Training For Elevation Hiking (Without Any Mountains)

“I have a big elevation hike coming up. But where I live is completely flat. How can I prepare?”

This is one of the most common issues I hear from hikers on a daily basis. But the good news is, it is entirely possible to prepare your body and mind for a big elevation change hike, even if where you live is as flat as a pancake.
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And inside the video, we explore a range of training strategies a hiker can use to help with this. 

How To Train For Elevation Hiking (Without Any Hills) 

In this video, we cover:
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• The biggest mistake I see from hikers trying to train for a big elevation hike
• Three areas of cardio training that can be incredibly useful for hikers preparing for elevation
• Why strength training is so beneficial for hikers facing lots of elevation change (and the two types of training crucial for helping your performance in the mountains)
• A range of simple workouts a hiker can use to prepare for elevation (even if you don't live near any mountains or big hills)
• How we can 'fill the gap' between our general training and the demands of the mountains
• Two areas of mobility that can be useful to help during elevation hiking
• A few great exercises to help stability and balance on steep descents
• A simple process to improve breathing control when on steep climbs

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​Get access to our free 'Getting Started With Strength Training For HIking' mini-course here:
​https://summitstrength.com.au/strength-mini-course

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https://www.summitstrength.com.au/online.html

Video Chapters

0:09 
Introduction to Elevation Hiking Training
1:46 
Understanding Elevation Changes
3:38 
Cardiovascular Preparation Strategies
17:59 
Muscular Preparation for Hikers
23:51 
Endurance and Strength Training
28:00 
Specific Exposure Techniques
38:14 
Balance and Stability Training
44:17 
Mobility and Flexibility Essentials
48:10 
Breathing Control for Hiking
51:50 
Summarizing Your Training Plan
55:19 
Personalized Training Support

Video Transcript:

[0:00] So in this video, we are diving into how to train for elevation hiking if you

[0:06] don't have any mountains or major hills to train on. Now, this is coming from probably the most common question I get from hikers and mountaineers all around the world, in the sense people ask me, hey, I have a hike coming up which has a lot of elevation change up and down coming up, but where I live is completely flat. You know, what can I do to prepare? And this is a really, really, really common issue that we hear from so many people around the world, because unfortunately, when it comes down to it, the majority of information out there online around training and physical preparation for hiking comes from hikers who have easy access to hills, who live near the mountains. They put out this content saying, hey, just go out and hike and get lots of exposure to this. Just go and climb up a nice long hill or whatever it may be. And that's all well and good when you have access to these things. But if it isn't excessive, if you live somewhere which is quite flat.

[1:03] It can get a little bit tricky. It can get a little bit confusing and it can get a little bit stressful. But the good news is when it comes down to this, it is entirely possible to prepare your body and your mind for a big elevation change hike, even if where you live is absolutely as flat as a pancake. And this is one of the things that we at Summit Strength help hikers with every single day and every single week and we've helped hundreds and hundreds of hikers and mountaineers over the years with this exact situation. You just need to be smart with your training, get creative in certain areas and make sure that you're honing your training in to the right areas which are best going to help you in the mountains.

[1:44] So essentially that's what we're going to be diving into today. As what we're going to be talking about is some ideas and some strategies around how a hiker can prepare for the demands of elevation hiking.

[1:55] Now, to be clear, what we're talking about today when I'm talking about elevation is we're just purely talking about going up and going down. So the changes of up and down, up and down, up and down. We're not explicitly talking about high altitude today because I know a lot of people use those terms interchangeably, but we're just talking about up and down. So this doesn't mean you have to be in altitude. You could be going down the canyon. You could be doing absolutely anything. A lot of the information between the two would be useful for a high altitude hike because you're going to be in mountains anywhere, but that's not the context of the word that we're using today, just to be clear.

[2:28] Now, what we're going to be covering today, it is going to be a bit of a long video because what I've realized is I talk about this subject a lot. I talk about training for elevation hiking in lots of different contexts, but a lot of the information I have is in different places. And there isn't really one central hub of me taking top to bottom all the different things we're going to be doing. So today I'm probably going to be covering 90, 95% of what I typically recommend for hikers with us type of stuff, just so it can all be in one place for your convenience. Now, what we're going to be covering today, a few different topics. Number one, cardiovascular preparations. So, what you can do on the cardio side of things to prepare for this. Number two, muscular preparation. So, what you can do for your muscles. Number three, specific exposure. Number four, a few different extra strategies you can consider. And then at the end, we're going to put all of this together and teach you how to actually put it together in a week. So as you go through, if you do start to feel like maybe I'm a little bit overwhelmed with this information, maybe start to think like, oh my gosh, how the heck does this all come together? How can I actually put this all together without it turning into a full-time job? Just know I'm going to cover that at the end and make sure it is all nice and crystal clear around how to put it together.

[3:39] So with that being said, let's start on cardiovascular preparations. Now in this section, we're going to be covering a quick little primer on energy systems because that's really, really important. We're going to be covering the biggest mistake I see from hikers when it comes down to this type of training for elevation hiking. And then the number three, three different areas of cardiovascular training, which I think a hiker should consider in this context.

[4:02] So cardiovascular training, so your cardio, is always going to be the single most important aspect of training for a hiker. Yes, I talk about a bunch of other things. I talk about strength training. I talk about recovery mobility. I talk about all this other stuff in my content, but realistically, cardio is going to be the main thing. But to do this best and best develop yourself cardiovascularly, we kind of want to take this a little bit further than the old advice of just go out and hike, which so many people still say, which doesn't really help. Or just going down your local gym and jumping into a HIIT class or doing high intensity classes online or something like that. Not all cardio is created equal, realistically. And to ensure we're best preparing ourselves for the demands of the mountain. We want to ensure that the cardio we are doing is actually targeting the right areas because different things of cardio will target different things. So.

[4:55] To give a bit of context to this, we need to do a quick primer in regards to energy systems. So our energy systems are the different systems in our body which literally create energy, energy for movement, energy for living, energy for exercise and hiking for our respects here.

[5:10] Now, on one side of things, we have our aerobic energy system. Now, this particular energy system, what it does is it produces energy while using oxygen as a fuel source, while using oxygen as part of the process. This particular energy system, it's quite slow. It's designed to produce energy for lower intensity stuff because it's not very quick. It takes a little while to produce energy, but it's very, very fuel efficient. It's slow, it's steady, and it's really, really fuel efficient, meaning it doesn't use a huge amount of our energy reserves. It doesn't use a huge amount of our fuel reserves to create that energy, which is really, really relevant.

