The Case For Awkward Training

​In this episode I explore why being 'perfect' with your training isn't always necessary for hikers. 

​Episode Transcript 

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking about awkward training and training which may not be so perfect, training which may put you in a few weird and wonderful positions, and why this may be potentially beneficial for some people.

[0:19] Now, when it comes down to training, the fitness industry has done a really, really, really big job, of pushing down perfect training down people's throats in the sense of sort of telling people, okay, all the exercises you do have to have these perfect, perfect, perfect form. And you need to do this exactly how I tell you and exactly how things go. Or you need to have correct posture while you're doing movements, while you're walking, while you're running, while you're doing this, or you have to do this, this exact way, or something's going to go wrong. And it's often said that if you don't do these things perfectly, you'll either put yourself in a huge risk of injury or you'll lose the effectiveness of a workout or an exercise. And this type of stuff and this type of thinking, it's often articulated not particularly well. And there is definitely a degree of truth here in the sense we don't want our training looking absolutely rubbish. We don't want our exercises looking completely different to what they should be and we don't want to be absolutely in these weird positions which make us uncomfortable.

[1:26] But i will also say that this adherence to perfect form to perfect posture to perfect exercising or whatever may be it's always not 100 true that this is so necessary in all contexts and hikers specifically in the hiking context they can get some really really really great benefits from slightly more awkward or chaotic or unorthodox training. So let me tell you more and tell you where I'm coming from this and what this all is. So let's start with the inspiration of this episode, why it came to mind. Now, this morning, probably about 40 minutes ago, I went out and I did some sprints.

[2:10] Now, lately, I've been trying to get myself back in a bit of a training groove after a whole bunch of stuff that's went on, which I talked about in a previous podcast. And one of the ways that I've been doing that and trying to get myself back in a routine, back in a rhythm, just back enjoying my training, is exploring some training and exploring different workouts and exercises, which are different than what I've been doing lately, which are different than I've been doing the last six months or 12 months, which are just different than my usual routine. Because my usual routine, it's just not really doing it for me at the moment. I'm not excited about it. I'm not doing it. So I want something a little bit different.

[2:44] Now, when I was younger, I used to do athletics and I used to be a track sprinter and I lived for sprinting and I used to absolutely love it. But honestly, you know, that was ages ago. I haven't really done much sprinting since I was probably 18 years old, which, you know, was a while ago now. But in the spirit of doing things different, I was like, you know what, I wouldn't mind exploring a bit of sprinting again, getting that feeling of going a bit quicker, just doing something a bit different and give it a go. So the first time I did it last week, it was literally I went out on a local jog and I just did a few sort of sections of quicker pace running. So I don't know if you could really call it a sprint, but it was just quicker pace running. And I was like, yeah, this was all right. But I kind of wanted to set myself up and not just on a footpath, but go out and do, you know, some proper sprints somewhere. So this morning I went down to the local park. I jogged down the local park. I had this nice long stretch and I was like, yeah, I'm going to do a few sprints. So I warmed up, you know, I did a total of five sprints all in all, which probably would have taken me like 15 to 20 seconds each. And then I had enough and I, you know, walked home.

[3:43] Now, when I am saying sprinting, just to be really, really clear, it probably isn't technically correct. Like don't imagine I'm going out there and just crazy, crazy, crazy going nuts or anything like that. I'm probably doing quick running in the sense that, you know, I haven't sprinted in ages. I didn't want to just throw myself in the deep end and end up hurting myself. So I sort of had a long windup. I didn't go from zero to 100 straight away, but it took a while to get into it. And it wasn't 100%. I was probably going maybe 85% of what I probably could try doing. But it was like, you know, quick running. But it was fun. And it did the desired effect. And I felt like I got, you know, a decent workout from it.

