Preventing Overuse Injuries For Hikers

​Overuse injuries are a plague on the hiking community. Issues like plantar fasciitis, shin splints, hiker's knee and various forms of tendonitis are some of the most common problems hikers encounter (both in their training and their adventures).

While the specifics of overcoming particular injuries will change from injury to injury, several overarching ideas and principles can make a genuine difference in reducing the risk of overuse injuries. And that is what we explore in this video.

​How To Prevent Overuse Injuries While Hiking 

Inside, I cover:

• What overuse injuries are (and the most common ones hikers face)
• What causes overuse injuries for hikers
• Principles and training ideas on how to prevent overuse injuries
• On-trail strategies and extra tips to minimise overuse issues

Mentioned in the video:

• How To Plan Your Training Hikes [When Leading To A Big Adventure]
• Free Strength Training For Hiking Mini-Course
• Preventing knee pain while hiking
• Preventing foot pain for hikers
• Building strong ankles for hiking
• Reducing lower back pain while hiking

Chapters

0:14  Introduction to Overuse Injuries
1:49  Understanding Overuse Injuries
4:23  Causes of Overuse Injuries
7:07  Preparing for Hiking Demands
17:49  Training Strategies for Hikers
18:18  Key Training Areas
24:40  Importance of Strength Training
29:09  Hiking-Specific Conditioning
35:48  Incorporating Recovery Sessions
37:47  Recovery Techniques
41:33  Strategies for Multi-Day Hikes
44:16  End-of-Day Recovery Tips
46:49  Additional Tips for Hikers
51:11  Conclusion and Offer for Support


Video Transcript:

[0:00] So in this video, we're going to be talking through some ideas, some strategies, and some tips around how a hiker can go about preventing the

[0:09] risk of overuse injuries creeping up in both their training and their hiking. Now, essentially why we are talking about this today is, in all honesty, overuse injuries are an absolute plague in the hiking community, and it is probably one of the single most common issues and reasons why hikers will not complete an adventure. When they're out on a trail on an overnight or a multi-day or whatever it may be and something comes up and pulls them off the trail, very, very, very common for overuse injuries to be the reason. On top of that, in the preparation process, so many hikers fall out of actually starting their trips because they pick up an overuse injury in their preparations. And it's something that I talk to with hikers every single day of every single week, and it's just such a common thing.

[0:58] Now, when it comes down to it, we are going to be diving into this topic in a bit of detail today. It is going to be a long video. We're going to be talking through quite a few different areas, but I really do feel like this is a topic that's worthwhile exploring in a bit of depth. Now, what we're going to be covering today is, first of all, what overuse injuries are and what the most common ones that we often see for hikers. We talk about what's going to cause overuse injuries, both in a general sense, but also specifically for hikers, what tends to be the common risk factors. And we're going to talk through some ideas around preventing or minimizing the risk of overuse injuries, some overarching principles, and then also some training and physical preparation ideas around how you can go about this. We're going to talk about some on-trail strategies, so things you can actually do if you're out on a multi-day adventure or an overnight adventure to help with this, and also a few extra tips as well. So we're going to be covering quite a few bases today.

[1:50] Now, to start with, let's just talk about what overuse injuries actually are. Now, overuse injuries basically occur from repetitive stress, and essentially when repetitive stress causes damage to the muscles, tendons, and bones over time. Now, this statement in itself, if you just looked at this, stress on the muscles, tendons, and bones, it's not a big deal. Anything we do, any training, any exercise, any hiking we do will cause damage to the muscles, tendons, and bones in small portions. However, where overused injuries tend to come from is when we have this repetitive stress and we stress and stress and stress an area, and in between these stresses, we don't have adequate rest or recovery, what will happen is the body, as opposed to it adapting and improving and improving its strength, its fitness or resilience or whatever it may be, if it doesn't get enough rest and recovery, it'll go the other way. It'll start to break down. And that's in quotation marks because it's not quite as scary as that. However, this damage will accumulate, which will lead to aches and pains and these overuse injuries. Now, with this type of stuff, if you do catch it early, if you notice these things are creeping up, if you notice these sort of things are getting in the way, aches and pains are coming up, and you action these things early, these issues can be resolved pretty quickly. It may just take a few days of rest. It may take a week off hiking or whatever it may be. And these types of things, if caught early, can be pretty simple to resolve.

[3:15] However a lot of people and you know we all fall into this is we'll ignore it we'll be like uh you know i've got a bit of ache or got something coming on um i'm just going to push through it i'm going to ignore it whatever may be and if it is ignored and if it's not respected and you don't modify what you're doing and just keep on loading more and more and more stress onto these areas without enough rest and recovery this can end up taking a little bit longer to get on top of and it can take weeks or even months to resolve which can end up being really really frustrating for a lot of people, Now, for hikers, you know, really, really common things that a lot of people struggle with is plantar fasciitis. That is one of the biggest issues many hikers face, and that is an overuse injury. Achilles or ankle tendonitis, things like shin splints or hiker's knee or hip bursitis. There's so many others, like they're just a few ones, but there's so many ones out there which are classified as these overuse injuries, which just really, really plague a lot of people. And for a lot of hikers, it may not be a case of that stopping their hiking entirely, but it definitely does get in the way of them enjoying themselves, it definitely does get in the way of them feeling confident out in their adventures, and it definitely does get in the way of them thinking and aspiring to some more challenging things they may want to do.

[4:24] So what causes overuse injuries? We kind of covered it just before, but we'll go into a little bit more detail.

[4:30] Realistically, where overuse injuries come from, in the most technical sense, they come from a period of inappropriate tissue loading. So essentially, tissue loading, Load is just stress that we apply to the tissues, the tissues of the muscles, the tendons, all of that stuff, and essentially a period of inappropriate tissue loading, which could come from excessive magnitude or volume of load, which essentially means just doing more than the body is used to. So if you are doing whatever you're doing and you're living your everyday life or you're doing your everyday training and your body's all fine, then all of a sudden we just start applying a huge amount of new load to your feet and the body's not used to that. you can't recover from that. It's just too much. It's too much of a magnitude or just too much spread out through the week. That can lead to an issue. It's basically just a big jump up in regards to what the body is used to. On top of that, on the flip side, and this is both the combination, you can also come from an inefficient recovery between bouts of load. So it may be a case of, hey, you go out and exercise three days a week and you usually have a few days in between or a day in between. Then all of a sudden we're doing the same thing, but we're condensing it all into actually three days. And maybe for you and yourself, your body's not quite recovering between that just for whatever reason, and that can lead to the issue.