[5:47] Now, in hiking, we are doing this. Hiking is an aerobic-based sport. Our aerobic energy system, very, very relevant because we're going for hours and hours and hours for long periods of time. Now, on the flip side of things, we have what we call our anaerobic energy systems. There's a few different systems in this sort of context, but we're just going to call them all the anaerobic energy systems. What these particular systems do is they produce energy without using oxygen as part of this process. So the difference between this and the aerobic energy system is they're quick. The aerobic energy system is slow, it's steady, it's efficient. The anaerobic energy systems are for when we need energy quickly, when we need energy to do higher intensity stuff. If we're going to jump or sprint or run or whatever may be, they're very, very quick. But the flip side of this, they sacrifice speed for efficiency. And these particular energy systems, they're not designed to go for long periods of time because they use a lot of fuels.

[6:45] Comparatively to produce one unit of energy, our aerobic energy system will use much less fuel comparatively to our anaerobic energy system. So they just churn through a lot of fuel because they're very quick. Now, on top of that, as part of this quicker process, they'd also produces what we call waste products, which aren't too scary. They're a natural part of the body. But what these waste products do is they produce fatigue. So we can't maintain these anaerobic energy systems for super, super long periods of time because these waste products build up. We churn through our fuel and we start to get timed. Very, very simple. Now, that's very, very, very, very basic, but hopefully you get the idea behind this. Aerobic energy system, low intensity, very efficient. Anaerobic energy system, high intensity, not quite as efficient. Now, the biggest mistake we often see from hikers when it comes down to this elevation change hiking is just basically just putting too much focus into high intensity training, into training which is focused on those anaerobic energy systems. Because the thought process often goes like this, and I've literally seen people write, supposed training experts, write this in articles and talk about this on podcasts, drives me a little bit mental. The thought process is, look, when I hike up hills, I get really out of breath and I get really tired. When I do high intensity interval training, so really short, sharp, high intensity stuff, I get really out of breath and I get tired. So the thought process is if I just do lots of high intensity interval training, if I do lots of burpees, lots of jumping around, lots of sprinting, lots of running, all of this, this will help me on the climbs.

[8:14] This may help a bit. It's not so saying that HIIT is the worst thing in the world. It will help you to a degree. But in all honesty, this is a little bit backwards. This is a little bit of a mistake. Because if we are spending all of our time on this super high-intensity training, if we're spending all of this time doing HIIT, doing CrossFit, doing sprinting, whatever it may be, what we're going to do is we're going to train and develop those anaerobic energy systems. And what we're going to do is we're going to become more and more reliant on those because we're training them, we're developing them, we're practicing them, we're getting good at that type of stuff and our body is getting better at that. And we'll get more and more and more reliant on that. Now the tricky thing is, as we said before, these energy systems are a little bit limited. They're not designed to sustain you for energy for hours and hours and hours. They're realistically only designed to sustain you for multiple minutes at a time at a higher intensity. So when we're just focusing our training on this, it is a little bit backwards because it doesn't really mimic the demands of hiking. And even when we're doing super steep climbs while hiking, it's usually more than two minutes. It's usually more than three minutes. It might be five minutes, 10 minutes, 20, 30, 60, whatever. Long story short, training predominantly, that is those anaerobic energy systems.

[9:30] Sequence a better approach to this is what we want to do is put much more time and attention into training our aerobic energy system if we can develop this it will allow us to go longer and longer and longer with less fatigue on top of that is if we can develop this and grow this and get it more efficient we can actually go at higher intensities meaning we can do steeper climbs and quicker climbs while predominantly using this system and that is really significant because if we can get more reliant on this system, if we can grow it to a point where we can use it almost exclusively when we're climbing, that's the dream. That's amazing because this is super efficient. It's never quite as black or white, say 100% aerobic and 100% anaerobic. However, the more and more we can rely on this, the better.

[10:18] Now, when developing the aerobic energy system, realistically, I recommend hikers focus on two areas of this. So we've got our aerobic energy system, then we can break it down into two different divisions. We've got aerobic capacity and aerobic power, which I'll break down in a second. Now, aerobic capacity is essentially the maximal capacity of our aerobic energy system to produce energy. So, its ability just to go and go and go and go. Now, this is the single most important aspect of fitness for any hiker, regardless of whether you're going on an up and down hike, a super flat hike, literally anything else, this is the single most important aspect of fitness for anyone. Now, it is best developed through long periods of low-intensity, long-duration exercise. So, what this might look like is just your hiking, literally getting out on the trail and getting out for long periods of time. It might just be load-a-pack walking, throwing on a pack, walking around the local neighborhood. It might be cycling, elliptical, row-a, swimming, anything that you can sustain for long periods of time at a low intensity. Now, for this type of stuff, for this aerobic capacity development, it doesn't matter if you have a huge amount of up and down. It doesn't matter if you have a huge elevation. And I often get asked questions from hikers saying, look, I've got this big elevation hike coming up. I don't have a huge amount of mountains or hills to train on.

[11:35] Is hiking on the flat going to be beneficial for me? And the answer to that is yes, because even if you don't have a huge amount of elevation, if we can get out and train this aerobic energy system and this aerobic capacity just through accumulating long periods of time, this is going to be incredibly beneficial. So yes, hiking, even if it's flat, is going to be useful.

[11:55] Now, the key to this type of exercise is essentially we want to keep it low intensity for the most part, meaning we want to keep it at a casual intensity and we just go for just distance and duration, go and go and go. Because if we turn this into a race and we end up just pushing and pushing and pushing and we get our heart rate super, super high and we get really huffed and puffed or whatever may be, again, this may be shifting the emphasis of this training slightly towards that higher intensity stuff. It's what we don't really want. So a general simple way to measure this is if you're going out on one of these sessions, keep the pace slow. And typically a really simple way of looking at this is sticking to nose breathing pace, meaning a walking or cycling or go on the elliptical at a pace where you can comfortably breathe in and out through your nose. Very, very simple. Now, if nose breathing doesn't really work for you, if you have a really blocked nose or a small nose, or you just don't like that, another option is you can just go at a pace where you can maintain a conversation without getting too huffed and puffed in between. So if you're walking with a friend, you could just chat and chat and chat and chat all day without actually having to huff and puff in between names, in between words. If you can stick to that, pretty good. Now, in those examples, hiking, loaded pack walking, cycling, elliptical rower, all that's pretty doable. You probably can't really do this when swimming, but for all the other examples, it works well enough.

[13:12] Or alternatively, if you're using a heart rate monitor, which I know a lot of people do, you can just stick to zone two. For whatever your heart rate monitor says, zone two, stick to that. Happy days are pretty good. So that's aerobic capacity.

[13:24] Now, on the flip side of things, we've got what's called aerobic power. So this is another aspect of our aerobic energy system. And this should read, sorry, it says aerobic capacity there, should read aerobic power. But essentially, aerobic power is the maximal intensity our body can sustain while still predominantly using the aerobic energy system. So that distinction is important. It's not the absolute maximal intensity our body can go at, because if we go absolutely as quick as we can without thinking about anything else, that will end up being predominantly anaerobic stuff is what we don't really want to do. But this aerobic power is the maximal intensity our body can sustain while predominantly using that aerobic energy system.

