Tips To Overcome Nerves For Multi-Day Hikes

If you have a multi-day hike coming up, and it is worrying you a bit, this episode shares a simple approach to help manage your nerves and get your mindset prepared for your adventure.

Episode Transcript:

[0:00] Right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking through a really, really effective process to help if you're a little bit nervous about an upcoming multi-day hike.

[0:13] Now, this can be really useful if you're in the situation and you have a multi-day hike or even an overnight hike coming up, and maybe you haven't actually done one of these in a while. Maybe it's been six months or a year or multiple years and you're getting a little bit worried. Or maybe you've just never done one of these before. Maybe you've done day hiking, or maybe you've done overnight hiking, but you've never really done this multi-day thing. Or maybe you're just going into a new territory, which makes you a little bit nervous or whatever it is. Today, we're going to be talking through a really simple strategy, which can help you.

[0:46] Because when it comes down to this type of stuff, multi-day hiking or overnight hiking, or whatever it may be. One of the trickiest things for this, especially for people who are doing this solo, are the unknowns. In the sense that there's so many unknowns when you go into these types of environments. You don't know what the weather's going to do. You don't know how your gear's going to go. You don't know what animals are going to be. You don't know what situations you're going to get into. And sure, we can prepare ourselves to an extent. We can make sure we have the right gear. We can make sure we're nailing our training and all of this. But all too often, there's just still so many other things out there which we're a little bit nervous about. It stresses out a little bit. It just goes through our head over and over and over. It sometimes keeps us up at night, makes us feel a bit gross, and it's just not much fun.

[1:34] So today, if you ever do feel like you're in that situation, and then things just swirling through your head, you're getting stressed, you're getting a bit anxious, or whatever it may be, for let's just say a big adventure of anyone's shape or form, this is a really simple strategy which can help. Now, what you want to do to start with this, you want to get out a pen and paper. You can do this on the computer, but I always find writing things down physically is a little bit more powerful. Now, essentially what you want to do is you just want to write a list. And you essentially want to sit down and write down every single thing which is making you nervous. Every single thing which is in your head, which you're like, I'm a little bit worried about that. You want to identify things and be specific. So it's not just saying, hey, I'm a little bit worried about the trip. What are you worried about? What is going through your head? Specifically, what is stressing you out? So this could be a million and one things, but common ones often here is blisters. Some people like, hey, I've had a bad experience with blisters in the past. I'm worried about that. Or maybe I'm worried about sleeping in a tent. I've never done that before. I haven't done that in a year or two. Maybe I'm worried about animal encounters or getting tired or super heavy rain or the mud or whatever. There could be dozens and dozens and dozens of things.

[2:52] List down every single one. Now you may not get all of these listed down initially.

[2:58] So this may be a bit of an ongoing process and you may just keep a running list. And anytime you think about something in your head, you're like, ah, yep, I'll add that to the list and write it down. But we want to get as many of these written down as possible. From there, the next step is we're going to look at each one of those individually, and you are just going to write down what makes you nervous about it. So what I mean by that is you just look at this and you sort of say, hey, why am I nervous? This doesn't have to be complicated, but it may be a case of saying with the blisters, like I am worried about the blisters that if they get sore, I'm just going to be in a lot of pain. Literally that. Or I'm worried about sleeping in a tent because I always get back pain or I'm worried I won't be able to sleep or I'm worried about X, Y, and Z or whatever it is. And literally just a really simple statement next to each of those, or like what you are actually nervous about. Then from here, we've got two more steps. Next to every single one of those, you were going to write down, this is what I've done. This is what I've identified.

[4:00] What am I going to do between now and then, or what am I going to do on the trip to try and prevent this issue becoming an issue anywhere in the present? So what I mean by that is with the blisters, You might write down, okay, I'm worried about blisters. I'm worried about getting blisters and being in pain. What are you going to do to prevent it?

[4:19] Well, are you going to wear it in your shoes? Are you going to put more walking in your shoes to make sure your feet get used to it? Are you going to do some type of blister prevention stuff and use some hiker's wool or tape up troublesome areas or get certain socks or whatever it is? There's a dozen things you could do. So just literally write down, what are you going to do to try to prevent that?