[5:45] There's lots of things that go into it. But basically, too much load, not enough recovery. Pretty simple. Now, to give you a couple of really simple examples we often see in just everyday life, before we even get into hiking-specific stuff, these are literally ones I've got from hikers in the past.

[6:01] But it may come from, okay, they wear work boots or high heels during their day-to-day. Maybe they work in an office, maybe they're a tradie, maybe they're doing whatever may be. And they do not have no issues. Then all of a sudden, they had a week where they actually have to do extra hours. They have to do a couple of extra hours every single day. So they spend a couple of extra hours in their work boots or in their heels or whatever may be. And they come out the other end of that feeling like, oh my gosh, my feet are really sore. And it lingers and they eventually go to a physio and ends up they have plantar fasciitis. It's just basically just gone through a period where they just had too much load through that area that the body wasn't used to, didn't have time to recover because they were doing it every single day. That led to an issue.

[6:40] Or, you know, another typical example is people who run every day. And I'm not saying hikers need to run or anything like that, but this is just an example. A lot of people might go out and say, I do a five-kilometer run every single day. That's just what I do before I go to work. And that's absolutely fine. But then they're working and they go through a period, maybe they have a week or two weeks where they just have really disrupted sleep. Maybe they're just absolutely sleeping terribly. Maybe they're going through a super high period of stress and they're just really,

[7:07] really, really struggling. And the body's recovery because sleep and stress affects our recovery goes way down and they keep up the running even though it's their normal thing but all of a sudden they come out the other end and like oh my ankle's feeling really sore where does that come from that may be a case of just insufficient recovery between load so that's kind of what we're looking at now in the hiking context we want to get a little bit more specific because that's just general principles in the hiking context we want to be a little bit more honed in and really really think about this typically in the hiking context for overuse stuff, it kind of comes from two typical areas. And there's a lot of things that fall into these categories.

[7:43] Now, number one is not being prepared for the specific demands of the hikes that you are doing. So to make this simple, we're going to use the example of a multi-day hike you're training for. And say you have a seven-day hike coming up with a certain amount of pack weight and this and that. If you enter that seven-day hike and the body is not prepared in a way for it to actually feel comfortable on that hike, then that could just end up being way too much load and that can lead to an overuse injury.

[8:12] The tricky thing with hiking is there's so many factors that can go into us being not prepared. So first of all, hiking time. This is something a lot of hikers run into. It's the most simple one, but maybe on your hike you have to go out and do six hours every single day and maybe that's what you need to prepare for. But in your training, you've only ever actually trained up to maybe hiking four hours. That difference going from four hours to six hours is a pretty big jump up. And if you have to do that on day one of your hike and then day two of your hike and then day three of your hike, that can lead to some issues, something to think about. Another one is elevation gain loss. If you are going out on a hike and there's loads and loads of up and down, and you know what, in your training, you haven't had an opportunity to do any type of elevation gain or loss in your training, then your body may not be prepared for that. Your knees may get sore, your ankles may get sore or whatever. Terrain. If you only train on footpaths and then you go out and you're on rocky terrain, that can lead to some issues. Speed. If you only train at a certain speed and then all of a sudden on your actual hikes you're going out, you're with a faster group or a faster friend, you need to push the speed a little bit more. That may be a demand you're not used to.

[9:18] Pack weight. Again, that's pretty simple, but if you are undershoot your pack weight in your training, if you only be carrying day packs and all of a sudden you have to carry a 15 kilo pack one week, and that's a risk factor. Footwear changes. This is something that a lot of people don't really think about. Now, there's so much debate in the world around footwear for hiking, whether you want to wear high-cut boots, mid-cut boots, walking shoes, barefoot shoes, zero-drop shoes, whatever may be. And so many people talk about this stuff. And I'm not going to say, hey, one pair of shoes is better than the other in regards to overuse injuries because there's pros and cons for every individual. But one thing that can happen is if we do all our training and all our hiking in a certain pair of footwear. And then actually we go out on a big adventure and we wear a brand new pair of footwear, which has a different support structure. The body probably isn't used to that particular demand. The body probably isn't there. So we have that big spike up in regards to load that can lead to issues. And also on top of that, the ability to recover day to day. In the sense, a lot of in the hiking context, like a lot of people can kind of scrape themselves through a days of hiking if they really, really need to.

[10:28] But as we said before, recovery is a major factor for this. And if you are not having some reserve of energy at the end of the day, and you're absolutely knackered, and you're just not recovering day to day because you are going to your absolute limit, this can be a risk factor. So there's things we want to be aware of. As you can see, there's a lot of different things in here that we need to be considerate of. And as much as a lot of people from the outside may say, hey, hiking is just walking. When we break it down like that, you're like, well, we need to be smart here. Now, on the flip side of things, that's more and more sort of you picking things up like when you're actually out hiking. Another thing that we often see from hikers with overuse injuries, particularly if they're leading up to a big adventure, is just doing too much too soon in regards to their training. So this basically means maybe they're ramping up their training hikes too quickly. Maybe they do a two-hour hike one week, then a four-hour hike one week, and then an eight-hour a hike the next week or whatever it may be, and they're just ramping up too quickly and the body's just not used to that and it's just a big jump up, that can be an issue. Maybe they're walking too much in the sense that a lot of hikers are like, hey, I'm going to hike three times a week and I'm just going to hike and hike and hike and hike and I'm going to do all of this walking. And technically that sounds really good, but maybe that's just a little bit too much for the feet. Maybe that will end up pushing it into some type of issue. We often see that.

[11:47] Ramping up pack weight too quickly, This is something that so many people do, and they just jump up, pack weight in their training. They'll add two kilos every single week, and they'll just go up and up and up and up and up, and then the body just doesn't catch up. It just starts to break down. Not much fun. Or even doing too much repetition in strength training. So a lot of hikers love step-ups or love lunges or love squats, and maybe they'll end up doing 100 step-ups a day, or maybe they'll end up doing these extended box step sessions, which they do again and again and again and again, or maybe they end up doing 50 lunges a day or whatever. And it's just that same thing over and over and over and over, which just stresses out that same area of the body and it doesn't have time to recover. There's a lot of factors that goes into that, but as you can break it all down, quite a bit going on. But the main things we see from hikers, not being prepared for the actual hikes they're doing. So you may pick up an overuse injury during your hike. And also just too much too soon in your training where you may pick up an overuse injury during your training, so before your hike. So with all that being said, now we've broken that down a little bit, what can a hiker be doing to prevent these issues creeping up? And I will sort of say, when we're talking about preventing injuries, it's never a case of 100% preventing an injury because there's always factors out of our control which can lead to these things. But it's more risk mitigation in the sense there's a lot of things we can do to reduce the risk of these types of things. So that's kind of what we want to think about.

