Understanding Pacing

If you always struggle with breathing on steep uphills, pacing is an incredibly important skill. In this episode we explore what good pacing is for hikers and how to practice and develop this skill.

Episode Transcript: 
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​[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking all about pacing. Now, one of the biggest complaints I get from hikers who want to improve their hiking is that they struggle with breathing on steep uphills. You know, they go up in a uphill and they're constantly out of breath. They can never carry a conversation. They really feel self-conscious of just gasping and being red-faced and not being able to keep up with the people. It's a really, really, really common complaint and a lot of people struggle with it. And on this podcast, we have talked about this quite a bit. We've talked about the specific training which can help you and all the different things that can go into this equation that can make a bit of a genuine difference. From things like developing your aerobic capacity to developing your aerobic power, to incorporating a small amount of sprint training, to doing specific elevation sessions and practicing this particular situation, to building up your strength reserve to make it easier on the legs so they use less energy. Even building up the strength of your breathing muscles through your respiratory muscle training.

[0:58] And all of these different things that can go into the equation to help with uphills. And, you know, on top of that, not just steep uphills, but these things fall into so many other aspects of your hiking as well. But no matter how much training and no matter how good the training you're doing is, if you don't get your pacing right with uphills, you are likely to be cursed to be constantly out of breath.

[1:24] Unfortunately, no matter how much training we do, if you don't get that pacing right, it will help you. You'll be fitter, you'll be stronger, you'll be in a better position, you can probably go faster, but you may not be actually feeling more comfortable with your breathing. So today I want to explore this in a little bit of detail and talk through this. Now, when I use the word pacing, pretty much it's as simple as how fast you move on the trail. If we want to get really technical and you want to look at a bit more holistic, you could probably include not just your hiking speed, but also like how often you're resting as well. But to keep things simple today and just keep things focused, when I say pacing, we're going to be really talking about hiking speed. Now, essentially as a really, really broad generalizations, good pacing, in quotation marks, is hiking at a pace which is just sustainable, which you can pretty much sustain for long periods of time without a huge amount of fatigue, meaning you You can just go and go and go and go. And yeah, you will slowly get tired, but it just feels like you could just constantly go.

[2:25] Now, poor pacing, again in quotation marks, is hiking at a pace which you just cannot really sustain. You know, it fatigues you quickly or it just causes you to be uncomfortable or you have to constantly start, stop, start, stop, or you're just gasping for air or whatever it may be. And it's not something you can like, yeah, it's just not something you can sustain for long.

[2:46] And ultimately, if we want to look at the best pacing and the absolute perfect pacing for yourself, it's probably going to be at a speed that intersects between the quickest pace you can sustain while being as energy efficient as possible. Now, if you were sort of like a racer, if you were a runner or a cyclist, you would do a lot of work trying to figure out this best pacing and really getting intricate there so you know exactly where you're sitting. For hikers, because we're not really racing, it's not quite as essential. It's interesting to know. But it's not quite as essential. So today we're really just going to be honing in on that good pacing side of things. Now, for many hikers who do struggle with breathing uphill, you know, one of the things that I hear or see all the time is they just have no control of their pacing. You know, there's just kind of one speed that they go at, or maybe there's just fast and super fast or whatever it may be. And ultimately they feel that no matter what speed they go, they kind of to always struggle in these sections. And every time I hit an uphill, it doesn't matter what speed I go, I'm always out of breath. I really struggle, or I constantly got to have a break or whatever it may be. This is really, really, really, really common. Because if you haven't thought about pacing before, if you haven't paid attention to it, if you haven't practiced it before, you probably don't have a huge amount of control over it.

