TFT72: Recovery Strategies For Hikers

In this episode, I share a number of strategies and techniques a hiker can use to aid their recovery between training and hiking.

You don't get fitter, stronger and more resilient when you train. You get fitter, stronger and more resilient when you recover from training.
 
That is an incredibly important point to be aware of. And today I share with you exactly how to ensure this happens.

You will learn:

• What the risks for hikers are if you do not look after your recovery
• A few 'active recovery' exercises which I absolutely love for hikers

• Three dead simple nutrition strategies which are essential for recovery between workouts
• The often-overlooked factor in recovery (which could well be the most important strategy of all)

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Episode Chapters:

0:03 
Recovery Techniques for Hikers
1:48 
Simple Recovery Methods
6:05 
Value of Meditation and Breathing
7:42 
Nutrition and Hydration Essentials
8:24 
The Power of Sleep
10:56 
Consistency is Key

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

Check out the Online Summit Program: https://www.summitstrength.com.au/online.html

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Episode Transcript:

Speaker0:
[0:00] Today I'm talking all about recovery techniques for hikers. Now you don't get fitter, stronger or more resilient when you train. You get fitter, stronger and more resilient when you recover from training. Now there's an incredibly important distinction to make because many hikers out there are simply just doing way too much training and they're not really allowing their bodies to properly recover, repair and adapt from week to week. And over the long term, this is really significantly compromising their progress and basically not allowing them to get all the potential benefits of all the hard work that they're putting in. So they're training their arse off, they're really, really going for it, but they're not actually getting all the potential benefits of all that effort and all that time and all that hard work simply because they're not allowing their body to recover in between sessions.

Speaker0:
[0:51] And beyond this, if you take it a little bit further over the long term, this can lead into things like long-term fatigue, aches, pains. It can potentially affect your immune system and put you at a much higher risk of injury all because you're just not recovering enough.

Speaker0:
[1:05] Now this is something really really important to be aware of and it's something that really really need to be emphasized in the hiking community because many people tend to just skip over this and not really put much effort into it. So today I just want to sort of want to dive into it a little bit and just list off a bunch of really really simple methods that you can use during your week and over the long term to help aid your recovery between sessions, to help get the most out of your training sessions so you are adapting and repairing and getting your body fitter, stronger and more resilient in the best way that you can. So all that hard work you're putting into your actual training is paying off in the long term.

Speaker0:
[1:43] And so you know you're doing the right things day to day to really get the most out of this time. So right now I'm just going to list off with a bunch of different things that you can add into your week which can help you. Now, when it comes to recovery, it doesn't have to be outrageously complicated, and it doesn't have to be outrageously, you know, spend a huge amount of time. Even doing something as simple as five to 10 minutes a day or a couple of times or a few times a week can really, really go a long way. So the techniques I'm going to list here are all ones that I've used myself or ones I use in my clients, and they're all ones that more or less everyone will have access to and that don't really require too much thought. So, number one, what I want to talk about is active recovery, which I have mentioned a few times in this podcast before. And active recovery is basically...

Speaker0:
[2:29] Filling in small segments of gentle exercise in your week to help get the blood moving around in the body, to help flush out any waste products and just help you recover between session to session. On top of that, they have the added bonus of them helping relax the body a little bit and take it out of this completely stressful situation if you're completely always training hard and just help it chill out a little bit, activate a few different things in the body to help aid that recovery process now active recovery can really be anything that's gentle and then anything that's sort of short period of time but a few really really good options are number one which i absolutely love for hikers and again i've mentioned on this podcast quite a few times is pool walking if i've got a client who's doing lots and lots of hiking and lots of training their legs are getting pretty sore i will always ask them to kind of find a pool and do some laps up and down of simply just walking now what this does is it gets that helps them get the blood moving the pressure of the water does some relatively decent things for recovery and if the water's cold it adds an extra element there and doing 10 to 15 minutes of this once a week or every couple of weeks can really go a long way.