[13:11] Now, first of all, let's talk about first principles in the sense that before we even get to like specifics of types of training and this and that, I want to talk through two first principles that you kind of want to keep top of mind when it comes down to this, because these are really, really, really, really important, regardless of any type of training, any type of hiking you're doing, just to keep top of mind. Now, first and foremost is load management. Now, this topic of load management is ultimately the overarching thing you need to keep in mind. and ultimately this encapsulates pretty much everything else we're going to be talking about today. So all the training, all the other things, it all falls into the category of this load management and this is the single most important thing you want to get right to reduce the risk of overuse injuries.

[13:53] Essentially load management is basically controlling the amount of stress that's going through the body in training, going through the body in hiking, going through the body in life to both improve your performance because you're trying to improve your hiking but also reduce the risk of injury. This basically means making sure we're not having those big jump-ups in regards to load through the bodies, making sure we're not absolutely running the body into the ground, but we're managing what we're applying so it doesn't get run down. When it comes down into training, we want to think about slowly and gradually applying stress to the body with adequate rest and recovery during training. That statement sounds simple, slowly and gradually applying training with adequate rest and recovery. That in itself is simple, but obviously there's a lot of factors that can complicate it, which we'll go into in a bit. On top of that, we want to be basically thinking about minimizing any, what we call spikes in load in your training and hiking. And the most simple, simple, simple way to think about that is if you were looking at your hiking and you're plotting all of your hikes out on a graph in regards to how difficult they were. And difficult, we can think about distance, we can think about elevation, we can think about pack weight or whatever it may be. Essentially, over time, if we're plotting out on a graph, we kind of want it to be a nice smooth graph, meaning we can go up, we can go down, and it can sort of go up and down. It's absolutely fine, but we want it relatively smooth on a graph.

[15:16] These spikes in load is essentially, if we were doing, okay, a hike was this difficult, was this difficult, this difficult one week, then all of a sudden we end up doing one way up here, that's a spike. We don't want that. We want to minimize that. We want to manage it. The same thing in regards to your training. So if you're having a training week, week by week by week, you're training a certain amount at a certain level of difficulty, happy days. But if you end up just having this one crazy week where you do double the amount of training or you absolutely run yourself into the ground, this can sometimes be a factor. So we want to minimize the spikes of this.

[15:48] Now, the other first principle we want to talk about is gradualness in the sense of when you are looking at training for a hike. So if you have a specific end date in mind, something that's really, really, really important to keep in mind is we want to do everything we can to get your body exactly where it needs to be for the demands of the hikes you want to be doing in the slowest possible way. I'll say that again. We want to get the body exactly where it needs to be to be prepared for the demands of our hiking in the slowest possible way. And so many people miss out on that last little section and they get themselves into trouble.

[16:25] Ultimately, when it comes down to training, the slower we can go, the more time the body will have to adapt. Meaning if we're just slowly applying little bits of challenge, little bits of challenge, little bits of challenge, the body will have plenty of time to recover, to adapt and make sure it's not overloaded. On the flip side, obviously, we need to get us where we need to be. We can't just absolutely undershoot our training preparations because this can get us into trouble as well. So we want to get exactly where we need to be in the slowest possible way. Now, it's really, really common for hikers in their training is they'll jump into their training and they'll just jump in the deep end. They'll go from zero to 100 really, really quickly and just pick up an issue early. They may with their hiking, they haven't done hiking, they've been out of hiking season for a while. They haven't been out on the trail. And then they just jump back into five or six hour hikes with a certain amount of pack late that they were doing last season. They do that for a couple of weeks and they're like, oh my gosh, actually, this is a bit too much. Or maybe with their training, they'll just sort of end up just absolutely jump into really, really hard and difficult sessions initially and pick up an issue early.

[17:28] Or for some people, they may be like, all right, I've had a little bit of a slower start, but with their training, with their hiking, they end up actually getting themselves where they need to be for their actual hike, where they need to be for their end point. But it's like halfway through their training process, months and months and months early. They're just in such a rush to get there.

[17:45] And now they're at this stage where they're like, well, I've still got months until my adventure. I've got to maintain this level of hiking, this level of difficulty, this level of training. And sometimes that repetition of that type of stress can lead to an issue. So we don't want to peak too early either. Now, this basically applies to our hiking targets. So when we're look in our actual hiking. It applies to our strength training and applies to our conditioning like any cardio we're doing. Basically, any training you're doing, we want to think about gradualness as well. So, load management and also gradualness kind of falls into that category as well.

[18:19] So as an overview, what we're going to be covering on the training front, I'm going to be covering four areas of training that I typically recommend for hikers. These will sound really, really familiar for people who've watched my videos and podcasts before, but we're going to be talking about how they kind of come into the whole of preventing overuse injuries. We're going to be talking about hiking training, strength training, hiking specific conditioning, and also recovery and what you can do there. And then we'll get into the on-trail strategies and all of that stuff. So on the hiking side of things, ultimately, this mainly applies to when you're training up to a specific endpoint. If you've got a specific date of a big adventure, this is kind of what I'm talking about here. The same ideas do apply to people who are just regular hikers and want to get out, but sometimes it can be a little bit harder to structure that. So I'm going to be talking specifically about leading to a big adventure. Ultimately, when you're leading to a big adventure, hiking is a necessity in your training because there's nothing more specific than this of actually exposing the body to this type of stuff, slowly building it up. We want to be using these training hikes in our training to expose the body to as many of the demands of our particular adventure as possible. So basically the body can adapt and improve to the tolerance of these demands so it can be a bit more comfortable. So if you've got lots of elevation coming up, ideally we'll be doing hiking, which will slowly expose the body to elevation. If you need to hike for six hours, ideally we'll be doing hiking, which will slowly get your legs used to walking for six hours. Pretty simple.

[19:42] Now, in all honesty, if you're training to a big adventure, we may not have practical access to all these types of demands. So, for example, if you're training for a mountain hike and where you live is completely flat, you may not have access to elevation with your hiking. That's fine. Or if you are training for a hike which is super muddy or super rough terrain and you don't quite have that terrain nearby, that may not be doable. And that's fine. You know, that's just what comes down to hiking. But essentially, you just want to demand, prepare our body for as many demands as we can. And then with the actual gaps, we're like, hey, can't do elevation, can't do terrain. Then we fill that in with other areas of our training, which we'll go into in a moment.

