Using AI When Training For Hiking

​Have you ever considered using generative AI to help your training for hiking? Well, if so, this episode is for you!  
 
Inside, I explore a few things you need to be aware of if you are going down this route.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: 

[0:00] All right. Hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. So in today's episode, we are talking a little bit about AI and training for hiking.

[0:09] And in all honesty, I always told myself I was never really going to do a post or a podcast or a video talking about AI and artificial intelligence, because you just see so many people out there who are talking about it. I don't really care. I never really thought it would affect me or whatever it may be. But just in the last couple of weeks, there's been a couple of things that have popped up, which has kind of brought it into my attention. And I figured it was worthwhile having a chat about it and just talking about these ideas for anyone who is interested in training for hiking and is in that process of using AI for quite a few things.

[0:45] Because when it comes down to the whole idea around training for hiking, and as you probably know, listening to this podcast, there is a little bit more that meets the eye. And one of the original intentions around me creating Summit Strength is I was like, you know what, the majority of the information out there when it comes down to training for hiking is rubbish. There are so many articles, there's so many videos, there's so much stuff out there that says all this stuff, but looking from it through a professional lens, as a coach, as someone with experience, someone who kind of knows what they're talking about, most of the stuff out there is really poor. And one of the original intentions of me starting Summit Strength was I was like, look, I want to be a change here. I want to be a source of good quality information. I want to help raise the bar for preparation for hikers. And over the years, as I've been building things out, I feel like, you know, I've made a good dent at things. Not to sort of say I've taken over the world and completely changed things or whatever it may be, but I feel like I've made a solid contribution and a lot of people have benefited from it.

[1:51] But recently, AI has been popping up all over the shop. And what I want to talk about today is the typical generative AI where you will go into Google or you'll go to ChatGPT and you'll just type something in and it'll give you advice. And this is something a lot of people are using for good effect in certain situations. And I'm not anti-AI or anything like that. You know, I'm all for it. It can be really, really useful.

[2:13] But there are a couple of issues that have sort of come up very recently and I want to talk you through. Because realistically, when it comes down to, this whole thing where you type in a question to AI and you'll type into Google and you get that, whatever that thing pops up at the top of your screen, or you type into chat GBT and you're like, hey, how do I do this? I don't know the ins and outs of AI. I'm not an expert or anything like that. But my general understanding is what it does is it just takes all the stuff that it's learned through all the different sources. And it kind of comes out with the average answer. And it basically takes everything out there. And then on the average, they say, look, you know pop this in here, and this is going to be the sum of all of this knowledge to you, which is all sounds well and good. But when we come into the situation of training for hiking, the tricky thing is, as I said before, the average advice around this topic is really rubbish, or it is getting better, but it's just not great.

[3:12] Now, on top of this, when we are looking at this general advice from AI, it doesn't know your personal context. You may ask a question, you may say, hey, how do I do this or how do I improve this or whatever it may be, and it may give you kind of good ideas, but everyone does have their personal situations, context, things going on, and it doesn't really know your particular context. And if you're aware of this, all in good, it can be useful, but I have seen a few people get into trouble with this, or not get into trouble, but just been led a bit astray.

[3:46] And on top of this, and I'll explain all this in a moment, but generative AI is far from perfect. So I want to talk through this a little bit and give you a couple of different examples. Now, the other day, one of the situations where this popped up was every once in a while, I'll go into Google and I'll just type in a certain phrase about training for hiking. And I'll type in strength training for hiking or how to prevent a hiker's knee or how to prevent rolled ankles or whatever it may be, just to get a bit of a gauge around where my content is showing up and also sort of see, you know, what other people are saying about other topics. And the other day, I typed in the phrase, how to get fit for hiking. Pretty common phrase, pretty simple.

[4:31] And the generative AI thing popped up. And I usually just glaze over it because I'm like, I'm not a big fan of that. But I was like, you know what? I'm actually going to read this this time. And it was quite interesting because it popped up with an answer. And, you know, the answer itself, it was kind of okay. You know, it was not terrible. It was not amazing. It was kind of okay. And what it sort of said was like, hey, to get fit for hiking, you can build your strength, endurance, strength, and cardiovascular fitness. For your endurance, you should start with daily walking to build up your endurance and prepare your muscles. For your cardio, you should jog and cycle and swim and use a treadmill or a stationary bike to increase your heart rate and lung capacity. You should do an interval training, an alternate short bursts of intense exercise with a recovery period. It said do some strength, do some lunges and squats and step-ups. It said do planks, Russian twists, push-ups and rows. It said do heels down, squat jumps, kettlebell deadlifts, and a few other bits and pieces. So, as a whole, you know, this advice, it's not terrible. It's not awful. But realistically, as I said, I said before, it is really, really average. And there are a couple of things that stuck out to me in that situation where I was like, oh, you know, that's not amazing.

[5:46] And if you're looking at that and using that as advice, oh, you know what? It's not great. You know, for example, I could be really nitpicky and we look at sort of walking. And that says, start with daily walks to build up endurance and prepare your muscles. Realistically, walking is not something that improves your endurance. It's not designed to improve your endurance through your muscles. Walking is designed to improve your aerobic capacity, to improve your cardiovascular fitness. It may seem like those terms often used interchangeably, and that's why AI has used that.