[4:36] Or if you're looking at the sleep, you might say, okay, you know what, I'm going to, if I'm worried about actually sleeping on the trail, maybe I'm just going to test all my sleep systems at home. I'm going to do that and just see how it all feels. Or maybe I'll sort of come up with a bit of a sleep routine and I'm going to use some magnesium and I'm going to do some stretching and some deep breathing to help me sleep. Or if I'm worried about animals, maybe I will make sure, I don't know, how do you deal with animals? With bears, for example, maybe I'm going to make sure that I don't have anything scented or whatever it is. Are you worried about getting tired on the trail? Okay, I'm going to come up with a snacking strategy and a pacing strategy. I'm going to stick with those. Literally just write down any ideas you can around prevention to reducing the chance of these things actually becoming an issue in the first place. And then the final step to this is you want to write down what you are going to do for each of these individual things if you get into a worst case scenario.

[5:32] So let's say your prevention doesn't work. Let's say something really, really, really like you just get into the worst case scenario. What are you going to do in that situation? If the blisters open up and they're open, they're sore, they're nasty, what are you going to do? Do you know how to treat that? Do you know how to manage that? What are you going to do?

[5:52] With the sleep, maybe you didn't sleep a wink at all the first night. It was horrible. It was awful. What are you going to do? Are you going have some caffeine to get you through the day? Are you going to maybe have an afternoon nap somewhere and set up? Whatever. What are you going to do?

[6:09] And if you encounter a bear, what are you going to do? I don't know what to do. I'm an Aussie. I don't know anything about bears, but if you're going in a bear country, you should probably know what you're going to do. If you just get to that point of exhaustion, you're like, oh my gosh, I've got no energy at all. My legs are lead. I've got nothing. What are you going to do? Are you going to have an emergency snack? Are you going to have some electrolytes? Are you going to take a rest? Whatever it is, write down an action plan for that worst case scenario for each of these. Now, this whole process, it can be really, really, really powerful. It does sound a bit simple.

[6:46] And a lot of people will be tempted just to rush through this and not really put in a huge amount of thought to it. But it can be super powerful. Because first of all, the simple act of identifying each of these issues and just taking it out of that swirl in your head where it's like, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, and it's not really crystallized. The simple act, if you just did step number one and literally identified these 10 things that are making you nervous.

[7:11] That in itself is super powerful. But then beyond that, like being able to plan for each of these things and say, okay, if this happens, I'm going to do this. Again, it can just take it out of your head. You can actually look at it and be like, yeah, cool. I'm feeling a bit more confident. Yes, I don't want these things to happen, but if they do, I know what to do. And on top of that, the beauty of this is it will highlight gaps in your knowledge and in your preparation. Because if one of your issues was getting tired, and you're like, I'm really, really worried about it. But then you're like, I actually don't know what I need to do to prevent getting tired. Or I don't know what I need to do if I do get absolutely exhausted. Well, this is something you need to figure out before you go. Or if you are like on the bear situation, say, you know, you're like, you know what, I actually don't know what I'm supposed to do if I can't encounter a bear. Well, you better learn that or whatever it is. So if you go through this process and you don't have answers to prevention or the worst case scenario,

[8:06] that's what you need to figure out. And again, once you can figure these things out, you've identified the unknown, you've identified your weaknesses, and you can figure this out, that can again not only take a lot of stress out of you right now, but if you do get in that situation, give you a much better chance of that not being an absolute nightmare.

[8:24] So there we go. That's the strategy. Identify what's causing you a worry. Plan out prevention, plan out your worst case scenario. Take a bit of time with this. As I said, it may be a bit of a running thing, like it may not all happen at once because other things will spring to mind. You just want to add them to the list, but this can be just such a useful thing. And then, as I said, if you identify anything you don't know about, get learning, figure it out, get yourself sorted, and it really will go a long way. So ultimately, if you are a hiker and you are looking at a multi-day adventure or realistically any adventure which is making you nervous, give this strategy a go it can be super super powerful and the last thing i will say you know if you're looking at this you're like okay cool i'm doing this but in all honesty i'm aware that my physical preparation is not where i need to be well reach out to me let's have a chat if you do want to learn a little bit about our online personal training for hikers go to summitstrength.com.au slash online on there you can learn about what we do for hikers learn about how we help them and if it sounds like something you want to explore a little bit more there's a link on that page where you can book a free call with our team and we can have a chat from there. So if you want to learn a little bit about that, go to summitstrength.com.au slash online and we can take it from there. So with that being said, I'm going to wrap things up here. So thank you so much for listening. I really hope you've enjoyed today's episode. I hope it helps a few people and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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