[20:22] Now, common mistakes we often see with hikers when it comes down to these training hikes leading to OVC injuries, number one, jumping in the deep end. In a sense, if you haven't done much hiking recently and you just jump into something that's really, really difficult and you do that and you try to push that and you just run yourself into the ground, a little bit tricky. So what we typically say, start off with your hiking at a level that feels comfortable, that feels pretty easy and gradually progress. And ultimately for my hikers, I never said a say, I never want them pushing to exhaustion and they want to push them to their limit. But most hikes should be around about six or seven out of 10 in regards to difficulty. So we don't want to jump in the deep end too soon. Number two, ramping up too quickly. If we're just jumping up our distances or our pack weight or whatever may be too quickly, and we're just not giving the body time to get used to these things, that can lead to an overuse injury. Too much hiking. A lot of hikers naturally will tend to say, hey, if one hike per week is good, maybe I'll do two, maybe I'll do three if you have time. Some people might be like oh my gosh i would never have enough time for that but a lot of people do um and if we're just doing too much hiking we're just doing too much stress through the feet too much stress for lower limbs this can lead to an overuse injury if we're just doing random hikes as we said as said before without graph ideally if we're slowly building up and over time we want our graph to be nice and smooth as we ramp up if you're just doing random hikes and not really putting much thought to it if you're just up and down up and down doing all these things sometimes that can just end up being we're just doing too much the body just gets exposed to this type of stuff.

[21:47] Or even under shooting your preparation, you may, as we said before, if your training hikes only get you up to a certain amount of hiking or a certain amount of pack weight, then all of a sudden you get to carry a huge amount of extra pack weight or a huge amount of extra distance.

[22:00] Vacuuming issue. So to overcome these things, two things I'd recommend.

[22:06] Number one, I typically, in regards to time spent hiking, I usually recommend doing no more than one longer hike per week, which may sound a bit crazy to some people, some people who are used to hiking two or three times a week, and they want to do all of this walking. They're like, why can't I do more?

[22:23] Typically, I recommend just doing one longer hike per week, one hike where you're pushing the distance a little bit, spending hours on the trail, whatever it may be. A lot of my hikers will do less than that. They may hike once every two weeks, once every three weeks, once every four weeks at the same time, but no more than one longer hike. And then the rest of the week is kind of build up in other training. If you are in the situation where you're like, hey, I love hiking, I really want to get out, then you kind of want to think, okay, instead of me doing three long hikes in a week or two long hikes, maybe just do one long hike and then the other ones do a little bit shorter, a little bit more casual, so they're not quite as strenuous. That's a general rule of Now, on top of that, what I really, really, really, really recommend every hiker do if you're leading to an adventure is sitting down and doing some longer term planning for your training hikes. What that means is sitting down, actually getting out a pen and paper, getting out a calendar and charting out a bit of a plan which will take you from point A to point B to where you need to be for your trip in the slowest and most gradual possible way, and planning this out so you can be sure that you're going to get where you need to be, but it's going to be in a smart, smart, smart way. This one simple thing, if you're going to take anything out of this presentation today, this is it. Make sure you're doing it because if you can nail this and you get it right, it can make such a dramatic difference.

[23:39] Pretty much, if you sit down and figure out a plan, and even if it's just a rough plan, these plans always change. They're always adaptable because weather, scheduling, family, socializing, always get in the way of long-term plans. But even putting a rough plan together, and this can ultimately solve pretty much most of these issues. It can solve you having the issue of jumping in the deep end, feeling like you're in too big a rush because you don't know where you need to go. It can solve that. It can solve ramping up too quickly. It can solve the random hike issue. It can solve undershooting your preparation. If you just sit down and figure this out, it'll go a long way. Now, I'm not going to be on the specifics of putting this together because this video is going to be a marathon already. But if you did want to learn how to do this and how I recommend going about planning out this, have a watch of my video, how to plan your training hikes when leading into a big adventure. I'll leave a link for that in the description below. You can check that out and it talks you through the process that I recommend for hikers. Very, very simple, which you can actually sit down, figure out a hiking plan, which will reduce the risk of a lot of these issues. So check that out, the link in the video description below.

[24:41] Now, next up is strength training. Now, strength training, when it comes down to it, is one of the most significant things you can do to reduce the risk of overuse injuries. This isn't me just saying this. This isn't me just making things up because I enjoy strength training and like it. There is so much evidence. It is an indisputable fact that strength training, if done right, can significantly reduce the risk of overuse injuries. If we can build up the capacity and build up the tolerance of our muscles and our connective tissues, we can then manage more load. We were talking about load management before. We don't want to overload things. One way we can minimize overloading things is not doing too much. Another way we can minimize overloading things is building up our tolerance to load, and strength training will help with that.

[25:25] Beyond this, you know, every hiker should be doing strength training, in my personal opinion, because there's just countless other benefits in regards to performance, helping on elevation, feeling power carrying easier, improving stability, a bunch of other things. So strength training, in all honesty, should be a part of your week. Now, a few points on this, just in the context of overuse injuries, which are important to be aware of. Number one, we want to make sure we're training the body as a whole and not neglect anything. In the sense we said before, there's so many common issues that hikers face with overuse injuries. Feet, ankles, she's, shins, knees hips hamstrings back whatever may be so we want to be making sure we are training the body as a whole i've even heard our hikers getting overuse injuries in the wrists and the elbows and the shoulders from hiking poles because they weren't prepared for it so when we're looking at our strength training it's not a case of just doing one or two exercises and really really working on that but we want to making sure we're following a well-rounded program which will cover everything you need you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours in the gym doing it but you want to follow a well-rounded program.

[26:23] Number two, we want to make sure we're applying progression over time. So many hikers I speak to, they have a strength training program. They have a few exercises or a workout they like, and they'll just do the same thing over and over and over and over and over from week after week after week after week and month after month. Ultimately, when it comes down to strength training, we are trying to improve the capacity and tolerance of your muscles and connective tissues. We do that by applying stress. Once we apply stress, the body's like, I don't like that. I want to adapt so I'll get stronger, more tolerant, more resilient, yada, yada, yada. If we just keep on applying the same amount of load again and again and again, the body will have no reason to change. So we want to make sure we're applying progression over time, slowly but surely stressing the body a little bit, a little bit, a little bit more so it continues to get stronger. Very, very simple.