Speaker0:
[3:35] Now, another one very similar is swimming. So if you don't want to walk, you can just do some swimming and do whatever type of stroke you want, use any type of equipment you want. It doesn't really matter as long as you're moving. Now, one of the theories behind this is the pressure of the water is supposed to be very, very good for the muscles. You're moving and getting the blood pumping, but also because your heart is horizontal and it's not above the working muscles, apparently that takes a little bit less strain for the heart to pump blood around. So it's even gentler on the muscles and on the body. I don't know how much that really affects things in all honesty, but that's another important point to make or another interesting point to make, I should say. So if you're doing 10 to 15 minutes of swimming once a week or every couple of weeks, that probably can be very, very effective. And the third option here, if you don't have access to a pool, is simply just doing a bit of cycling, either on a bike from the outdoors or on a stationary bike at the gym and just doing a simple 15 to 30-minute session where you don't really get huffed and puffed. You should get the body temperature up a little bit and doing that once over once a week or something can be really really effective but active recovery is something that most hikers probably should be looking at to be doing at least once a week or every once every couple of weeks at the very very minimum now the second um second method here is pretty simple is some type of massage so if you're lucky enough to be able to get yourself in for sports massage once a week that's going to be absolutely amazing for your recovery if you don't have that luck or maybe not that um that.

Speaker0:
[5:03] Heft in your wallet you might be just simply looking at self-massage which basically turns into foam rolling and simply spending five minutes of foam rolling every single day can be amazing to help calm the body down reduce aches and pains flush out a few waste products and just make it feel good alternatively if you can't do five minutes every single day maybe doing 10 minutes every few days or at least doing it once a week and just spending about 15 minutes this can be a really really effective way of just helping the body recover and it's so so simple to do and the next ones is doing some type of yoga or stretching so simply doing stretching sessions for again 15 to 20 minutes or doing a yoga class again can help body calm the body down help relieve a little bit aches and pains and just help that recovery process go a little bit more now hikers always ask me should they be fitting in like they love their yoga like can they fit that around their training programs when they come on and i'm always like yes absolutely do as much yoga as you want because it's not going to stress the body out it's not going to you know take anything away from

Speaker0:
[6:02] the training we're doing and most likely we'll add quite a bit. So have a think about that.

Speaker0:
[6:08] Now, a couple of others which you might not have considered in this situation is simply doing some type of meditation or some type of breathing technique to help calm the body down. Now, this one isn't so physically going to be, you know, helping flush out waste products or anything like that, but it can help switch the body away from what's called the flight or flight response, which happens when we're stressed or when we're training quite a bit and the body's ready to go and ready for action. It can help switch it into what's called the rest and digest response, which has a few different changes in the body, which can help that recovery process. And can help de-stress you and can help everything calming down. And even just doing five minutes of meditation or five minutes of deep breathing once a day or every couple of days can really make a bit of a difference here. Now, if you struggle with meditation, a really cool app for this, which you can look into is something called Headspace. Now, it's not so much meditation, but it's more mindfulness. But in our respects, it does exactly the same thing in helping calm the body down, just give you a bit of time away from all the stresses of life.

Speaker0:
[7:05] Breathing techniques, you can do abdominal breathing, which I've talked about many times in this podcast. You can simply do like square breathing or literally any deep breathing technique. You can go into Google, type in deep breathing and a hundred different techniques will pop up. But spending five minutes a day could probably be something that will really, really affect you. Now for quite a few of my hikers, I'll often combine an active recovery session with a breathing session. So I'll ask them to go do a really gentle walk and simply concentrate on their breathing for 20 minutes. Or I'll ask them to do a gentle cycle and put on a little meditation app and just help them zone out. Now you can put those two together pretty well enough and it can make a bit of a difference.

