with your pack walking. See if you can get them involved with your training hikes. And that may be enough to get them in a much more comfortable position and have a much better experience with you. So with that being said, that's enough on this subject today. I hope it helps a few people. I hope it simplifies things for a few people. And I hope it helps get a few kids out there having some more successful adventures. So thank you for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.

​Want to get
fit, strong and resilient
for your hiking adventures?

Check out
The Online Summit Program