[14:05] That's important. Now, this is really, really relevant for us because it can help us on those steep uphills. So if we can develop this and get more comfortable and practice this, we can again work at higher and higher intensities, but while still maintaining this aerobic energy system. Very important. So the way we develop this, there's lots and lots and lots of different ways of going about it. But what I typically recommend, very, very simple approach, is doing some very particular interval training. So interval training is going far slow, far slow, far slow. Not all interval training is created equal. To best develop aerobic power, we want to follow a very particular approach. Now, this is really, really simple. The only drawback to this is you probably do need a bit of cardiovascular equipment. You need like a stationary bike or an elliptical or a rower, a sled. You could possibly do this on a set of stairs or a hill if you have access to those, but something where you can basically just go quite quick without having to worry about your footing or going things wrong or whatever it may be.

[15:01] Now, essentially what you're going to do, let's use the stationary bike as an example. Hop on the bike. You're going to go really, really quick for three minutes at a time.

[15:09] Three minutes on the clock, go really, really quick, get yourself quite huffed and puffed. After the three minutes, you're going to rest for 90 seconds, have complete rest, just recover, just chill out. And then you can do that about seven to 10 times. Now you might be asking yourself like, okay, Rowan, you just said before high intensity stuff, not so good. What are we doing here? Well, the idea behind this is because we are going for three minutes at a time of pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, this is going to be predominantly aerobic because that's just the way the energy systems work. If we were doing 10 seconds or 20 seconds or 45 seconds or 60 seconds of really high intensity, it's a little bit different. So the idea behind this is accumulating that quick pace at a slightly longer period. Very, very, very useful. Now, this type of interval training, in my opinion, is just going to be so much more relevant and beneficial for hikers. And I get a lot of my hikers doing this to really, really good effect.

[16:02] Now, let's talk about higher intensities. Because you might be thinking like, okay, cool, aerobic capacity makes sense. I'll do lots of hiking. Maybe I'll give those aerobic power stuff a go. But what about the really high intensity stuff? I quite enjoy that, getting really huffed and puffed, pushing really hard. Where does that stuff fit in? And realistically, it's not the most important thing in the world.

[16:22] But if you do enjoy this, if you do like this, doing some small doses of this type of short, sharp sprint training can be useful. because purely just getting to these speeds, getting to these intensities where you're really getting out of breath and your heart rate's really through the roof, whatever it may be. Again, it's not 100% necessary, but it can be useful to help prepare the body and the mind just to feel a bit more comfortable in these situations. So if you ever do get to that point and you're like, oh my gosh, like I've got this massive climb and everything's going wrong and I'm stressing out and my breathing's getting out of control and this and that. If you have exposed the body to this a little bit in your training, it can sometimes help you feel a bit more comfortable. Now, we don't need to do a huge amount of time with this. Realistically, we want to keep this short and sweet, and it's just tiny, tiny, tiny little bit is what you'd be looking at. So a few examples of this might be like, okay, if I'm doing a strength workout at a gym, maybe at the end of the strength workout, I'll just go on a stationary bike, and I'll do five minutes of 30 seconds really, really, really, really quick, 30 seconds slow, and literally do that five times. That's five minutes, gets exposed to this type of thing, and away you go. Or you could literally just do one 30-second sprint at the end of a workout. Just hop on and just go everything you've got. And you'll get yourself really out of breath. You can walk out of the gym. You're like, cool, I got a little bit of exposure there.

[17:35] Or it may be a case if you are out on your hiking trails, you might just every once in a while come across a bit of a tougher section. And when I say tougher, maybe something with a bit of an incline, if you obviously have access to that, and just really, really push it. Push it to the point where you get quite huffed and bucked. You don't have to do this all the time and ruin your hiking and turn it into a race, but just every once in a while may be useful. This type of stuff, just little bits and pieces of it, it can sometimes be a nice addition.

[17:59] So we've talked about cardio, aerobic capacity, aerobic power, little bit of that sprint training. Let's talk about muscles now, muscular preparation. To complement our cardio training, we also want to think about what are we doing for our muscles? What are we doing for our joints? What are we doing on that side of things as well? This is ultimately where strength training comes into the mix. Now, strength training is such a massive benefit for hikers. And if you will have an elevation change hike coming up, you 100%, I strongly recommend you do it. Now, when it comes down to this type of training, and we'll dive over this in a sec, but there's two main elements of strength training we kind of want to be hitting, and two main elements of strength training which are pretty relevant for hikers. That is muscular strength and muscular endurance. Now, muscular strength, what is this? It is essentially the maximal amount of force a muscle can produce. Pretty straightforward. Your muscles can produce force. Muscular strength is the maximal amount of force that muscle can produce. Now, while many hikers on first thought, they'll be like, well, does a hiker really need this type of thing? Does it really need strength? Does it really need this type of thing? Because I'm never really going to that maximal intensity in regards to muscles. Developing this can just be incredibly, incredibly, incredibly beneficial for any hiker. Now, in the elevation change context, what we're talking about today, going up and down hills, this is ultimately best described through the concept of strength reserve. So I'm going to give you an example and kind of put this into context of why this may be useful.

[19:24] Now, strength reserve is essentially the difference between your maximal strength, the absolute limit, maximal amount that that muscle can produce, and the strength needed for a given task. So we use an example of like, say you're doing a step on the trail.

[19:39] If you did a maximal, maximal, maximal amount of a step, that will be loading up a huge amount of weight on your body and just doing so much that you can only do one step and you could literally do no more. Then in the hiking context, the actual strength needed for that task is literally to step up with whatever your hiking pack is. Obviously, there's a bit of a difference there. That's what your strength reserve is. Now, to use an example of why strength can be beneficial for hiking, here's the example. Put yourself in the shoes. You go out for a hike and you come across a steep section on the hike where you're going up a steep set of stairs. Every single step you take going up those stairs takes about 15% of the maximal force of your quadriceps, like the front of the thighs. Every single step, it takes 15% of the maximal force you have. Now, if it's taking 15% of exactly your maximal force, step after step after step, if you do 10, that'll probably be okay. 20, probably okay. 30, 40, 50, 60, 100. You're probably going to get pretty tired pretty quickly. You might come back from that high and you're like, oh, that sucked. I did not enjoy that. That was a struggle. So you're like, you know what? I'm actually going to go to the gym and I'm going to train for six weeks and develop my strength. For six weeks, I'm going to follow a nice, well-rounded program week by week, make myself a little bit stronger.

