Please Don't Make This Training Mistake

In this episode, I explore a common mistake I often see hikers make with their training, which might make 'logical' sense, but very much increases the risk of picking up an ache, pain or injury. 

​Episode Transcript:

[0:00] All right. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. And today I want to explore a very, very, very common training mistake that I see through the hiking community and something

[0:10] that I strongly recommend avoiding and not falling into the trap of. Now, this particular mistake, it's something that comes up all the time in the hiking community, is essentially just wanting to do the same type of training every single day. Now, what I mean by this is maybe the hiker is going on a bigger hiking adventure that has a lot of elevation change, a lot of up and down, and a lot of hills they need to tackle. A lot of hikers will be like, okay, I've got to hike on the hills for four or five or six days. So, what I'm going to do in my training is I'm going to climb up and down hills every single day in the week. Or maybe in other situations, a hiker like I've got a lot of steps coming up on a trip. I've got to tackle a bunch of elevation, but it's going to be that stepping. So what they're going to do is they're going to go up and do stair climbing every single day, or they're going to do some box step sessions every single day. Or the other third one is hiking. It's literally like, hey, I've got to get ready for hiking to do four or five or six or seven days per week. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go out and hike every single day.

[1:16] And I wouldn't say every single hiker falls into this because not everyone wants to train every day or has the time to train every day, but I see it all the time because this may make sense logically. It may be like, okay, I'm going to be doing hills multiple days a week, like five days in a row on my hike. So I'm just going to train that. It makes sense logically, but I promise you this is a mistake with your training. And I strongly, strongly, strongly urge you not to fall into this trap because when it comes down.

[1:47] To it. One of the drawbacks for this approach is one risk factor for injury and specifically risk factor for overuse injury. So things like plantar fasciitis and shin splints and hiker's knee and all of that stuff that hikers hate. One risk factor for injury is just doing too much of the same thing over and over and over again. Doing the same workouts, the same stresses on the body, the same impacts on your joints just over and over and over again. This is one of the causes of an overuse injury. You're just doing the same thing and the body never gets any change. It never gets any rest. You know, from an injury mitigation standpoint, so reducing the risk of injury, a simple thing any hiker can do to reduce the risk of overuse injuries is just

[2:37] having a little bit more variety of movement. If you're a hiker who wants to train every single day, that's totally fine but to reduce the risk of injury we just don't want to do the same thing every single day we want to have a little bit of variation so the body adapts to different things it gets different forces in different areas and different challenges and you can still move your strength and fitness forward but in a way that's just going to be nicer on your body now beyond that even outside of injury and pain which is such a massive factor for hikers if we're looking at just generally improving your fitness and your strength and endurance and ultimately your performance on the trail.

[3:14] Well having more variety in your training is going to be better than that if you look at professional marathon runners they don't just go out and just do long running every single day they vary it up if you look at any professional sport they don't just do the same thing every single day they vary it up and that is for a particular reason now you may often hear, people seeing success with this method and i know a lot of hikers do it and you'll often hear hikers online who've done this approach. You see it all the time where someone's like, hey, how do I get ready for this type of trip? And they put it up on, say, Facebook, and there's 100 comments and a bunch of people like, hey, I just hiked every day or I just did hills every day or whatever may be. And there are people who see success with this method. And you hear these stories and you see these stories because people love, love, love to toot their own horn and toot their own successes. And if something's worked for them, they love to tell everyone about it. But people never tell you about from their failures you never hear from the people who tried this and four weeks in they're like oh my gosh i can barely walk because my knees are cooked, you never hear about these people i hear about these people because this is an instigator for a lot of people where they're like oh my gosh i tried this i got myself into trouble i need a different approach and that's when they come work with me but in the public perception you very rarely hear about people in this.

[4:36] If you have the time and inclination as a hiker to do some training every single day, it's not necessary. You don't have to be training every day as a hiker, but if you did want to do it and you did have the time and you did have the motivation, it is certainly possible for you to train every single day, but please don't fall into this trap of just doing the same thing seven days a week.

[4:58] There's just so much better ways of going about other things. To give you an example of what a week may look like and how you may break this up.

