Mental Tips For Long Distance Hikes

​The longer a hike goes, the more of a mental battle it can become. In this episode, we explore a range of tips a hiker can use before they head off, which can make a major difference to their mindset and enjoyment on a longer-term hike. 

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking through a few simple mental tips to help a long distance hiker and a few specific areas that you should consider and you should plan on the

[0:15] mental side of things before you hit the trail. So if you do get into certain situations, you know, you can be prepared and ready and get through things. Now, the reason why I'm talking about this today is because hiking in itself is a physical and a mental challenge. We talk about on this podcast all the time about preparing physically for these types of challenges, and we talk about it all the time. Mental side of things, you know, there are so many things that go on with hiking. There's so many mental struggles, mental barriers, mental roadblocks, and things we need to overcome. Now, on a day hike or an overnight hike, you know, sometimes these things can be enough. Maybe we're a little bit worried about group dynamics. Maybe we're worried about heights. Maybe we're worried about being unstable or dealing with an outcome pain or whatever it may be. When we progress to longer hikes, if we get into the multi-day arena, these mental challenges can get even more. Because then we're throwing into the equation sleep systems and animals and weather and multiple days and being uncomfortable and being dirty and this and that.

[1:19] And then the longer and longer and longer we kind of get with these types of hikes, the more and more and more the mental side of things does become a challenge. Because realistically, a lot of hikers out there, if they're just looking at one, two, three, or even four or five days for some people, you can really just push through misery. You can push through those mental barriers and you can just deal with it and get through it. It's not fun. It's not something I recommend. but if you run into an issue, we can just kind of just force ourselves to get through. But when we're looking at these longer distance things of a week or two or three or four or multiple months, I don't really have that option because you do really want to be miserable for a week. Do you really want to be fighting this mental battle for two or three weeks? Do you really want to be second guessing yourself every single day?

[2:09] No. So when we're looking at longer term hiking and anything that is long for you, doing a bit of pre-planning on the mental side of things can be really, really, really useful. And essentially just thinking through a few particular areas before you actually hit the trail. So if you do run into certain situations and run into certain issues, you can actually be ready. You can be prepared. You can have these things in your back pocket and apply them.

[2:33] Now, the things I'm about to talk through today, we are talking about long distance hikes, but they are probably relevant for anyone doing any type of hiking. They just get more and more and more powerful and more and more and more necessary the longer you go. So I'm going to be talking through four really, really simple areas that you want to have a think about on the mental side of things, and you want to action plan on the mental side of things before you head off. Now, first and foremost, a really, really, really good technique is just knowing your deeper reasons why you're doing this hike. Now, we've talked about this on this podcast a few times before, and you've probably heard the concept of knowing your why before, in the sense that if we go and set ourselves a goal.

[3:14] It can be quite useful just having that goal in place. If we say, I want to do this hike, I want to lift this amount of weight, I want to lose a certain amount of weight, or whatever it may be. Just having a simple goal in our sites can be really, really useful for motivation, not only to help us build up to it, but if we're going through a certain tough time or whatever it may be, we can kind of anchor ourselves there. However, for 99% of the situations, that's surface level goal. That's useful, but there's probably another couple of levels to it. There's probably some deeper reasons why you actually want to do this goal. And if you can identify and highlight these reasons, it can be so, so, so powerful in so many different situations. Now, there's many, many, many different ways and approaches you can go about this. But a really simple technique I like for this type of thing, just to get a good idea and a good understanding of why you're doing this, is what we call the three whys. So essentially, just ask yourself, why do I want to do this hike? Whatever you're doing. Give yourself a reason. Maybe you're just like, hey, it's a hike I've wanted to do for ages or hey, a friend's going on it. Hey, I got the opportunity, whatever may be. Get that surface level reason, write it down. Then look at that reason and ask yourself, why is that important to me?

[4:27] So maybe you said, look, I've always wanted to do this hike for a while. Maybe ask yourself the reason, why is that important? You might be like, well, you know what? Actually, in all honesty, I'm getting a little bit older. I don't really feel like I have too many more opportunities to do something like this again maybe family's getting busy or my body's kind of slowing down whatever it may be and I kind of kind of want to do it now already you can look at that you're like hey that is quite a bit more powerful than just I want to do a hike but then we can take this a step further ask yourself why again and you look in that situation maybe like oh you know what my body's slowing down a bit um I kind of want to go out and do this hike ask yourself why again.