[27:12] So many hikers miss that and definitely make sure you're on top of it. We want to ensure that strength training is helping us and not hurting us. The amount of I speak to who say, hey, I do a strength training program, or maybe I go to a gym, or maybe do exercise classes, and this exercise causes me pain, or this exercise causes me pain, or whatever it may be, or I'm really, really sore afterwards. It's crazy. If you're doing strength training, yes, it will be a challenge. Yes, it will be difficult, but we don't want to be doing stuff which is hurting us. If you're doing box jumps and you always get sore knees, maybe you don't do box jumps. If you're doing squats and you always get sore hips, maybe you want to adjust the way that you squat. If you're doing a bunch of lunges and you always get sort of sore knees from that, maybe you want to try and choose a different exercise variation, whatever it may be. But if something is causing you pain, you probably want to modify it. And then on top of that is structured strength training. So what I mean by structured strength training is having a set of exercises, a set routine where you can follow it. You have plenty of time to think, plenty of time to work through exercise, plenty of time to concentrate, and you're not in a rush, you're not huffed and pucked, but you can work through things logically.

[28:15] Structured strength training is going to be much, much, much better than HIIT. So if you're doing circuit training or where you're doing like 45 seconds on, 15 seconds off, or if you're doing CrossFit or whatever it may be, these things can be good for general fitness. They can be good as better than nothing in regards to strength training, but because you're running around and doing all of this stuff, you can't really concentrate, it isn't going to be quite as good as structured strength training. So I highly recommend if you are looking at this, follow a structured workout.

[28:43] Now, if you're not sure how to go about that, again, I'm not going to get into the specifics of it today, but if you did want to learn a little bit about strength training, I do have a free mini course around this for hikers.

[28:53] Essentially, this course will just dive into a little bit more around the benefits of strength training for hiking. So, we're talking about overuse injuries, a bunch of other benefits. It'll talk you through understanding the principles of effective strength training for hiking. So, make sure you get the most out of your workouts. And it will also teach

[29:07] you how to create a couple of your own strength workouts to help your hiking. So making sure you're coming up with workouts which will cover all the bases you need for your hiking and give you a simple template you can follow and simple plug and play instructions around how to put together your own workouts if you do want to check that out you can go to summitstrength.com.au slash strength dash mini dash course that course is completely free you can check it out um and and have a work through there i'll leave a link for that in the video description below all right next up we talked about hiking training we talked about strength training, let's talk about hiking-specific conditioning. Now, hiking-specific conditioning is just a fancy term that I made up, which basically means shorter cardio sessions you'll do during your week, which are targeted to the specific demands of hiking. So it's not actual hiking, but it's other types of cardio you do, which is honed into what you need as a hiker. Now, these are really, really good for exposing the body to the demands of hiking in a controlled environment. And when I say controlled environment, for example, if we want to expose the body to pack carrying, we're like, hey, we're carrying a pack. If we're doing that out on the trail and we're doing a hiking, which is good, but sometimes if we want to carry a really heavy pack, we don't want to be in the middle of nowhere in case something goes wrong or whatever it may be.

[30:20] A lot of things can go wrong on the trail. If we're doing pack walking around the neighborhood, this is a controlled environment. If we end up being overloaded, we can be like, you know what, I'm going to call a cab or call a family member to pick me up or whatever it may be. So exposing the body to demands of hiking in a controlled environment. Number two, it can be really, really good at controlling the amount of walking load you need to do. So when it comes down to hiking specific conditioning, we can approach this and we can do walking sessions. But if we make them a bit more challenging in certain ways, we may only have to do this for 30 minutes or 40 minutes or 60 minutes, as opposed to going out and doing multiple hours of hiking. Or we can even do these types of sessions on a bike or an elliptical or a rower. So this changes the dynamics. So we're not just doing walking over and over and over. It can be useful.

[31:03] It can be really, really good about building hiking-specific fitness and having that fatigue reduction. As we said before, if you are fatigued at the end of the day, overly tired, this can be a factor. So if we can build up our fitness, a fitness ability to go up and down hills or whatever may be, this can be really useful. And this can also be used to fill in any gaps we have in our training hikes. As we said before, without hiking, we may not have access to everything we need to be for our trips. We may not have access to elevation, like going up and down hills. We may not have access to whatever may be, but we can use these conditioning sessions to fill in gaps. So if you're like, hey, my hiking is all going to be flat, but I'm actually going to go climb up a mountain, we may do some stair or hill climbing, or we may do some step sessions, or we may do whatever it may be. This can work out really well.

[31:52] Now, common examples of this type of training is like load of pack walking, as I mentioned before, just whacking on a pack, walking around the local neighborhood, stair and hill training, finding a short set of stairs or hills going up and down that. Tempo walking, as we said before, hiking speed can sometimes trip people up. Tempo walking is just doing periods of quicker walking and slower walking, kind of alternating between the two, or even interval training, like, you know, doing something like hopping on a bike or an elliptical or a rower and doing periods of higher intensity work interspersed with rest. All of this can be really, really beneficial in the hiking context.

[32:25] Now, a few points when it comes down to this and how to get the most out of this type of training. Number one is just be aware of the specific demands of hiking you'll face. What I like hikers to do is if they're leading up to a big trip or they're leading up to a bunch of hikes they want to do, just list down all the challenges that they need to prepare for. List down all the challenges that they will get exposed to with their hiking. And then for anything else, see if you can tailor these sessions to that. So if you're carrying a super heavy pack, probably worthwhile doing some pack sessions. If you've got lots of elevation, probably worthwhile doing some stair sessions. If you're going to be hiking with a quicker group, probably worthwhile doing the tempo walking. If you're aware that, hey, I need to push a lot of hills and I get really out of breath, probably worthwhile doing some interval training. You can tailor these things to the specific things you need. Number two, we want to keep these sessions time efficient. These sessions shouldn't take ages. 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes, occasionally up to 90 minutes if you've got a lot of time, but we want these sessions to be time efficient. So we're not just overloading the body with that movement, movement, movement, movement, but we've been honed in, we've been specific and short and sharp, getting that what we want.

[33:29] Next up, as we were thinking about like gradualness before, we want to think about gradualness with this. We want to start in the grand scheme of things, lower intensity, lower difficulty sessions, and slowly but surely build up. So if you were preparing for a hike and say there was a hike 16 weeks away and you're like, hey, how am I going to plan these sessions? Maybe I might do four weeks of pack walking with a relatively light pack. Then I'll do four weeks of pack walking and get up to a little bit heavier. So by the end of all that pack walking, I'm kind of at the point where I need with my pack. Then I might be like, all right, I'm going to change this session to some stair climbing, but I'm just going to do it with the body weight. And then I'm going to do stair climbing with a pack. And you can see it gets a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder over time. And you're going to apply this to, again, anything you're doing.