[20:57] Then, six weeks later, you go out and do exactly the same hike again. You come across that steep section of stairs, and this time, I've increased the strength of my quadriceps. So, every single time I take a step on that section, it requires 10% of my maximal force. That, in itself, 10 steps, 20 steps, 50 steps, 100 steps, that's going to be significantly easier for you, both in every single step and also the accumulation of fatigue. So, this is kind of the example of why strength can just be so useful. Now, on top of that, beyond strength reserve, working on muscular strength is really, really beneficial for reducing the risk of aches and pains and injuries. One of the most common issues that hikers have with these elevation change hikes is knee pain on descents. Building up the strength in the joints and the muscles can significantly reduce that pain.

[21:46] Improving stability and confidence, like purely even if you do no specific balance training in your week, just getting stronger, working through strength training can play a big, big, big role in improving your stability. And also just reducing muscle burn on uphills and those jelly legs on descents, pretty common. Increasing your strength can reduce this. So ultimately, strength training can be pretty beneficial. Now, muscular strength is best developed through higher load, lower repetition strength training. So strength training is like going to some squats or some glute bridges or some pushups or something like that. It could be with your body weight. It could be with bands. It could be with dumbbells or machines or whatever it may be. There's a million and one ways of going about strength training, but essentially what we want to be looking at if we're looking at this strength stuff is higher load, lower repetition. So what this might look like is if you're a beginner, if you're pretty fresh in regards to strength training, you haven't done a huge amount, this may involve doing like eight to 10 repetitions at a time. So what that might look like is if you're say doing a, let's sort of say a step up, step up, super simple.

[22:46] A step up, if you just did with body weight, you might be able to do 15 or 20 repetitions or something. Then you hold a couple of dumbbells and you're like, oh, I can actually only do about 12 repetitions. And you're like, well, maybe I'll make that a little bit heavier. So I'll hold a couple of heavier dumbbells. And this time I can only really do eight repetitions. Then I need a rest. That's kind of what we're looking at between eight to 10 repetitions before you start to fatigue. And you do that, you rest, you do it again, you rest, and so forth. If you're kind of intermediate, if you've been strength training for like a year or two, you're pretty confident with this, you may do a little bit heavier. You may choose a weight, which you can limit yourself to like six to eight repetitions. So a bit heavier, a bit more challenging. You can kind of really, really put some oomph into it. And if you're really advanced, if you've been training for years and years and years, you've got a background in powerlifting and this and that, you may do really, really heavy, like one, two, three, four, five, six. This stuff's really beneficial. It's not particularly necessary for everyone, but can be useful. So depending on where you're up there. Now you may be asking yourself, all right, Rowan, cool.

[23:41] Like what exercise should I do in? How many time should I be doing it? How do I actually make a workout, this and that? I'll go into all of that in a moment around how you could put this together, but this is just the sort of context on strength.

[23:51] But before I get to that, let's talk about endurance. Now, endurance, muscular endurance, muscular strength, they're kind of two sides of the same coin. Muscular endurance is the ability of your muscles to produce a moderate amount of force again and again and again and again and again. So strength without maximal force, endurance is a moderate amount of force repeatedly. Now, this can ultimately just help us sustain output and reduce burn on the legs on the uphill, jelly legs on the descents, all of that. So once you get that kind of tougher climbing or tougher descents, just the ability if you just do that again and again and again and again and again, obviously pretty relevant for hikers. Now endurance, when we're talking about endurance in the strength work of that concept, context, is best developed through lower load, higher repetition strength training. So typically, we're using the step-up example before. What we want to do is choose a weight or resistance where we could probably do anywhere from 15 to 20 repetitions at a time and something like that. So we're not using quite as much load, not using quite as much weight, not using quite as difficult, but we're just doing higher repetition and getting that burn and working through it.

[24:57] Now, one thing I'll be clear about on this is this is in the strength training example. In the hiking context, the idea between muscular endurance is a little bit different. Because if you talk to someone who's a personal trainer in a local gym, or if you talk to a bodybuilder, or if you talk to whatever it may be, they may classify endurance as doing like 15 repetitions of something like we just did. And they say that is muscular endurance and that's kind of what you need. But in the hiking context, muscular endurance is maybe the ability to go and do hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of steps. It's a little bit different in different contexts. Now, I wouldn't expect you to be doing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reps in your strength workouts, because that can get a little bit boring and a little bit out of hand, but we'll go into it in a moment, like how we can kind of fill that gap. And it kind of falls into what we call specific exposure workouts. And we'll get into that in a moment.

[25:47] Now, strength and endurance. How do you actually go about putting these two things together? Because they're both important, they're both valuable. How do you actually put them together? There's lots and lots and lots of different ways you can go about training these over a longer period of time and sort of figuring things out. Some very complicated, some very simple, whatever it may be. For me, I like to keep things as simple as possible. Here's a simple rule of thumb. Essentially, if you're going out to do a strength workout, and so you go into the gym or doing a workout at home, you can just split your workout evenly between these two things. So what I mean is if you're doing a 45-minute workout, you might spend five minutes warming up. You might spend 20 minutes doing the strength stuff, this slower, this lower repetition, more challenging stuff, and spend 20 minutes of that. Then you might do 20 minutes of the endurance stuff and higher repetition, this and that. Super simple way of breaking things up. You don't have to have a huge amount of knowledge on how to figure that out, and that works out pretty well.

[26:37] Now, to be honest, there is a lot, lot, lot more which goes into creating an effective strength training program for hiking. Because I've just sort of said, hey, do lower reps or higher reps. Most people kind of know this already to a degree, but there's a lot more that goes into it. And you're going to figure about out how to actually structure a workout and how to make sure you're covering all your bases. You've got to figure out what exercises you're doing, how many times you're doing it, how to actually progress it over time and all of that. In all honesty, this video is going to go for long enough as it is, and I'm not going to harp on about strength training too much longer. So, if you did need help with this, if you weren't sure about all of that, how to choose exercise or whatever it may be, I have something that can help you out here. Basically, I have a free mini course around getting started with strength training for hiking. So inside this course, it'll dive into a little bit more about the benefits of strength training for hiking, even outside of this elevation hiking context. It talks about the principles of effective strength training. So important things you need to keep in mind to get the most out of this type of training. And also it will teach you how to create your own strength workouts. So it will give you exercise examples, it will give you templates and you can literally just copy and paste things into those templates to create your own workouts. Now, if you did want to sign up, this is completely free. You can go to summitstrength.com.au slash strength dash mini dash course. Check that out if you're interested in strength training. It's a nice little starter place there can get you going.

[28:00] Next up, let's talk about specific exposure, because basic cardio and strength and endurance work is a really, really good start. Definitely all hikers should be doing this. But if we're preparing for a hike up in the mountains, and this is all we focus on, sometimes there can be a little bit of a gap between that physical readiness that we need for, that we've gotten ourselves ready for in our general training, and what we actually need on the trail. So this is where kind of specific exposure comes in, where we can kind of expose the muscles, the joints, and the body in general, just to going up the demands of going up and down in a particular way.