[4:03] And on top of that, as an added issue for people who just don't have control on their pacing, and it's just not in their wheelhouse, is that even if you improve your fitness and even if you improve your capabilities in your training anyway and you're getting fitter you're getting stronger you're getting better more often than not what happens if you don't have control on that pacing even if you're fitter you just end up going faster and you still never get comfortable you're still out of breath because naturally you're just going faster and faster and faster as you get fitter and fitter and fitter and it never really feels like you're improving even though technically you are but that actual metric of of saying, hey, I can breathe comfortably on uphills. I don't get out of breath. I can carry a conversation. That doesn't really make a difference. But I'll tell you right now, you can change this. If you don't feel like you really have a huge amount of control on your pacing, you can change this. And it's such a significant thing. And ultimately, if you can practice and train your pacing in your training and in your hiking, and ultimately teach your your body and mind to be able to work at an efficient pace and to alternate between paces if necessary, it can do absolute wonders for your uphills and all your hiking in general.

[5:12] So if you're interested in this idea of pacing, and if you're interested in this idea of learning how to control your pacing, this is a sort of a simple way you can kind of go about it. Now, starting with the end in mind, sort of the ultimate thing we kind of want to build towards in regards to our pacing, specifically when we're talking about breathing on uphills. In the absolute perfect world, we would get to the stage where we are able to climb the steep uphills on the trail at a pace where we can constantly breathe in and out through our nose. I'll say that again. In the perfect world, we will be able to climb steep uphills at a pace where we can constantly breathe in and out through our nose. Ultimately, this will kind of fall into to that category of good pacing I mentioned before.

[5:58] Now, why am I saying this? Why do you care about being able to breathe in and out through your nose in this particular situation? Well, it isn't because nose breathing is some magical thing. Now, you'll often see online, you'll often see on the internet, people get really dogmatic about nose breathing. They'll be like, hey, it will do a thousand and one things to be good for you. It's the best thing in the world. It's better than, you know, sliced, best thing since sliced bread or whatever it may be. And if you've ever seen that stuff, people get a bit carried away. And yes, there is some evidence to sort of say, look, or some theory and some ideas to sort of say, walking and exercising in the pace where you can breathe in and out through your nose is going to have a few benefits. It's going to be a relatively efficient method of breathing and can have some particular good things. But in the grand scheme of things, it's kind of not the be-all, end-all as people talk about. It is beneficial. It can be important, but it's not life and death as some people often talk about. But instead, where I want to hone in on this, the more important thing is that nose breathing, breathing in and out through your nose, is a rate limiter, is a speed limiter.

[7:07] And essentially, if we're breathing in and out through your nose, this is the first step to good pacing. Because if you can breathe in and out through your nose while you're walking, while you're hiking, while you're exercising, this is a sign that you are likely predominantly using your aerobic energy system to fuel your movement. I'll say that again. If you can breathe in and out through your nose, this is a sign you are likely predominantly using your aerobic energy system to fuel your movement. Now, if you've never heard of this before, I've talked about this podcast loads before, but essentially in our body, we have a few different ways of producing energy. Our aerobic energy system produces energy while using oxygen as a fuel source. And essentially, it's a really, really efficient energy system, which can just be sustained for long periods of time over and over and over and over without a huge amount of fatigue. It's very, very, very efficient, but it is a little bit slow. So it's really designed to provide energy through low to maybe moderate intensity exercise.

[8:06] Now, on the flip side of things, if this energy system is a little bit slow, the body's like, hey, when I'm going quicker, when I'm struggling with things, when I'm doing things higher intensity, aerobic energy system's a bit slow. I need to produce energy somewhere else. It has what a few systems have fallen to, anaerobic energy systems, which essentially energy systems which produce energy without oxygen. Now, these energy systems, they're quicker. They can produce energy very, very, very quickly to sustain that high intensity, but they are not quite as efficient, meaning they may cause you to fatigue quickly, they'll use more fuel, and they're not something you really, really want to sustain. So going back to the point we were talking about, okay, if you can breathe in and out through your nose, this is a sign saying you can likely predominantly use your aerobic energy system to fuel your movement. This is a really, really good thing, because if we can stick to using this aerobic energy system for most of our movement.