[4:18] Now, after all of this, and that was the inspiration of the episode, you know, when I finished the session, I was walking home, I noticed something, you know, there were a few areas in my legs, which were kind of speaking to me a little bit. It wasn't pain. It wasn't like I'd done any injury or anything like that, but I was like, oh, you know what? Those areas worked a little bit more than I kind of thought, you know, a bit in my ankle, a bit in my feet, a bit in my, you know, different bits of my legs. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And I did know why, immediately why that was. Number one, I was doing the sprints in my barefoot shoes, which didn't have much support. That was an intentional choice for myself because I wanted to do the sprints in these particular shoes, but I knew they didn't have much support, so there was a lot of impact going through certain areas because I hadn't really done sprints before in a long time. Now, on top of that, I was doing these sprints in a park, and the surface of the grass definitely was not as even as I thought initially. There's some ups and downs. There were a few changes in hardness or a few little holes and this and that. And when I was running, I was aware that it wasn't all smooth sailing. I had to sort of change my legs a little bit. I had a few heavy steps in certain points and all of that. And in all honesty, my legs coming out the back of it were just sore from this new impact of sprinting I hadn't done in ages. And also the weird, weird positions my steps had put myself into.

[5:31] And as I was working home and I was noticing these, I was like, ah, this isn't much fun. And I was thinking about this and I was like, you know what, in all honesty, next time I'm going to go find somewhere much, much smoother. Something I don't have to worry about those ups and downs. It's just nice manicured surface. So maybe go down the local athletics track, which we have one pretty close to me, or at least find an oval with a nice level. And I was thinking that, I was like, yeah, yeah, that's what I'm going to do. But then I stopped myself and I caught myself here because there are a few factors that I didn't initially consider, mainly for the fact that my end goal today wasn't sprinting perfectly. I don't desire to get back into athletics. I don't desire to end up being as quick as I can be or whatever may be. Yes, I want to spray it up. Yes, I want to improve. Yes, I want to have fun and explore this. But ultimately, my end goal wasn't doing this perfectly. My goal for this type of training was number one, to get me in a routine, but also the longer term thing to use as a training method to help prepare me for my martial arts, which I want to do again. And I've talked about in previous episodes around why I'm doing that and all of that as well. So you can check them out as well. But the intention for the sprinting, I was like, you know what? I want to expose my body to these kind of higher forces, these higher impacts. I want to get a little bit more explosive, a bit more powerful to help both protect me in that type of environment where you kind of get thrown in all these weird and wonderful positions and you've got to explode in this and that, and also perform a little bit better in just this chaotic environment of training for those martial arts. So my end goal, it wasn't to be a sprinter, it was to help me towards this stuff.

[6:59] And with that in mind, I actually didn't mind that a few areas have been worked differently. Because if my end goal is to prepare for a chaotic environment, having a little bit of differentness, a little bit of awkwardness, a little bit of chaos, just a little bit of it in my training, not a bad thing. Now, sure, I don't want a completely uneven field to sprint on, because if I end up doing that, I want to actually be able to do the session as I want, and the primary session of actually going fast. But a little bit of variation, in all honesty, it might be a good thing.

[7:28] Now, that happened to me this morning, and that was the inspiration for this podcast, because this is something that is super, super, super relevant for hikers, and something which I talk about with hikers all the time. I talk about with hikers I'm directly working with, talk about with hikers who I'm just having a conversation with if they're considering our services, and also just talk about hikers who are just reaching out to me and asking about questions. This comes up every single week, and it's a really, really interesting thing.

[7:54] Because one thing we often get from people working with us through our online personal training, because everything we do these days is online, is they'll often ask us about the correct form on exercises. And they'll say, well, if you're not there physically with me, how can you ensure that I'm doing it right? How can you ensure my form is correct? How can you inform I'm not going to ensure I'm not going to hurt myself? And yes, we have videos which people do this, but they're like, hey, how can you make sure I'm doing it right? And typically my response to that is that in the hiking context as a hiker who is trying to prepare to improve you for the trail it's actually okay if you don't do things in quotation marks perfectly.

[8:35] Because hiking isn't this nice manicured thing. You get exposed to all different weird and wonderful positions while hiking. On uphills, downhills, on uneven surfaces, potholes, slips, slides. It's a bit chaotic sometimes. And you do get the body in all these different positions. And sometimes in the training context, if your exercises are not 100% perfect, they're not exactly like you may see some people doing in the gym, this can actually be, it's not the end of the world, and it can actually be a beneficial thing. Because it can expose the body to some slightly more awkward, different positions in a controlled environment.