[28:39] Now, in this situation, in a normal situation, if you had a big elevation change hike coming up and you live next to a mountain, you would just literally do this on your training hikes. You would go out hiking, get lots of exposure to this, and it kind of naturally falls into filling this gap between the two things. But if you don't have easy access to this, is what we're talking about today, we want to get a little bit more creative with some different accessible methods of training to simulate these demands as much as we can. So we want to think, okay, my hike, I'm going to be lots of up and down. My training has kind of got me to this point. What can I do that will sort of fill the gap in between, which will kind of just be a half step between the general training and between the full-on hiking. So this is where this comes. Now, the specific exposure is going to be come in two tiers. Tier number one is if you potentially have access to this stuff, go right ahead, this is the best stuff you can do. Tier number two is like, look, if that stuff you still don't have access to, the tier one stuff, then here are some other options.

[29:34] So tier number one, you know, some people may be in the situation where they're like, you know what, I don't have any big mountains or big hills to train on, but maybe locally, if I look around, if I live in the city or if I look around locally, I may find some smaller hills or stairs which I can train on locally. This might involve just finding a local hill, finding a steep driveway, finding a set of stairs in your neighborhood, in an office block, in a shopping mall, apartment block, sports stadium, any of these options. Sometimes if you really sit down and think about it and you look around your local area, you may be surprised about the options that do come out. So if you have the opportunity to find any of these things to train on, this is kind of your first bet. This is going to be really, really useful and this is going to sort of help prepare the body for that up and down.

[30:18] These don't have to be super long. Sometimes when people are thinking about this, they're like, well, I can't find a big hill that'll take me 10 minutes to climb, so what's the point? But realistically, for this type of stuff, anything, if you do have the opportunity to find something that will take you a minute or more to climb, that can be really, really good. I've even had hikers who literally will only have a few flights of stairs or two flights of stairs in their house, and they'll do this type of session on that. Obviously, that's a bit boring. Obviously, that's not a huge amount of fun, but it can be doable. So, you can look into that. Now, if you're going down this route, you can do these workouts very, very simply. You might find that set of stairs in the shopping mall. You might sit on time after 20 to 40 minutes and literally just go up and down, up and down, up and down for that period. Literally just resting when you need. So, once you start to get a little bit tired, you can just rest. And then the main important thing is just making sure you're conservative with downhills. So, if you're going downhill repeatedly, sometimes that can get a little bit uncomfortable on the knees or whatever it may be. So, take that slow, take that steady. The key to this is each time you do it, you just want to progress it in one way or another. Each week, you might add a little bit more time. You might do 20 minutes, then 25, then 30, then 35. That works out pretty well. Or you might add some pack weight. You may keep this at 20 minutes each week, but do body weight and then five kilos and six kilos and seven kilos. Or you might bump up intensity. You might do two weeks of really slow and steady, two weeks of moderate intensity where you push it, three weeks, two weeks where you really, really push it or whatever it may be. There's lots of different ways of going on about this, but this is all pretty self-explanatory and we kind of want to fit that in if we can.

[31:47] But what if you don't have access to this, which a lot of people don't? If you're like, well, yeah, cool, that makes sense. But realistically, there are no stairs nearby. I just have zero access to this. There are no hills nearby. I live in the middle of Texas and there's nothing around or whatever it may be. Then we can go down to these tier two workouts. Now, these workouts are designed to replicate as many of the demands as possible for this hiking, but it probably won't be all. Because if we're going up and down a natural hill, we'll get that uphill, we'll get that downhill, happy days. If we're doing these tier two ones, typically we can get some good options for training on the way up, but then usually we don't get a huge amount of great options for going on the way down. So that's kind of a bit of a limitation, but you deal with it as you can. Now, some simple options here, I'm just going to run you through like six different options, which you can wrap your head around, a box step workout. So this is really accessible. You can do this at home, you can do this in a park, you can do this in a gym. All you're going to do is just find a box or a step or a counter or something like that, which is kind of like three, you know, just relatively low. All you're going to do is step up and down, up and down, up and down for extended periods of time. The box doesn't have to be super high that you get tired really, really quickly, but it wants to be, you know, quite small and you're just going up and down, up and down, up and down. A simple way of approaching this that I get a lot of my hikers to start with is just step for four minutes. You literally go up and down, up and down, up and down for four minutes, have a minute off, and then just repeat that a bunch of times.

[33:14] Does get a little bit boring, but if you are trying to prepare for this type of thing, and this is what you have access to, can work out pretty well. Only thing to be aware of with this workout is you just need to be careful with the down step. So a lot of people get a little bit lazy. They step up and then just like fall down and they step up and then just kind of jolt down. And that can end up being a little bit uncomfortable if you're just doing that a lot of period of time. So if you do this, just slow and steady all the way up, all the way down, keep in control. Another option, you know, a lot of people lean towards, and this is pretty self-explanatory. If you have gym access or a local gym, you might use a stairmaster or a step machine or a Jacob's ladder or something like that. An example of this, you might climb for four minutes or six minutes or eight minutes at a time, have a minute or two rest and go again. Pretty straightforward. A lot of people are aware of that. Or it might be treadmill incline walking, where again, if you have a treadmill at a gym or if you have one line around at home and just do an extended walking, you might do eight minutes, two minutes off. You might do 15 minutes or 30 minutes. So some people even do full 60 minute sessions. Again, this can be useful. It can work out pretty well. Another option is sled pushing. So a lot of gyms these days will have sleds or you can make your own. You can push something back and forth on a local oval and literally just pushing back and forth with a sled for four minutes or six minutes or eight minutes. So it's not a full sprint, but it's a slow and steady push. This can work out pretty well.

[34:28] Another option. So they're probably four good options. Now these next two, like they can work. They're probably not ideal, but they can work. Is super high rep strength training. So this particular stuff it's looking at that endurance work we were doing before but basically enhancing that turn into a really really really endurancey workout so an example of this might be like doing 20 glute bridges and then immediately after 20 squats then immediately after 20 single legged deadlifts on each leg and then immediately after 20 step-ups on each leg all of this stuff should be pretty easy but it's just rep up to rep up to rep up to rep and in that situation that's 20 40 60 80 there's 120 20 reps in a set that can work it's not ideal but it can work and then finally another option and this is something a lot of people haven't explored before is doing some heavy resistance cardio so this typically really just needs like a stationary bike you can sometimes do this on elliptical depending what you have access to but essentially something that just does have resistance styles and is cyclical so cyclical is the right word so like not like a rower where you go and then you come back and go and then come back, but something that's going around in a circle. And essentially what you do here is you basically hop on the bike, you ramp up the resistance to the point where you're kind of just like riding through mud and you just sustain that. And essentially you want to get a resistance where it kind of limits you between about 30 to 40 RPM. So really heavy, you get a leg burn and just sustain it.