[8:56] We can ensure that we're being really, really energy efficient. We can be sure that we're not churning through the fuel. We can be sure that we're not accumulating a huge amount of waste products, which can fatigue us early, which comes with when we're going a bit quicker and we're getting a bit out of breath and working these anaerobic energy systems. So ultimately, the more that we can stick to this aerobic energy system, the better. So ultimately, as an end goal, in the perfect situation, if we can go up hills at a nose breathing pace, we are naturally going to be more in control of our breath because we can be a bit more controlled with this nose breathing. We're not going to get super out of breath. We're going to be more energy efficient and we'll be able to go more, much longer and further without fatiguing or getting really super uncomfortable. So that's the end goal. If we can get there, you'll be able to go all day and climbing up those hills feeling like, okay, that actually felt pretty good.

[9:43] However, that's the end goal. There is one tricky thing about this and tricky thing about nose breathing. At first, it can be really, really, really hard to sustain. And at first, when you start practicing this, you'll be like, oh my gosh, I can't do this on hills. Oh my gosh, like I just cannot sustain this. I cannot hold on to this. And you're still getting out of breath. And for some people who already do struggle with their breathing, they're aware that, look, this is an issue that I face. They may feel like they can only really go a few steps uphill with nose breathing, and then it's just unsustainable. Then you're like, oh my gosh, I can't do this anymore. It happens. This is the tricky thing. And if you fall into this, and if you've tried this before and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't do it, you need to be aware that this is a skill. You need to practice and develop it. And if you can be patient, and if you can practice it, you can develop it and stick with it and master it, then it'll get easier and easier to do. You'll be able to go quicker and longer sticking to this, and it'll get more useful and more effective and help you get to that end point.

[10:42] So with that being said, we've got the end point in mind. How do you actually build up to that? How do you actually get to that point? Well, you obviously got to practice it and you want to practice it in your training sessions. So if you listen to this podcast already, I would hope you're doing some type of training in your week. And we want to incorporate this nose breathing to some of our sessions in the week and specifically into our lower to moderate intensity cardio sessions.

[11:05] So a good first place to start with this is if you've never done it before, is literally just start practicing it in your normal walking through the day. You know, when you're walking around the neighborhood, when you're going down the shops, when you're going to the bus stop or whatever it may be, just practice this. Keep your mouth closed, breathe in and out through the nose. If you find that easy, great. Happy days, great first start. Keep with it. Just keep on practicing it because it's always useful. If you do find this difficult, you're like just walking around, I can't even sustain this. Then what this means is you need to adjust your pace. it means whatever pace you're going at that you can't sustain that nose breathing slow it down a little bit try it again stick with the nose breathing see how that goes if you can stick with that great go with that if you still can't stick with it slow it down again and it may be a case of some people i've seen where they have to literally just do like the absolute slowest dawdle at first to really sustain it and if that's you that's fine start wherever you can and go with that. Practice it. So that's step number one. Give that a go. Now, once you're comfortable with that, for some people that might be right away, for some people it might take a couple of weeks or whatever it may be, then you want to try doing it with a slightly loaded pack. Now, loaded pack walking, you know, great session for training for hiking regardless. Just throwing on a pack, walking around the neighborhood, working around, you know, local park, even on the treadmill or whatever it may be. And this is a great situation to really practice this. Know nose breathing.

[12:23] You'll notice that with the pack on your back, it will be a little bit trickier. Sometimes it can just throw out our breathing a little bit. Obviously, it adds a little bit of intensity. So again, you just need to practice it. Give it a go. If you can sustain it, great. If you can't, slow down your speed, try it again, and keep on adjusting your speed until you get it. So in this situation, obviously, we're getting exposed to this nose breathing. We're practicing it, but we're also practicing adjusting our walking speed, which is a skill in itself.