[9:12] So it's not like you're just forcing the body again and again and again into these weird things, but if there's a little bit of variation, it's not the end of the world. And what I say is, as long as an exercise isn't hurting you, as long as that's not leading to pain and not leading to discomfort, and as long as you're still feeling it in predominantly the desired muscles, then you're kind of all good. Now, an example of this is let's talk about the step down. The step downs are an exercise I use for so many hikers. And typically what you do is you stand on a step and you just basically lower yourself down on one leg to the floor and then come up. Very, very simple. Now in the perfect, perfect, perfect world, we would do this. And as we come down, basically our bum would come back. Our knees would stay nice and steady. Our ankles will stay nice and steady. Our foot would stay flat on the floor or flat on the step. And we just push up and push up. But sometimes when people do this, they'll come down and their knees will wobble around, their ankles will wobble around, sometimes their foot will come up, sometimes they'll fall over, all of these different things. And that type of stuff, it's not the end of the world.

[10:12] Now, admittedly, at first, it can sometimes be hard for people to wrap their head around this. Because people have been told again and again and again, you have to do this right, or you're going to hurt yourself, or you have to do this right, or it's a waste of time or whatever it may be. And I honestly know I've lost a few people. When we have our initial calls and we're discussing the program and seeing if they're good fit, and I've lost people who didn't want to work with us because they just didn't believe this and they'd been told that posture and perfect form is so essential so many times in their life it was so ingrained in them they just didn't trust this different way of doing things but you know, what can you do? A little bit of awkwardness in your training isn't always a bad thing.

[10:51] Now, another more intentional way of doing this, so we talked about strength training where that's just like, you know, you're probably not always forcing yourself in these positions, but it can kind of happen. Another more intentional way of doing this is with our walking sessions. Now, for hikers, if you're training for hiking, if you can actually get out and regularly hike, and say you can get out every once or two, once every week or once every two weeks or even once every three weeks, typically people will probably get exposed to enough like awkward walking in their training, meaning awkward walking is like walking along and getting those potholes and the uneven terrain and slippery surfaces and all of that. So if you're getting regular hiking, you probably get enough exposure of that when you're actually on the track and you're all good. But for some people out there, they just actually can't get out hiking regularly. They may be in the middle of winter, they may be in the middle of summer, they may be super busy, they may just have a young family and may be only able to hike once every month or even less.

[11:46] So in that case, we actually try to seek out a little bit of awkwardness in their walking sessions. So when they're walking around the local neighborhood or walking in their training, we seek out a bit of awkwardness. So a simple thing here might involve, okay, if we're doing a load of pack walk around the local neighborhood, which we'll often get people to do, this might involve them just walking off the footpath as opposed to being on the footpath. So you end up going over the grass and the driveways and the potholes and all those slightly different surfaces. And that's very, very intentional. Or it might involve, okay, if you're doing a stair session around the local area. It might involve, if you can, finding a set of stairs which has slightly more uneven steps. So it's not like perfect steps, exactly the same steps every time. It's not like being in the gym on the Stairmaster where you're just doing step and step and step, but finding one of those more, you know, awkward stepping things. Or maybe just a set of stairs which have those awkwardly sized steps. It may be all the same, but it's like really struggles to get a flow or whatever it may be. You know, these types of things, they're not exactly the same as actually getting out on the hot trail and hiking, but they can help. They can fill a little bit of the gap there.

[12:49] Sometimes a little bit of awkwardness in your training can be a good thing. Now, one note I will sort of say from this is if you are considering this and if you aren't going about this and if you are incorporating this type of stuff into your training, you do need to be aware of intensity in the sense of awkward or chaotic training probably isn't super suited to high intensity or maximal intensity stuff. So what I mean by that, for example, my sprints that I was talking about before, in all honesty, as much as they weren't sprints in quotation marks, they weren't super high intensity. Because I haven't done them for so long, because I was being pretty conservative and probably because I'm not very good at them anymore, they were probably moderate intensity at best. In the sense that the sprints that I did outdoors today while I was running, compared to the sprints I might do on the assault bike or the rower or something that I can do in the gym where I can go 100% absolutely push myself, the sprints outside were probably moderate most.