[5:07] Let's give you an example of like, okay, you're a hiker who wants to train seven days a week, and you're a hiker who has lots and lots of steps coming up. So, you're aware that, hey, that's actually worrying me. I need to get ready for this a little bit more. Well, a seven-day period, instead of you just doing stair sessions every single day, you could break it up something like this. You could do one longer hike each week with a pack where you get out on a hike and you do some extended distance, extended time with a pack, whether you do lots of elevation up and down if you have access to that, whether you're just doing flatter hiking, whatever it may be. You could do one stair session a week where you find a set of stairs and you practice going up and down, up and down, up and down. That's exactly what you need to prepare for, all well and good. You could do another session where you do a box step session where you step up and down, up and down, up and down on a small little box or a small counter. Now, this may be very, very similar to the stair session. We're both getting ready for those steps, but it's just slightly different enough that it's a different force, it's a different impact, it's a different way the body goes around. And that tiny, slightly different variation is enough for a change. So you may do that. Then you may look at like doing, okay, two strength sessions in a week. I might do two full body sessions. And in those sessions, I may do quite a bit of leg work. And the legs are getting forces. We'll work in the quads. We'll work in the hamstrings. We'll work in the glutes. They're doing exercises.

[6:30] But again, it's different. It's different forces, different impacts. Then you may say, okay, look, that's one hike, one stairs, one box step session, to strength that's five days in a week. You might say, okay, on day number six, maybe I'll do some off-feed intervals. Maybe I'm aware that, look, the joints have taken quite a bit of work. I still want to work really, really, really hard. I want to give myself every chance possible of success on this trip, but I'm aware that, oh, you know what? I don't want to overload the knees. So maybe I'll find a stationary bike or an elliptical or go down a local pool, and maybe I'll do some interval training where I can push the intensity, work really, really, really hard, but it's going to vary the impact. It's not going to put stress through the feet or the knees, but it's just going to be a bit different. That can be very, very effective. And then you may say, okay, I've got one more day in the week. I still want to be active. But in all honesty, most people, when they're looking at training, you probably want one day of very casual stuff to give the body recovery. So maybe on the seventh day, maybe I'll go out and just do a casual walk. No pack, no difficulty, just for 30 minutes, 40 minutes. And then I might spend 30 minutes or 40 minutes stretching. That in itself, that's a seven-day week. We get exposure to hiking with a pack. We get exposure to two days a week going up and down stairs or boxes. We get strength training. We get high-intensity stuff. We get a recovery day. That's a really well-rounded week. And as you can see, it's just different variation. I would absolutely bet my livelihood.

[7:58] On the situation, that if I had two hikers and they came to me and they were like, hey, Rowan, I've got to hike in six weeks' time, or I've got to hike in 10 weeks' time, and I want to get ready for that. I want to train every single day. If I took one hiker and had them do stairs every single day for six weeks, and I took another hiker who followed a more well-rounded program where we vary things out, I guarantee you the second hiker will see more improvements in their fitness, more improvements in their strength less chance of pain and be more confident on the trail it's night and day between the difference so coming back to the original thing if you're a hiker who's wanting to really really really get in the best possible position for your trip and in your head you want to be training every single day and doing as much as you can that's totally fine, but please don't fall into the mistake of just doing the same thing every single day mix it up a little bit, vary it up, focus on different workouts, give your body a bit of a chance to kind of adapt to different things. And I promise you, it's going to be so much more effective.

[9:02] So with that being said, I'll probably wrap things up here. Last thing I will sort of say is if you were a hiker and you're like, yep, I need to get ready for a trip. But in all honesty, I was going to fall into that trap. And maybe I'm looking for a slightly different approach, which won't have quite a much risk of things going wrong. Then I would love to chat with you. If you want to find out a little bit about our online personal training for hiking, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online. On that page, you can watch a video, talks about our program, how we go about things. And if there's something you want to explore a little bit more, there's a link on that page where you can book a free call with our team. We can explore you, your situation, your goals, what you want to look at. And we can ultimately just see if and how we may be able to help you with your training. So with that being said, if you want to learn more, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online and we can take it from there. So thank you so much for listening. have a lovely day and we'll talk to you very very soon bye.

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