[5:06] This one will get pretty deep. This will be very, very personal to you. It may take a little bit of mental juggling and mental resistance to get through it. But if you can ask yourself why and come up with a reason, it can be really, really powerful. Maybe this is just hypothetical, random, random, random example. Yet maybe you can sort of say, hey, the reason why is I feel like I'm slowing down. But I actually did see my parents at an age very close to me and they slowed down dramatically. And not only do I want to do this in case I get to that stage, but I want to stave that off. I want to keep my life being exciting, keep the adventure alive or whatever may be. That's just a random hypothetical example, but you can kind of see from the surface level, I just want to do this hike to I want to do this before I slow down too much to, you know what, this is really personal to me. It can be really, really powerful. So it's three whys. Why are you doing this? Why is that important? Why is that important? You may struggle with this. It may take some time to wrap your head around it,

[6:07] but it can be really useful. So that's first and foremost. I'm not going to go too much more onto that because I have talked about it in the podcast quite a few times. But first and foremost, figure that out, spend a bit of time with it, write it down.

[6:18] Next up, on long distance hikes, when we're doing these long, long, long hikes, there tends to be a couple of barriers in regards to boredom. In the sense of some of these longer distance hikes, depending on what you're doing, sometimes there are certain sections of the trail which are just not super exciting. Because if you're trying to link trail after trail after trail and the infrastructure isn't quite there, you may end up doing a lot of road walking. You may end up doing like a lot of fire trail walking. You may end up walking on sections where you're like, ah, this isn't the pretty idyllic stuff that I love. Yes, there are parts of that, but it's a bit boring. Or sometimes, you know, just walking day after day after day can get just a little bit monotonous. You know, sometimes some days you'd be like, oh my gosh, mentally, I'm just struggling. I'm bored. I want something else to do. I want some excitement or whatever it may be. These can strike out of nowhere on a long distance hike.

[7:07] So having a bit of a plan around what you're going to do if boredom overtakes you can be really useful. And again, if we can plan this out before we actually hit the trail and have a few ideas in our back pocket can be really good. So, on that situation, you know, a few ideas, you know, music. Now, music, controversial topic on the world of hiking, and I'm not saying have a loud speaker, but maybe on your phone, get an MP3 player, something like that, have a boredom playlist. Have a series of songs which are either really, really fun to you, really exciting, really poppy or whatever it may be, or on the flip side, have a series of songs which are really just, there's no vocals it's just mononymous and it's just kind of mindless and you can kind of sink yourself into there and almost go into a trance have a playlist available and use that or alternatively have a bunch of audiobooks downloaded and say you know what i'm on a tough section of the trail maybe i'm going to pop an audiobook on and just listen to it now obviously both of those situations that has the logistics of you know electronics and charging things and also some people don't like having headphones in so they don't hear what's going on totally understand. So, if either of those aren't on a situation, what are other things you can do if you're bored?

[8:17] Do you like singing? Can there be a few songs that you just sing and sing and sing out loud on the trail? Whatever. Come up with an idea or two, which you can do if you fall into a boredom situation. So, if you get to that point, you're not going to have to rack your brains and be like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do today? How am I going to get myself through this? But you've actually got something ready.

[8:37] Next up is having to think about a busy mind in the sense of one thing that can often strike on a long distance hike or really any other type of hike is essentially by the end of the day, we are physically tired. By the end of the day, we're like, oh my gosh, yep, I'm ready for a rest. I'm ready to get to sleep early. I'm ready to have a really rejuvenating sleep so I can wake up tomorrow feeling fresh.

[8:59] But we wrap up, we pack out, we get in our tent and all of a sudden, our mind just does not shut off. There's a million things going through there. There's really, really worrying us. We're thinking about the next day and stressing about certain sections coming up. We're worrying about something that happened during the day. We're like, oh my gosh, I forgot that at home and I should have dealt with that. Maybe, hopefully not, you're thinking about work and like, oh, what happens here when I get home and have to do all of this? Or whatever. A busy mind can sometimes be really tough. And if this affects our sleep, not only can it be really unenjoyable, but it can affect our sleep, affect our recovery, affect our energy and mood the next day, not something we want. So again, having strategies in place to deal with a busy mind if it comes up.

[9:42] Now, two simple strategies I really like. Number one, journaling. Journaling, literally putting pen to paper, writing down what's in your head. I love it. I think it's a really, really, really useful strategy for any overnight, multi-day, long distance hiker. And I always bring a pen and paper on my hikes. And essentially, just sitting down at the end of the day, just before the sun goes down, or you can use a light or whatever it may be, just spend five minutes writing down all your thoughts. Write down what you did today. Write down what's coming up. Write down what's thinking going through your head or whatever it is. And the pure act of just transferring those thoughts from your head to a pen and paper, it can just empty things out, calm things down, can be really useful. Plus, on top of that, having those journals and all those epiphanies you've had on the trail and all those things you've thought through. They can be really interesting to look back on.