[35:53] Each of these workouts, as you can see, they're close enough to this elevation hiking in one way or another. Each of these workouts are limited in one way or another, and most of them aren't really going to get exposed to that downhill, but they can do the job. The keys to this type of stuff is, as with any type of training, you want to plan it out. You want to make sure you do a workout for anywhere from three, four, maybe up to six weeks at a time. Each week you do it, make it a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder, a little bit harder. And then once you've done it after six weeks or whenever you get bored of it, change it to another workout. So I'm not saying do a box step workout for 12 weeks in a row because that will just end up being super boring, but vary. Get different exposures to different things you have access to. If you're in the situation where you literally only have one of these things available, then yeah, you may do it for a while. So I do have clients at the moment who are stuck indoors for the winter and don't have gym access and literally all they have is box step workouts to do because they've got an elevation high coming up in a month or so, yeah, you may just do that over and over and over, but if not, get a bit of a variation. So those are our specific exposure options.

[37:00] Now, if you are using these tier two options, as I said, they are a little bit limited for the downhills. One thing you really, really do need to make sure is you are absolutely nailing your strength training because most of those workouts, they aren't going to help a huge amount on the downhills. And if you do have that gap that you need to prepare for the downhills on the trail, we need to make sure you are nailing your strength training. That's what's going to fill the gap in regards to preparedness for that type of stuff. So, just keep that in mind. Now, there are many, many, many different ways you can go about these workouts. As you saw, I kind of gave the bare bones explanation for each of those because there's just many different ways of adapting this type of workout to what you kind of want. Now, you could keep these like slow and steady and use them as aerobic capacity workouts. So, you could do the stepping workouts are just working at that nose breathing pace really, really nice and slow and steady. Or you could use that interval structure I used before and use them as those aerobic power intervals and do those three minutes of climbing quite quick and then rest. And you could do that. You could use variable speeds. You could go faster and slower and faster and slower. There's lots and lots and lots of different ways you can go about this. And in all honesty, you can get creative. It is up to you how you want to approach this and what you want to get out of these particular workouts. But we do want to just make sure we are getting some exposure to those movements so the body and the mind gets used to it.

[38:15] So now we've covered cardio, strength, and specific exposure. Let's now go into a few little extras you can look at. So let's talk about balance and stability, because when it comes down to it, like a lot of hikers out there do struggle with balance on steep descents. They get that jelly legs, they start feeling really wobbly, they start feeling unconfident, and it ends up just being an absolute ordeal, and they don't have a huge amount of fun. Now, in the grand scheme of things, if you are just doing strength training and strength development, and if you're doing fatigue reduction, meaning you're improving your fitness, improving your endurance, improving your strength, and that's minimizing the risk of fatigue in these situations, those in itself will make a massive difference here because strength development will enhance your stability, will enhance your strength anyway. Fatigue reduction will reduce the likelihood of that jelly legs and that unsteadiness. That will make a massive difference here already. So not everyone has to do this specific balance training, but if you are worried about this, doing a little bit extra can help.

[39:09] Now when it comes down to balance training a lot of people just get way too overly complicated with this stuff and you see people like doing all this crazy balance work and this and that and spending all this time in all honesty you don't need to spend a huge amount of time with this you don't need to get too complicated you can just do some simple things in your week which can make a bit of a difference now i'm going to talk you through a really really simple four-step process that any hike you can use which can make a pretty big difference here step number one is you just doing some simple single leg standing. So you might do this in your warm-ups, in your strength workouts. You may just do this in random parts in your day or whatever it may be. And literally, all you're going to do is just stand on one leg at a time with your eyes open.

[39:48] Practice that. Once you get to the point where you can do that for 60 seconds without falling over, and you can kind of hang on that, and you can do it for about 60 seconds without falling over, and then we move up to the next level. And we'd stand on one leg, do exactly the same thing, but this time you close your eyes. You'll notice really quickly this is way more difficult. You'll be wobbling all over the place and this can be a serious challenge. So go with this, close your eyes and practice this. The idea behind the closed eye balance is sometimes when we've got these steep descents, we can get a little bit nervous because we don't really know where our feet are. We don't really know where we're stepping. We don't really know our awareness in the body in space. So getting used to this closed eye balance can often help us. Once we've got a minute on that on each leg. It may take some people a while. Then we go on to the next level. Next one is you're going to stand on a pillow or a mat with your eyes open. So the idea behind this is we're on one leg again and we've got something that's a little bit unstable underneath us. So just a pillow or folded up mat. You could use like a BOSU ball or stability disc if you really wanted, but anything that's just a little bit unstable. Again, we do this for one minute with our eyes open. Once we can do that, we close our eyes and see how we go. And I promise you, if you can get to that point where you can do it on a pillow, on one leg, with your eyes open for 60 seconds, your balance is probably going to be pretty good. And you can be very, very happy with this.

[41:04] On top of this, that's a really, really simple thing. You might just throw on your warmups or your rest periods or whatever it may be. On top of that, then you may sort of think about, okay, I'm working on this. I'm doing my strength training. Maybe there are some exercises in my strength training, which can also help with this a little bit as well. And we can look at some slightly more specific strength exercises, which can help with you with those going downhill with your stability. So I'm going to give you three really, really simple examples, which you can kind of throw into your workouts. Now, number one is one of my favorite exercises for hikers, and you've probably seen me talk about it before, is the step down. Now, I get all of my hikers in doing this in one way, shape, form or another. Very, very simple. This is a great strength exercise for your quadriceps, a little bit of glute work as well. In this context, looking at stability on the way downhill, this is literally just teaching the body to control yourself on the way down. Really, really good for ankle stability, knee stability, hip stability. Really, really good for helping improve your balance. It's just a really, really great option. So basically, all you're doing here one foot on a box or a step or something like that, slowly lowering yourself down. Now, if this is way too easy for you, you can literally just use a higher step or a higher box and make that a little bit more difficult. If this is way too difficult for you and you're wobbling around all the place, you can use one or two tracking poles to help your stability. Very, very simple, but very, very effective.

[42:19] Now, say you've done that for a while and you're like, you know what, I kind of want to step things up. I want to make it a little bit more difficult. Then we can enter in a couple of other ones. So, these are a couple of different forward lunge options, which can be quite useful in this situation. Now, this particular exercise is a forward lunge.

[42:38] Now, essentially what we're doing, a forward lunge is another quadricep exercise, great for developing strength through the front of the thighs, a little bit of the glutes as well.