[13:46] And if I was getting to that stage where I was going 100% on the sprints, and if I wanted to absolutely max out my speed, accelerate into it and go 100%, yeah, I probably would want as smooth a surface as possible. Eliminate all those little bits and pieces just because if I'm doing that maximal intensity, that super high intensity, that's where we want to eliminate that type of stuff. So things don't go wrong. So I don't step in a pothole and hurt myself or whatever it may be. Or for strength. So I've used the example of, okay, with my clients, a little bit awkwardness, not a big deal. But for my clients, and the way I teach strength training is most of my clients don't typically do maximal effort training, meaning we don't do exercises where you go absolutely to the limit and you cannot do any more. Typically, what I teach my clients to do is always keep a couple of reps in the back pocket, and we use something that's called two reps in reserve, meaning if we ask someone to do 10 repetitions of an exercise, so repeat an exercise 10 times, we ask them to choose a weight or resistance, where if they really, really, really went to the limit, they could probably do 12 repetitions, but instead we just do 10. So we've always got two reps in our back pocket. Now, on top of that, we intentionally choose exercises, which do have a large degree of error. So even if they don't do it perfectly, it will still be safe because safety is always a priority.

[15:02] But in the example, if say I was asking clients to do 1RMs and max out their strength or do exercises like barbell back squats or barbell deadlifts, which if you get wrong can sometimes lead to a bit of discomfort, yeah, I might be a bit more focused on form. But we intentionally don't do exercises that have a risk of things going wrong. And we intentionally don't do that maximal effort training.

[15:24] Or for pack walking, if someone was doing normal pack walking or just a little bit heavier than they're usually carrying or whatever it may be, doing this type of uneven and stuff, it's absolutely fine because we're doing that on the trail anyway. But if someone is intentionally overloading their pack to an outrageous degree, and we don't often do this, but sometimes we might do this with our mountaineers who are doing big, big carries up to base camp or whatever it may be, and maybe they're putting an extra 10, 15, even 20 kilos on top of what they may carry and end up being an absolute turtle, there we might look for some slightly more manicured surfaces. We may use a stairmaster or at least a hill with a steady incline. So they can just concentrate on grinding out those steps as opposed to worrying about things going wrong.

[16:05] So ultimately, when it comes down to it, as a hiker and in the hiking context, if you're training, if you're a little bit awkward with training, if you're a little bit out of the usual, if you're not perfect or whatever it may be, it's not a big deal. Just think, as long as it's a low or moderate intensity exercise, you have a large degree for error. If you're doing absolutely maximal stuff, yes, we want to be closer to perfect, but it's probably not as big deal as the fitness industry may have made you to believe. So just have a think about.

[16:33] If you've been worrying about this, have a think about how this applies to your hiking, if this may be beneficial, and in what context you're looking at your training. Because it's an interesting can of worms, and it's definitely worth putting a bit of thought about too.

[16:45] Now, if you are curious about this type of training, and say you're doing something, you're like, okay, how does this apply to me?

[16:52] How does this sort of apply into my things? Am I sort of fitting into, you know, this session, is this okay to be a bit awkward, or should this session be perfect, or whatever it may be? If you're just curious about this type of training, always happy to have a chat about this type of stuff. Now, as I sort of said in the, I don't even know if I said in the previous podcast or not. Oh, I did. Yes, I did say in the previous podcast, recently we have released a brand new training for hiking community group, where basically it's an open group where people can come in, ask questions, tell stories and share their training process. So if you were curious about exploring this, if you had questions about this, if you wanted to share what you're doing and get my opinion or whatever it may be, feel free to come and join. Basically, all you need to do is go to school.com, that's school with a K, S-K-O-O-L.com slash training-for-hiking. I'll leave a link for that in the show notes below. But that's school.com with a K slash training-for-hiking. Inside that group, you can join, we can have a chat, we can share, and we can sort of bounce off each other. So if you want to learn, come check it out there. But with that being said, I really do hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I hope this has opened the eyes of a few people and maybe sort of got a few people thinking because it is a very, very interesting subject. And particularly with hikers who are a little bit different than the average gym goer, this can be really, really useful. So thank you so much for listening. Hope you have a lovely day and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.