[34:12] On top of this is off-feet conditioning, and this is kind of really, really useful on the overuse injuries side of things. Off-feet conditioning is absolutely your friend when it comes down to this. Now, what off-feet conditioning is, is essentially cardio, which won't put stress through the feet. So, what that means is it's not walking, it's not running, but it might be something like cycling or elliptical or the rower or swimming or whatever it may be, stuff that will still develop your cardio fitness, but doesn't put stress through the feet. This can be really, really, really useful to leverage as a high car because you can work on different aspects of your training, but while managing the load going through those lower limbs. So if you're already doing lots of hiking, and maybe you're doing a walking session as well, and you're like, I want to fit in more, but I'm a little bit worried about my feet, this can be really, really useful. And I get a lot of my hikers doing this. So this can be really useful in the situation of longer duration sessions. If you're like, hey, I kind of want to fit in just some longer cardio, but I'm already doing some hiking, but I don't want to just do more and more walking. It takes a little while. You may just hop on a bike and go for a couple of hours and that can be a really good session. It's lower intensity, but it will develop your aerobic fitness and be really effective. Or on the flip side of things, you can use this as higher intensity interval work.

[35:24] Sometimes doing the higher intensity training as walking sessions can be a little bit uncomfortable. If you're really trying to go super, super quick up and down a set of stairs, it can sometimes be a little bit uncomfortable on the knees. If we're doing our interval training on a bike or an elliptical or a rower, this can sometimes be much nicer on the body. So you can concentrate on pushing your fitness, challenging yourself with these sessions, but it doesn't stress out the joints too much.

[35:48] Worthwhile having to think about. Now, next up is recovery sessions. We talked about hiking, talked about strength training, talked about hiking specific conditioning. Recovery sessions are essentially some nice additions that can help. When it comes into the grand scheme of recovery, there are many things we can do during our week to help with recovery.

[36:07] Nutrition plays a massive role. Sleep plays a massive role. Stress management plays a massive role. Relaxation plays a massive role. All of these things will help recovery in one way or another. Now, we can also complement this and things we can do in regards to exercise with what we call recovery sessions. Essentially, these are lower intensity, gentle sessions. They're not designed to help improve your fitness or improve your tolerance, but they're just designed to help the body and mind calm down and help them bounce back in between sessions. So you can enhance your recovery help you adapt in between those harder sessions. It plays a big role. Now, we can also use these sessions to almost just give a bit of love to sore areas. If you feel like some areas is getting really overworked or really tired, sometimes just giving a little bit of love, giving them a little bit of attention can help them feel a little bit better. Now, a simple thing that I'll often get my hikers to do, and probably most of my hikers to do in all honesty, is I'll get them on the recovery side of things. One session a week for about 15, 10 to 15 minutes, I'll get them to do a little bit of self-massage, a little bit of stretching each week. So self-massage is like foam rolling or working with like a tool or a bowl and just like literally massaging your muscles. Stretching, literally stretching.

[37:14] Once a week, 15 minutes, pretty short, but it can make a bit of a difference. Essentially, the whole idea behind this is just let everything recover, adapt, calm down. It goes a long way. Now, to be clear, when I'm talking about self-massage and stretching, these things can be really, really nice just to help the body feel good. These things can be really, really nice to help the body recover and can be really, really nice to help the body calm down. And ultimately, anything we do to calm the body down will be beneficial for recovery. And this can be really, really nice just to reduce aches and pains and just help it feel a bit more comfortable.

[37:48] However, to be very, very, very clear, stretching by itself isn't probably going to make a dramatic difference to OB-EU syndromes. This may seem backwards. And the first thing a lot of people think of is, okay, I'm preventing injury. I need to stretch. Or, you know, I had an issue. I need to stretch or whatever it may be.

[38:06] But to be very, very, very clear, stretching by itself isn't going to make a dramatic difference to your chance of overuse injuries. It can have a place in regards to this recovery. It can have a place in regards to calming things down. It's not going to make a dramatic difference. Again, this isn't me just saying, but there's a lot of research out there that is saying this common recommendation to stretch isn't really going to make a dramatic difference, to be very clear on that point. Now, on top of that, that's what I typically get my hikers doing, a bit of self-massage, a bit of stretching. Other options you can look at here, pool walking. If you have access to a pool or body of water, whatever it may be, literally just walking up and down in the water can be really, really nice. Very relaxing, very calming. The water pressure helps the muscles. No pressure through the joints. Very, very useful. Doing yoga, calm yoga can be really, really nice. Again, it's just relaxing. It stretches the body out, helps it feels good. Or in all honesty, you can do any gentle or easy cardio. Hopping on a bike and literally just turning the legs over for 10-15 minutes can be good. Going out and swimming, just doing casual laps for a little while can be good. Anything that's relaxing and calming.

[39:09] Now, when it comes down to this, going into it, like obviously I haven't gone into absolute specifics of it all, but like giving you the general idea. But right now you might be thinking, okay, sure, this is fine, Rowan. That sounds like a lot. Like how the heck would that ever fit into a wick?

[39:24] And it's so pretty straightforward. Now, just to give you a couple of examples of how this may look. On the hiking side of things, hike when you can. If you can hike every single week, great. If you can hike every couple of weeks, great. If you can hike every three weeks, great. Whatever it may be. Have a watch of that video around coming up with your hiking plan. Follow your plan, fit in your hiking where you can. If you're in the situation where you're like, hey, I can train three days a week and then I'll hike where I can, then it may be a case you might do two strength sessions in a week, maybe 20 minutes or 30 minutes or 40 minutes or 60 minutes, whatever it may be. Then you may choose one of those hiking specific conditioning sessions and you may do one of those each week. That's a good three days a week of training that will cover most of your bases and then the recovery you can just fit in little bits and pieces here and there you could just do the 15 minute session i mentioned you could just do two or three minutes a day or whatever it may be just add in a little bit of some pieces or if you sort of had four days a week you may do hike where you can two strength sessions two of those hiking specific conditioning sessions and then again adding bits and pieces of recovery this it's pretty straightforward but like you know there's lots of different ways you can go about this, but just to give you a visual of how that may fit into a week, you can kind of see, okay, this is a nice spread of sessions. It's not like I'm just walking or hiking three or four days a week, but I've got different variations of movement, different spreads of sessions, different things are going to improve my fitness and my tolerance in different ways. This can work really, really well.