[10:30] But just for a busy mind can be really useful. And then on top of that, have a think about what can you actually do if you're lying in your tent and you're like, I don't want to get out my sleeping bag and journal. Like I'm here, I'm settled, but the mind is just racing.

[10:43] Well, you know, in this situation, what can you do just to calm the mind down? A really simple technique is to box breathing. Essentially a breathing technique, which will calm us down physically and just relax the system, but also we'll just distract our mind a little bit from all those racing thoughts. So what you do with box breathing, you can basically do this. Breathe in for four seconds and count the four seconds in your head. Go one, two, three, four. Hold your breath for four seconds and count that in your head.

[11:10] Exhale for four seconds, count that in your head. Hold for four seconds, count that. And literally just repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat until you fall asleep. And the idea behind this is, again, just that slow, steady, controlled breathing can just help us relax and calm down. But also because you are thinking those thoughts in your head. That's what you're thinking of we're not thinking about what's happening tomorrow we're not thinking about whatever may be that's kind of taking over what's going in our head just that counting can be really useful again there are lots of different things you can fall into this category but just think what can i do if i do have a bit of a busy mind and then finally it's definitely worthwhile coming up with some anchors to use during tricky spots so what i mean by this is on a long distance hike there are many situations where things may get a little bit tricky maybe there's a way it a day where it's torrential rain or a bunch of mud, or you're just tackling a huge amount of elevation, or maybe come across like rougher terrain, which you weren't used to, or maybe you are getting a bit sick, or maybe you've just had a bad interaction with someone like, you know, on the trail or whatever. There's so many different things that can come up.

[12:15] So essentially pre-planning what you can do in this situation to help you get through these tricky spots, to help you distract yourself, change your mindset, maybe get a little bit more positive or whatever may be, this can be really, really useful.

[12:31] So two simple ideas. Again, there's a million things here, but two simple ideas could be coming up with a positive mantra. I love mantras for hikers. Essentially a simple positive statement that you can just say again and again and again and again in your head, something that's meaningful for you. So for example, if you're getting to a spot where you're like, oh my gosh, this is really hard. I'm really tired today. You can just repeat in your head. I'm strong. I'm powerful. I've got this. Repeat that again and again and again and again. Drown out those stressful noise, get a little bit positive, and that can be really, really, really powerful. There's a million and one mantras you could use, but that's very simple. Another anchor you can use is using micro tasks in a situation in the sense that if you've got a really long day ahead and you're like, oh my gosh, it's super muzzy, it's slippery, I'm just not having a good time. Instead of thinking about the entire day, break it up into little sections.

[13:23] Set yourself a goal in your distance and say, look, there's a tree, there's a mountain, there's a hill, whatever it may be. What I'm going to do is I'm just going to put all my attention into getting to that point. Just focus on that, focus on that, focus on that. Don't think about the rest of the day or whatever it may be. Get to that point, take a second, congratulate yourself, pat yourself on the back, and then focus on something else. And just split up the day into these little micro tasks to get you through. It sounds a bit silly, but it can be really powerful. And again, if you've actually planned this out and thought about this before you hit the trail, It's not you desperately trying to figure out things that will work. It's stuff that you have in your back pocket. You're like, yep, cool. I'm going to fall on this and I'm going to use it.

[14:09] So that's probably enough on this topic today. As I said, for each of these categories, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of things you could do. And there's probably loads of other things you can pre-plan for. So hopefully this just gives you a bit of inspiration to kind of start thinking this out and planning on the mental side of things, coming up with different situations and putting strategies, techniques, or action plans in place. And the more you can plan out on this, the more powerful it will be. It may not always work. You may not be able to always quiet that busy mind. You may not be able to absolutely forget about the tough day ahead, but every percentage you can help yourself here, it's going to pay off massively because these long distance hikes, they're no joke on the mental side of things.

[14:50] You want to give yourself every chance possible. So with that being said, hopefully that helps. Now, last thing I will sort of say today is if you are a hiker who's preparing for a long distance adventure or any hiking adventure and you're aware that look you know what i've got this coming up but i am not sure if i'm going to be ready and i do need help if you're interested in getting a little bit of help with your physical and mental preparation leading into one of these adventures what i'd like you to do is go to summitstrength.com.au online now on that page there's a big video which talks a little bit through our program and if it sounds like something you want to explore a little bit more you can book a call with our team we can have a bit of a chat and we can take it from there and there's a link to book a call on that page over the years we've helped loads of different hikers do long distance hikes all around the world and love to help a few more out so if you did want to learn a bit more go to summitstrength.com.au online and we can take it from there so with that being said thank you so much for listening hope you've enjoyed it hope you got a bit out of it and we'll talk to you very very soon bye.

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