[42:45] Now, that in itself, if you're just doing this with body weight, where you're on one leg and you step forward and then come up, that in itself can be a good starting place for this. Because you'll notice as you step forward, it is pretty tricky to stabilize. It is pretty tricky to balance. And some people may just that be enough for them.

[43:01] Now, this front rack with your pack is a nice way of progressing this. So essentially what you're doing is you're getting a pack, popping it on your shoulders, is keeping up nice and high. This is going to do two things. Number one, the pack will add some little extra weight, which will be challenging in itself to keep your posture up and keep your legs going on all of that. But number two, you may not notice this is when you're using the pack in this situation, I can't actually see where my foot's going. I can't actually see going down. So this is actually really, really, really challenging just to know where I'm going to step, where my body is without being able to see it. So similar with that closed out balance I was showing before, this can be pretty tricky in the going downhill context this can be really useful which is getting you used to stepping downhill if you actually want to take in the sights or whatever may be so this is really useful and when I was filming this I was wobbling all over the place so it is a challenge now the next one is this is a bit of an advanced exercise but this is a deficit lunge so similar thing it's a forward lunge but what we're doing is just stepping up a box or a couple of steps or something like that and it just adds a bit of range of motion it adds that extra challenge and simulating going downhill, very, very tough. This is an advanced exercise. I wouldn't say most hikers would ever get to this stage or need to get to this stage, but this can be an option if you're looking for something.

[44:17] What have we got next? Let's move on. Okay, that's stability and balance. We have a couple more things before I wrap up this video. Mobility, let's talk about that. Now, mobility, flexibility, very, very similar things. It's basically range of motion through the joints. So, how mobile we are. This can play a bit of a role in elevation hiking for some people. Now, two of the biggest areas when we're thinking about this which can impact hikers are ankles and hips. And if our ankles and hips are tight, if they are restricted, that can sometimes affect us on elevation hiking. Now, in all honesty, there's a range of other situations that may affect individuals, like if your hamstrings are tight or if your glutes are tight or if something else is tight, this can help affect different individuals. So I'm not saying these are the only two areas that you really want to think about for mobility, but when we're talking in general terms, as a general consensus, this can be a good idea to focus on these areas. Now, ankles, what we're looking at here is if they are restricted and tight, it can often make it a little bit difficult for us to plant our feet on ascents. So what I mean by that is when we are hiking up hills, when we're going up steep ascents, when we're going up steep stairs, typically the best way or the more comfortable way for a lot of people is when we're stepping up, we can plant our foot and we can push up with a whole foot going up. And each step we take, we plant a whole foot and we're pushing up on the way up.

[45:38] What can happen is if we have tight ankles, if they're quite restricted and this and that, we may step up and we're like, oh, the ankles actually can't plant the foot all the way down. So what we have to do is we end up being up on our toes and we can only really be up on our toes as we climb. Now, this wouldn't be a big deal if you only had to do it for going up a set of stairs at home or going up a set of stairs at the shops or something. But if we're doing this on a hike, we have to do step after step and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these potentially, this can lead to two things. Number one, the calves can get really, really, really tired and really burning and the calves are relatively small muscles. And if they fatigue early, not much fun. Also, number two, this can sometimes add a little bit extra pressure through the knees and lead to a bit of aggravation through the knees, which isn't what we want.

[46:22] On the flip side, as if we have really, really tight ankles, sometimes when we're going downhills, it can limit the ability of our knee to kind of comfortably move over our toes. So if we're looking at sort of coming downhill, step downhill, step downhill, step downhill, in the perfect situation on some of the steps, our knee, our foot would land and our knee would comfortably move over like that, absorb a bit of force, then we'd step down and come down. Not great example with fingers, but you know what I mean. What can happen again, if the ankles are really, really tight, if we step down and we're like, oh the ankle doesn't have any room to move the knee can't move over there comfortably again what will happen is the force will just push us forward our heel will pop up a little bit the force will go a little bit more forward and that can lead to a little bit of knee discomfort.

[47:04] Very simple on the hip side of things if the front of the hips are tight you know this can just sometimes make it difficult to step up on high steps and some people that might be really really challenging so doing a little bit of mobility work on these areas can potentially be useful. Now, just a couple of simple examples. This is an example of doing some ankle mobility. So this is a needle wall stretch. It's basically just teaching the knee to comfortably move over your toes. I get most of my hikers doing this in one way or another. The idea behind this is we're trying to challenge the stability in this calf here, this ankle here in the front. So we're trying to keep our heel on the floor and we're basically just driving the knee into the wall. Very, very simple. Another example, this is a hip mobility one where basically we're looking at stretching the front of the hips here. One knee forward, one knee back, hips nice and equal and basically just leaning forward, get a little bit of a stretch through here and then from here, arms come up, that'll intensify the stretch and then come down and you might do this like 10 or 15 times. Now these mobility exercises, I typically like to just throw them in the start of our warm-ups so warm enough for strength training, warm enough for cardio, do these two things, that's a nice warm-up in itself and we can work those areas a bit.

[48:10] And then the final thing, before I lose my voice on this video, let's talk about breathing control and then we're going to wrap things up. So many hikers, they train their cardio, they train their strength, they do all of this stuff and they can't come out the other end and they're like, oh my gosh, I've done all of this stuff, but I still struggle with my breathing uphills. I still get really, really tired. What's going on? And one thing that can happen is as we improve our strength, as we improve our fitness, as we improve our capabilities, we end up just going quicker and quicker and quicker. And even though we're more fit, even though we're going quicker, we end up just still getting tired. So a lot of hikers would get a lot of benefit from practicing pacing and breathing control. And this in itself can make such a dramatic difference for those who get out of breath on uphills.

[48:55] There are a million and one ways you can go about training and breathing. And a lot of people may have looked into breathing training before and going down this route. And it can get a little bit complicated. In all honesty, for most hikers, you can keep this really, really, really simple. I'm going to talk you through a two-step process here. Very, very straightforward. Step number one is we just want to think about steady climbing and controlled breathing. So what that means is in those specific workouts we're mentioning before, if you're doing stair hill climbing, if you're doing a step session, if you're doing an incline treadmill work, pushing a sled, whatever it may be. Essentially, you just do that session. All the climbing you do is sustain that nose breathing we mentioned before, breathing in and out through the nose the whole way through. Or if the nose is no good, sustaining that conversational pace where you can comfortably carry a conversation. What this is going to do is going to teach you to sit at that pace, sit at that level control so you can sustain this output while being in that period position where you're predominantly using the aerobic energy system, you're being efficient and working there. At first, it will be difficult to do. At first, you may have to significantly pull back your pace and significantly pull things back. But if you stick with it, if you practice it, if you develop it, it'll get easier and easier and easier. And you'll notice you can actually go quicker and quicker and quicker while going at this controlled pace. So that's step number one.