[12:50] So, that's step number two, loaded pack walking. Now, once you're comfortable with that, again, some people might be able to do that straight away. Some people might take a few weeks, whatever it is. Once you're comfortable with this, then we want to try it with some elevation sessions. So, this could be walking up and down, you know, a local hill or a set of stairs, or it might be walking on a treadmill on an incline or on the stairmaster, or even doing like step ups or just going up and down on a box or whatever it may be. All of these sessions, they're good workouts for hikers for a bunch of different reasons. And we talked about these in in the podcast many, many times. And essentially, these sessions, again, can be a really good situation where we can practice this nose breathing and teach ourself to use this and be a bit more efficient with this and be a bit more comfortable with this. So essentially, when you're doing these sessions, whether it's on stairs, hills, treadmill, stairmaster, just box steps, whatever it may be, climb at a pace where you can stick to that nose breathing. Again, you will need to adjust your speed. At first, when you hit these inclines or do this, it may be excruciatingly slow. And if you have a history of getting out of breath on uphills, you may have to go so, so, so slow that it's just frustrating. That's fine. That's normal. You've got to stick with it. You've got to be patient. Slow down your pace. Start climbing. If you feel like your breathing is getting out of hand and you're like, I can't even slow down my pace anymore, then stop. Let your breathing recover recover and go again. And for some people, again, it may be stop, start, stop, start, stop, start, but it's just getting through this initial period.

[14:20] And if you're patient with this, you will notice week by week, you can go faster and faster and faster while sustaining this nose breathing. So even if you're going excruciatingly slow at first, it may just be a week or two or three. You have to stick with this and then you'll begin to get some momentum, be able to build it up and get back to a bit more of a normal walking pace while sticking with this nose breathing, which again is really beneficial because you're ensuring you're working at that good intensity, you're ensuring you're staying efficient and you've developed this skill, really, really valuable. And then ultimately, once you're comfortable with that, getting into step four, you can try it on the trail with your actual hiking. So when you start hiking up a steep uphill or any uphills on the trail, set yourself the target that you are gonna do this entire hill at nose breathing pace. Again, this may be excruciatingly slow the first one, two, or three times you do it, like weeks you do it. And again, you may have to break this up with rest. And again, it may be a little bit frustrating, but if you can practice it and stick with it, it will get better and better and better. It's a slow process for some people, but I promise you, if you can do it, if you can stay patient with it, it's just so, so, so valuable.

[15:33] So there's four-step progression to kind of get into this type of thing. Now, this is a simple progression on how to develop this. And I've seen this work really, really well. But to be clear, for a lot of people, you don't have to do this in this particular order. Now, you can do them all at once, and you can just start applying this straight away into your training. You don't have to kind of spend three weeks and three weeks and three weeks and be really slow. The reason why I'm talking about this progression, the reason why I sort of like have laid it out like this, is ultimately, some people do get a bit frustrated with this initially with their hiking. If you're just going out on the weekend, this weekend, you're like, hey, I'm going to give this a go. And if you've never done it before, it can be a little bit frustrating because it might feel like it's just absolutely impossible and you just can't sustain it. You try it for like a minute, you're like, this sucks, I'm not going to do this. Or maybe you are out with other people, like a lot of us are hiking with friends or groups or whatever it may be, and you don't have that luxury of being on the trail and being really, really super slow. And ultimately, because hiking is the fun stuff, you know, it's not like, hey, every single hike we're doing is just dedicated training, this can sometimes be better just to develop this nose breathing initially off the trail and just enjoy your hiking and do your hiking. And then once you're feeling confident with the nose breathing, then introduce it on the trail.

[16:39] That's just a bit of a thought process there. But honestly, if you want to dive right in, then all good. You can do all those four things pretty much simultaneously straight away.

[16:47] But either way, when you do get to this stage where you can climb hills at a nose breathing pace, all of a sudden you realize larger in control of your breathing and getting less fatigued and you will notice your training will complement this because the more we develop our training the more we develop our aerobic energy system the more access we'll have to this like like this nose breathing the more um capabilities of our aerobic energy system to to fuel us and sustain us which we develop through our training the quicker you'll be able to go with this nose breathing ultimately this is good pacing it's not the only definition but this is what i like to sort of say if you can master this and stick to pacing and stick to the pace where you can breathe in and out through the nose on those steep uphills, it will make a dramatic difference to your hiking. I promise you.

[17:32] Now, a few final points I just want to clarify before I wrap this episode up because there are a few final bits and pieces. Number one, the common complaint is a lot of people like, I've heard of nose breathing before, I've tried it, but in all honesty, my nostrils really, really like small or I really struggle with this. I just can't do it or whatever it may be. Some people structurally just cannot do nose breathing very efficiently. If that is you, then the other option is just going at a pace where you can comfortably carry a conversation without having to huff between words. Or you can basically sing a song without having to huff between words. That's your other option. And obviously, if you're just by yourself and chatting away or singing away by yourself, it's a little bit funny, but that's the other option. If you can't do nose breathing, that's what you want. And if you get to that stage where you cannot keep on singing or you cannot carry that conversation without having a huff between words, slow down.