[40:43] Now, when it comes down to this, I know the ideas I've talked about here are pretty broad. I'm talking about overuse injuries as a whole, but you may be watching this and be like, all right, okay, Rowan, but what about specific exercises or what about my specific issue, whatever it may be? If you were thinking about that, I've got a few extra resources you could check out. If you were interested in getting a little bit more specific with exercise examples and other tips for specific areas of your bodies, I have a few other resources for you. I've got videos that dive into detail around knee pain for hikers, foot pain for hikers, ankle pain for hikers, lower back pain for hikers, which technically can be a bit of an overuse injury, which goes into a little bit more detail. So I'll put the links for those in the video description. Again, they're quite long things, but again, the nitty gritty of this stuff in a little bit more detail. So you can check that out if you're looking for a little bit more extra learning.

[41:33] So now we talked about prevention and training. Now we want to talk about strategies you can do on multi-day hikes. You can do this stuff on day hikes and overnighter hikes, but they probably won't massively make a massive difference to overuse injuries. They'll probably be useful in other respects, but a lot of hikers pick up overuse injuries on multi-day things. So other things you can do in regards to this. Number one, fatigue management. Pretty much when it comes down to it, as we said, recovery, very, very, very, very important. As a general rule of some, the more energy you have at the end of the day means the more reserves you're going to have to aid your recovery. Meaning if you get to the end of the day and you're absolutely knackered, you've used all your energy, you've absolutely pushed yourself to the limit, your body is going to have a hard time recovering. It may well recover overnight or this and that, but it's going to have a hard time with that. And if you do that day after day after day, that may not be ideal. Alternatively, if you get to the end of the day and you're like, you know what, I could honestly have gone for another hour or two or whatever it may be. I, yeah, had a challenging day, but I kind of still feel, okay, more than likely you're going to recover a bit better. So we want to think about what can we do during the day to minimize fatigue, enhance your energy, and make sure on top of things.

[42:46] This is a bit of a bit of a broader topic, but it definitely does help overuse injuries and it definitely does help your hiking as a whole. So areas to consider on this, your nutrition. Are you eating enough? Most hikers don't eat enough. They do not fuel enough and that gets them into trouble. Are you eating enough? And what are you eating? A lot of hikers for some reason or another are really, really, really hesitant about eating carbohydrates on the trail. If you specifically don't eat carbohydrates for a medical issue or a dietary reason, whatever it may be, that's fine. But if not carbohydrates are going to fuel a lot of your energy on the trail so making sure your nutrition is right very important hydration are you hydrated on the trail are you drinking enough water are you having some electrolytes goes a long way on fatigue pacing are you managing your pace not just on the flats but the uphills as well and everything like that are you keeping things calm and collected as opposed to huffing and puffing through your whole hike sleep this is a trap a lot of people look at when they're looking at like more ultralight stuff and they're trying to.

[43:42] Really really cut down their pack weight sometimes they'll compromise on the sleep systems and they won't actually be 100% comfortable at night and they won't sleep very well that can impact our recovery so sometimes it's worthwhile saying hey am I actually carrying extra kilo on the trail if it's going to help my sleep whatever it may be also on top of that if you don't sleep particularly well on the trail what are you doing to aid that what are you doing before you go to bed what are you doing as an aid or whatever may be different things there all of these different areas play a massive, massive, massive role in regards to fatigue, big, big, big role in recovery as well. Definitely make sure you're thinking about these things.

[44:17] Now, on top of that, it kind of goes hand in hand with that. We want to think about end-of-day recovery. When you're on these multi-day hikes, what can you do to help the body recover? There are a few simple actions at the end of the day, which don't take a huge amount of thought, don't take a huge amount of effort, but they can help the body calm down and boost recovery. Number one, stretching and self-massage routine at the end of the day. I get a lot of my hikers doing this. Spend 10 minutes at the end of the day doing some stretching. Do a little bit of self-massage. You're obviously not going to be carrying a foam roller out on the trail, but do it with your water bottle. Do it with your trekking pole. Do it with your thumbs. You can even get cork massage balls, which weigh like five grams you can keep in your pack. Spend 10 minutes doing that. It can go a long way. Nutrition.

[44:55] Sometimes people finish up at the end of the day, and they'll have hours and hours and hours until dinner if you're finishing early. Just make sure you are refueling at the end of the day. Have a snack after you finish up in between that and dinner. Or if you're having dinner relatively soon, make sure it's a well-rounded dinner. Make sure there's some protein, some fat, and some carbohydrates in it. Make sure you're getting what you need for recovery. Hydration. Again, if you end up being the day a bit dehydrated, which a lot of us do, make sure you're rehydrating once you're in camp.

[45:23] Ultimately, anything that's calming and relaxing at the end of the day can go a long way. If you like journaling, if you're not reading, if you like listening to gentle music, anything that's going to chill the body out a little bit can go a long way. For a lot of people at the end of the day's hiking, you will be relaxed because you're sitting in camp having a good time, that's great. But if you've had a bit of a stressful day or if you've been getting a bit anxious or something's going on mentally, calming down and relaxing can go a long way. I know that's sometimes easier said than done, but definitely worthwhile thinking about. And then finally, this is something not everyone has to do, but something I quite like is sports compression gear. Essentially, sports compression tights, sports compression socks, or whatever it may be, they can be quite nice in regards to wearing at the end of the day just to help circulation while you're not moving. So typically when we're exercising, when we're hiking, blood's moving around and that's all well and good. When we stop moving and stop exercising, the blood's still moving around, but it gets a little bit slower. Sometimes, you know, the body can just have some accumulated waste products from want all the exercise sometimes that can lead to a little bit of muscle discomfort the whole idea around sports compression gear after exercise you may wear it for an hour or two or three when you're around camp it just basically keeps the blood moving a little bit more enhances circulation just a little bit more and sometimes can be quite nice just for sore muscles help things recover help things feel a little bit better not everyone needs to wear it obviously you've got to spend money to buy this and all that but i do like it as an addition to a multi-day hikers pack because that can make a bit of a difference.