Speaker0:
[7:43] And then on top of this, you probably want to be looking at nutrition and hydration. So making sure you're eating enough through the week and making sure you're getting enough water. So we don't want to dive in too much into detail on those. But as we talked about nutrition quite a bit in other podcasts, but as a general rule of thumb, you want to just be making sure you're getting a reasonable amount of protein through the day. So making sure you're having a server protein with your breakfast, lunch and dinner. And then also making sure you're getting carbohydrates in some shape or form around your training sessions. at the very least and on top of that making sure you're fully hydrated through the day. Those little tips there can make a massive difference to your recovery and over

Speaker0:
[8:22] the long term is something you really want to think about. And then the final thing that which often gets overlooked is simply sleep and that can be one of the most effective recovery techniques you can ever do and making sure you get eight hours sleep at night. If you can do that consistently that's going to support your training so incredibly. Now it might be the fact that if you're only sleeping five or six hours a night or you're going through a period of high stress and you might not be able to recover properly from your training programs so if you can't get that quality sleep you might actually have to reduce the amount of your training so you're not going so you're balancing things out the other way if you can't actually recover properly you might just have to reduce your training.

Speaker0:
[9:01] Now, when it comes down to sleep as well, if you are training super hard, sometimes the eight hours of sleep might not be enough. And some professional athletes are getting up to 10 hours sleep every single night, which I know is a bit of a luxury for many, many people. But if you can slip in an extra 10, 15, 20 minutes sleep here and there throughout the week or into your consistent routine, if you are training hard, that can make a pretty big difference. Now, this stuff should really be done week to week so you should be able to choose one or two of those things and do five to ten minutes of that a couple of times a week or do 15 minutes or one of those things once a week now it's really really small addition and sometimes it might feel like you're not getting the best use of your time you might be wanting to train hard might be one of putting in sessions but it really really does make a massive difference now for example on this every single one of my clients I give a quick 10 to 15 minute recovery session, which I ask them to do every single week, either immediately after their hiking sessions or on days between their training. So this simply involves doing 10 to 15 minutes of stretching and foam rolling, which we go through more or less the entire lower body. And that way I can make sure they're getting in a little bit through the week, they're helping reduce those aches and pains, just aid their body as they come through.

Speaker0:
[10:17] Now, for many people here, it's simply going to be not enough. And when it comes to particularly my mountaineering clients who are doing a much more training volume, or if you yourself were doing two or three hikes in a week, I'd probably put a bit more emphasis on the active recovery sessions. So for my mountaineering clients, I always prescribe them that they have to get in a pool, either for walking or swimming, or they have to get on a bike on the days after their big sessions, whether they're going for a run, whether they're going for a big hike. And it's just a non-negotiable in their week because I know these recovery sessions can really, really be the difference between success and failure over long-term

Speaker0:
[10:55] for whatever training program. So I highly recommend you take something that I've talked about today and apply it into your week. Try a few of them out, see what you enjoy, but just try to apply it consistently week by week. Added bonus right now, if you are stuck at home and you are stressed over a number of things, it probably can help you deal with your stress a little bit, can help you sleep better, and can generally help you feel a little bit better overall. So I cannot stress how important all of this stuff is. Now, when it comes to it, everyone is going to be different with this, but everyone and everyone's going to prefer different things. But in all honesty, every single hiker out there will get benefits from adding some type of this into your week. So have a look at your schedule, have a look at what you're doing, take one of these recommendations and start applying it.

Speaker0:
[11:40] And you will be surprised at what a difference it can make. So I really hope you've enjoyed today's episode. Today hope you've got a little bit of value out of it a little bit of insight and maybe it gives you a bit of the kick up the butt you need to start making some of this recovery stuff happen as always if you've enjoyed the episode i would absolutely love if you could share it with another hiker someone who might be struggling with their bit of stress at the moment someone might be gearing up for a big adventure or might be just getting into their training i really really appreciate helping you spread the love of this podcast and helping grow it a little bit so thank you so much for listening today guys and we'll talk to you very very soon bye.

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hiking adventure?

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