[18:22] Now, just to clarify as well, nose breathing means breathing in and out through the nose. There is another option where you can basically breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. That is sort of creeping up on that intensity a little bit. So when I'm talking about nose breathing here, in and out through the nose.

[18:40] Also, you do not want, you don't have to get obsessive with practicing nose breathing in all your training. As I said before, your lower and moderate intensity cardio sessions are really, really good for this. So you're walking, so you're steering hill climbing. If you're doing cycling, if you're doing anything slow and gentle and sustained, this is really, really good. But if you aren't doing higher intensity sessions, so things like intervals or sprint sessions or HIIT or group exercise classes or even strength training or whatever it may be, you don't have to worry about this nose breathing. Because in these these particular sessions, particularly with the interval stuff, you want to be pushing hard. You don't want to be limiting your rate and you want to be pushing hard to get the best results. So some people kind of get their wires crossed and they're like, okay, nose breathing. I'm going to do this a hundred percent of the time. It's not necessary. Lower and moderate intensity cardio sessions is where you want to be applying this. And then on top of that, you need to be aware of, one of the biggest issues of applying this to the trail when you're actually out hiking is the social dynamic. Because as I said before, we're not always just doing solo hikes. We're out with friends or groups or whatever it may be.

[19:49] So in the early stages, when you are learning this and when you're developing this, if you want to start doing this on the trail, but you're out with other people, it obviously can be hard to get people to wait for you. So ultimately in this situation, you need to have a conversation. If you want to practice this on the trail and you're out with other people, you need to say, hey guys, or hey friend, look, I am going to be trying something new on the uphills. I'm going to be practicing this. Do you mind either going at my pace so I can sustain this, or can I just meet you at the top of the hill? I am going to be a.

[20:22] If you can have that conversation, most people will kind of be okay with it. If people are funny, say you're with a group you don't really know or anything like that, okay, it may not be the best situation to practice it, but conversation, really, really important. And the final thing I'll sort of say as well is ultimately, for some people, you may never get to the point where you can do 100% of your hikes at nose breathing because some of us are doing some pretty strenuous, challenging things. Sometimes we're doing super steep uphills. Sometimes we're doing crazy terrain, whatever it may be. Maybe we're at high altitude or whatever it is. It may not be possible to do 100% of your hikes at nose breathing. And that's okay. Because again, we don't want to get obsessive with this type of stuff. We don't want to take it away from the fun of hiking. We don't want to play it in the back of my mind thinking, oh my gosh, I'm so guilty. I'm not doing it or whatever it may be. It doesn't have to be 100%. But ultimately, the more that you apply it, the better. So if you can only do half your hike at nose breathing initially, then if you can do 60%, that's a dramatic improvement. 70%, a dramatic improvement. And just every little bit more you can do is going to be better and better and better.

[21:23] So ultimately, when you're coming down to this, if you do struggle with breathing on steep uphills, yes, training, really, really, really important. Developing your aerobic capacity, developing aerobic power, doing a little bit of sprint training, doing your strength training, doing your elevation sessions, all of that really valuable. And if you're not sure how to do any of those, there's plenty of episodes through this podcasts that talks through those things. But you've got to go hand in hand with actually making sure you are managing your pacing, that you are on top of it, that you can go at different speeds and restrain yourself if needed. Because if not, no matter how fit you get, potentially you are going to be out of breath. So this is a really, really, really, really useful process, really useful skill, and I strongly encourage you to give it a go. So if you've never heard of this before, or you've never thought about pacing before or you really, really struggle, this is it. Give it a whirl. It will take some time. You will need some patience, but it will pay off. So that's all I have to say on this subject. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope you got a bit out of it and I really do hope it helps a few hikers out there. So thank you so much for listening today and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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