[50:10] Now, stage number two is that once we've done that, once we're confident with it, once we're happy with it, then what we're going to do is some steady climbing interspersed with some quicker paces. So again, this will just fall into your specific workout. So any of those workouts we mentioned before. And what you might do is you might climb at nose breathing pace for a few minutes. So you might do like three or four minutes or something like that. Get control, nice and steady. And then for a minute, you're going to ramp up the pace. You're going to pump it up so you get quite out of breath. And for a minute, you kind of push the pace. So by the end of the minute, you're huffing and puffing. You're out of breath or whatever it may be. And then essentially what you're going to do before you rest, you're not resting, you're keeping on moving, but you just pull your pace back and continue on. and you try to get back to that nose breathing pace as quickly as possible and then go from there. And you go three or four minutes quick, three or four minutes slow, one minute quick. Three minutes, four minutes quick, slow, one minute quick. And just alternate between the two. And the idea behind this is teaching yourself to when you do get out of breath, to be able to pull the breathing down under control while you are still moving, which in the hiking context is really, really useful is if you just all of a sudden halfway up the climb, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm struggling. Instead of you having to completely stop you can actually keep on going or in that situation where you actually get to the top of the hill and you're like oh my gosh i'm so hard of breath i'm so tired instead of just having to stop for minutes and just do nothing if you've got a friend who's raring to go you can keep on moving but just slowly pull back your breathing very very useful.

[51:39] So getting close to the end of this video, summarizing, to cover all your bases for elevation hiking, obviously I've added a talk about a lot today. Here is ideally what we kind of want to fit in our training.

[51:50] Aerobic capacity work, aerobic power work, some small amounts of high intensity, strength development, endurance development, balance and stability, mobility, and breathing control. That sounds like a lot, admittedly. And right now you might be like, oh my gosh, Rowan, I am not a full-time athlete. I work a full job. I got a young family. I don't want to spend my whole life training. you're like, how am I supposed to fit this all into a week? I've got you. Here's some examples of how you can kind of take all of this stuff that I've just mentioned here and condense it into something that is reasonable, that is doable, and that is hopefully realistic for your week.

[52:22] So first example, in the situation where you're like, I am happy to train five days a week. I got quite a bit of time to train. I want to put a lot of into this. Maybe I got a big expedition coming up. I'm happy to train five days a week. An example of this, once a week, you might do a hike, or if you can't hike, then maybe just go out and do a load of pack wall for 60 minutes or 90 minutes or something like that. Once a week, we're getting a nice long exposure to low intensity stuff. Number two, we're going to do two strength sessions per week. And in these strength sessions, we're going to do a bit of strength, a bit of endurance, a bit of balance, and a bit of mobility. All of that's going to be done in those strength sessions. Again, this might be just 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes. And if you don't know how that all goes together and you have no idea how to put together that, please check out that mini course I mentioned before. I'll leave a link for that in the show notes below.

[53:11] And then on top of that, maybe I'm like, oh, you know what? I'm actually training in a gym. Maybe I want to get a little exposure to that really quick stuff. Literally at the end of these strength sessions, as I'm walking out gym, I might just sit on a bike, just do 30 seconds, really, really, really, really quick, get really, really out of breath. And then I leave the gym. Or if I'm at home, I might just do 30 seconds like mountain climbers or something and get really, really, really out of breath. If I want it. Doesn't have to happen, but if I want it.

[53:35] Then I might look at one specific exposure per week. So I might sort of say, okay, I'm just going to rotate between these options. Maybe I'm going to do four weeks of step climbing, stepping up and down. Maybe I'll do four weeks of sled pushing because there's one of those in the gym. Maybe I'll do four weeks of the heavy resistance stuff and I'll just rotate between the things over time. And then I would do one aerobic power or higher intensity thing. So I'd spend 30 minutes of doing that really high intensity stuff or another aerobic capacity session, depending on what I prefer. That's a five-day week example. That works out pretty well. If you don't have access to five days a week, four days a week. Might do one hike or load a pack walk two strength sessions again exactly the same and then just one cardio rotating between either aerobic power or one of those specific exposures so you may do four weeks of aerobic power then four weeks of stepping then four weeks of aerobic power then four weeks of treadmill walking something like that that works out pretty well or if you're looking at three days a week you might just do one hike or load a pack walk just one of those strength sessions and then one cardio session again rotating between them so as you can see we've taken all of these different aspects of fitness and all of these different aspects of training but we can kind of fit it into what's going to work for us and if you can do this you can be confident you're ticking off pretty much all the bases you need to be in the best possible position for elevation hiking.

[54:55] Now, with all that being said, hopefully that gives some people some direction. Hopefully that helps. And hopefully that just sort of gives you some insights into different things you can do for your training in this context. However, saying that, I fully, fully, fully understand if sometimes you're like, oh my gosh, I just don't know how to put this all together. Like, I don't know how to plan this out over the long term. I don't know how this all comes into my life. I have a bit of a changing schedule, so it gets a little bit tricky.

[55:16] Maybe I have an ache or pain I need to work around or whatever it may be. If you did need a little bit of extra help putting this all together.

[55:22] I would love to chat with you. You know, what we do through Summit Strength, which is my business, is we do our personalized online training programs for hikers to help them get fit, strong, and resilient for their adventures. Essentially, what our packages do, we will create a custom and personalized workout program to prepare you for anything the trail may throw at you, covering all of those things we mentioned today in a way that will fit around you, your life, your needs, and your preferences. We will educate you on top of that on all the different peripheral factors which can make or bake an adventure. So we put a lot of emphasis into nutrition, recovery, self-care, mental strength, as we mentioned before, high attitude. There's a lot of stuff you can go into that and a bunch of other things. And on top of that, we'll make sure you get the coaching, support, and accountability to keep you on track. Now, if you're interested in learning a little bit more about that and seeing if and how this may be right for you, essentially what you can do is go to summerstrength.com.au slash online.

[56:14] Now, on that page, there's another video which kind of talks about our program, goes into a little bit of detail on how we go about things, what it's all about. And if that does sound like something you would like to explore, on that page, there's a link where you can book a call with our team. And here we can sit down, we can have a really thorough chat with you, learn about what you've got going on, what you're training for, what your struggles are, what you're looking to help with. And from there, if it sounds like something we could confidently say we can help you out with, we can talk you through one of our packages, one of our options, which may work well for you. So if you did want a little bit of help with this go to summerstrength.com.au slash online check it out from there and hopefully we'll chat to a few hikers from there.

[56:55] So with that being said i really do hope you've enjoyed today's video i hope you get a bit out of it if there are any questions please just drop a comment below i'm more than happy to help but with that being said let's wrap things up thanks for watching and we'll talk to you very very soon bye.