[46:50] All right, so we're getting towards the tail end of this video now. Last things I want to cover is a few simple extra tips which can make a bit of a difference. Number one, hiking poles. Hiking poles specifically for the lower limbs, so the ankles, the feet, the shins, the knees can play a big role in taking stress from the lower limbs when you're hiking. If you are aware that you have a history of overuse injuries or you'll be worried about them, I highly recommend hiking poles on the trail. Number two is if you are planning on wearing a certain pair of footwear when you hike and when you're actually out on your adventure, do your walking training in that footwear. So if you're doing training hikes, if you're doing loader pack walking, if you're doing steering wheel climbing, try to wear that footwear so your body can adapt and get used to that type of stuff. As you said before, a change in footwear does require the body to deal with different forces, different stresses, and that sometimes can trip people up. If you are planning on getting new footwear, try to get that early, make that change early in the training process. Don't wait till four weeks before you go. Don't wait till two weeks before you go. Get it done early. And if you are changing things midway through, say you're training for 12 weeks and you get to six weeks and you get a pair of shoes, pull things back temporarily. Pull back your hiking, pull back your walking, just temporarily, take it easy and slowly expose that body, the body to that, just so you don't, again, end up overloading certain areas of your feet and your ankles or whatever it may be.

[48:13] Respect periods of lower activity and rebuild. If you get sick, if you go on holidays, if you miss training for a week or two, whatever it may be, try not to just jump back right where you were or even worse, just keep on jumping straight up. Because when we're looking at that training load, as we were talking about before, plotting that stuff out on a graph, there's one issue where we can end up going this, this, this, this, and then jump up. And we're kind of like just a big spike up there. What can also be an issue is if we're doing normal, normal, nothing, and then back to normal, sometimes this can be a little bit too big of a jump up. So if you've had a week or two of lower activity, maybe just ease yourself in with a week of moderate activity and then get back to your normal stuff. So be smart about that. Obviously, when you're in time limits and this and that, it can be a little bit tricky if you've got a date looming, but that's something you just need to be aware of.

[49:04] Hiking speed can make a major difference to stress in the lower limbs. If you have a history of foot issues, ankle issues, Achilles issues, shin splints, knee pain, whatever may be, managing your hiking speed can really, really make a major difference. Typically, when we're out by ourself, we usually go to a pace that's pretty comfortable for us. Where this comes into the issue is if we are going out on a hike and we're with a friend, we're the group or whatever may be, and their pace is a bit quicker than ours and we have to keep up with them, that can stress us out a little bit. That can add extra load to things that we're not used to, and that can make things a little bit tricky. So one of the most powerful things you can do here is having a conversation. If you're going out with a friend or with a group, say to them, hey, my foot's a little bit niggly. Do you mind if I go at my own pace? Or do you mind if we go at my pace? Or if you're with a group, so to say, hey, actually, you know what? I struggle with this. Do you mind if we pull things back? Or do you mind if I just meet you at certain checkpoints or whatever it may be? There's a lot of different ways you can approach those conversations, but that can be really, really, really powerful.

[50:08] On top of that, take action early. If you ever feel like something's creeping up, if your shins start getting sore, if your feet start getting sore, if your ankles start getting sore, if you act on it early, it can be really, really easy to get on top of. If you ignore it for a week or two or three or four, I've even had people who've ignored things for like six weeks and then finally said something, it can be much more difficult to get on top of things. If you feel like something's creeping up, just take a little bit extra recovery time. If you're like, hey, my foot is getting a bit sore, take a few days off walking. If you feel like my shins are getting all pumped up, maybe take a few days off anything that stresses out. If my knees are getting sore, maybe take a few days off anything that sort of gives that. Sometimes even just two or three days is enough to let it recover and let it chill out. On top of that is if you're aware certain things are causing or aggravating an issue, maybe modify that. If you're doing lots of jumping in your training, you're getting a lot of knee pain, maybe just say, you know what, I'm not going to do any jumping anymore. I'm going to do other exercises. Or maybe if you're doing a lot of running and you're like, hey,

[51:06] you know, I'm getting foot pain, maybe just reduce your running distances or whatever it may be. Take action early. And if you're unsure about how to go about this, reach out to a professional, get some direction. It'll really, really go a long way.

[51:19] So, there we go. I know this has been a bit of a marathon video, but hopefully you're still here with me and hopefully this has been useful and hopefully this gives you some insights in regards to how to prevent some common overuse injuries coming up. I fully understand this has been a bit more of a broader overview as opposed to getting into specific exercises and this and that. But as I said, there are some more resources in the video description where you can dive into that type of stuff. However, if you are in a situation, you're like, okay, Rowan, this kind of all makes sense. But in all honesty, I need help with this. I'm not sure how to put this together. I'm not sure if I'm doing the right things. I really just don't want to spend the time figuring this out for myself or whatever it may be. If you did feel like you need a little bit of extra help with this, I would love to chat with you. Through Summit Strength, the company that I own, we offer online personal training, personalized online personal training for hikers to help them get fit, strong, and resilient for their adventures. Essentially, what our programs will typically include is we'll sit down and create a custom and personalized workout program to get you ready for anything the trail may throw at you. So as we sort of said before, making sure you're exactly where you need to be, but doing it in a way which will apply all those bits and pieces we just talked about before and do in a way which will minimise the risk of things going wrong and being very, very, very intentional.

[52:34] On top of that, we do put a big emphasis in regards to educating you on all the peripheral factors which can make or break an adventure. So we talked about before, fatigue management, very, very important. We talk about nutrition, recovery, self-care, mental strength, a bunch of other things. We get a little bit more detail around the pain prevention side of things and a bunch of other stuff. And we also give you the coaching, support, and accountability to keep you on track, to adapt your training around what's going on. If you have a week where you're sick, how do you change things? If you have a bit of a rough time, how to keep on track, or whatever it may be, we will be there in your corner. Now, if you do want to find out a little bit more about that, you can basically check out our online personal training program at summerstrength.com.au slash online. On there, there's another video which talks through our program in a bit more detail. And if it does sound like something we want to explore and see if it may be right for you, there's a link there. We can book a quick call with us. We can hop on, have a bit of face-to-face, learn about you, your situation, your needs, your goals, and if you wanted to. And if it sounds like something we can help you out with, we can talk you through one of our packages which may fit into what you need. That call is completely free, so if anyone wants to check it out, no obligation, no stress, no pressure, but you can check it out from there.

[53:43] But with that being said, that is enough from me today. A bit of a long video, but really, really do hope this is useful. Really, really do hope it gives you some insights and really, really do hope this can reduce the risk of overuse injuries for you in your training, your hiking and your preparation. So any questions of any of that, please reach out to me. Always happy to chat. But aside from that, hope you have a lovely, lovely day and we'll talk to you very soon.
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