[6:20] But they're not the same. And then you may think, hey, Rowan, you're nitpicking here, but the amount of people that I've talked to who were like, hey, I'm just going to do some daily walks. I'm going to do my 10,000 steps a day, and that's going to prepare my muscles for getting out on the trail. I do hear it quite a bit, and it is tricky.

[6:38] Or another one, when it was saying cardio, and the first thing it recommended for cardio was to jog. And I just have such an issue with this, and I talk about this all the time, in the sense that jogging and running is fine. It's a great method of exercise, and a lot of people see some good success, and that's why it's in this AI recommendation. But having it been a first recommendation, I have seen so many hikers who haven't run in 10, 20, 30 years who are like, I'm training for a hike. I need to start jogging to prepare myself, and they do it, and they either hate it, or they get themselves aches or pains or whatever it may be. And again, you might be like, Rowan, you're nitpicking here, but this is something I've been actively fighting against over the last few years to get people away from this as a first recommendation. And it's just frustrating to see it pop up as the first thing to improve your part cardio. Or in the sense of interval training, where it says alternate short bursts of intense exercise with a recovery period. And this is fine advice that that is what interval training is. But when it comes down to hiking, there is a big, big, big difference between going down your local gym and jumping into a HIIT class where you're doing 20 seconds of quick or 30 seconds of quick or 40 seconds or quick, or interval training, which is going to be really, really honed in towards your hiking.

[7:52] And again, you may think I'm nitpicking here, but the amount of people that I've talked to who in the past have heard interval training is good, they've read an article, and then they just decided to go down to gym and do those sessions, it has led a lot of people down the wrong track. And to see this pop up at the start of Google, ah, drives me mental. Now but on beyond that there was a really really interesting thing that popped up and i was like oh my gosh this is a little bit weird because there was a statement one of the recommendations on the strength side of things it was said do squat jumps and next to squat jumps it said develop eccentric muscle eccentric quadricep strength to prevent jelly legs while hiking downhill, and that statement jumped out at me because i was like that sounds really familiar that is literally what I talk about, develop eccentric quadriceps strength to prevent jelly legs from downhill. That phrase I use all the time. But on the flip side of things, as much as I say that phrase all the time, I never talk about squat jumps. And on top of that, squat jumps do not develop eccentric muscle strength. They're not designed for that. They are realistically.

[9:00] Targeted towards concentric muscle strength or particularly muscle power so i was like you know what this is curious like i wonder who's recommending squat jumps for this maybe they've just you know got got their screws backwards or whatever it may be and i was curious so i clicked into where the recommendation came from because of each of these recommendations had a little link and it would show what article it pulled it from and i was really surprised because it pulled that recommendation from one of my articles and i was like fine you know that's i'm not like you know saying, hey, you can't use my articles for AI or anything like that. I don't really care. But I was surprised because it had taken half of my advice, but then attached a different exercise because I never recommend squat jumps for hikers. And I know if you're trying to develop eccentric muscle strength, that's not an exercise which falls into that category. And what had happened is that in that article, they'd literally taken the sentence of me saying, hey, develop eccentric muscle strength to prevent jelly legs. And in that article, I talked about doing squats, but very slow and controlled squats where you're doing like four or five seconds on the way down.

[10:03] But then they've taken that statement and then just replaced the advice with squat jumps which is just wrong it's incorrect and it just blew my mind I was like oh my gosh like if you're going to take someone's advice from an article take the full advice so it's just another thing I'm just saying look this stuff isn't perfect and as much as it may sound seem good on the first uh first viewing you know what realistically it's not amazing now on the flip side of this the other instigating factor why I wanted to do this episode was a conversation I was having the other day with a hiker. And we were chatting about them and they want to improve their fitness and they want to get sort of ready for, you know, some big adventures coming up. And in their background, they said, look, I've done lots of hiking, haven't really done a huge amount of sort of structured training, this and that, never really followed a plan. And I also have a history of plantar fasciitis, and that's been a long history, which I've battled on and off like quite a bit.

[10:50] And they told me, you know, recently they just created a training program through ChatBeat GBT. And they'd said, hey, I want to prepare for this. I want to improve this. Can you create me a training program? And ChatGBT spat out a training program with talking about some basics around doing some cardio and building things up and doing some classes and this and that. There's nothing majorly bad with the advice. It was like, it wasn't great, but it wasn't bad. And it was definitely better than, you know, what they've been doing before. So that's all well and good. But then she'd said you know one of the recommendations from this was in her cardio that she should start doing some interval training with running which in theory sounds great because if you're trying to improve your fitness interval training can be a good option running can be a good option if this works for you and yada yada yada in theory this sounds great but in reality if someone has a big history of plantar fasciitis and hasn't done running in a long time the The recommendation to go from barely doing anything and just hiking to interval training with running, it's just dumb, in all honesty. And I'm not saying this person is dumb. I'm saying the AI recommendation was dumb because that itself is a massive red flag for flaring up.

[12:05] Aggravation of overuse injuries. If you want to get into running, that's fine, but you probably want to ease yourself in as opposed to doing interval training. Or if you want to do interval training and really push the intensity, you probably don't want to be running either way. So again, it was just like really average advice. And in this situation, completely missed the context.

[12:24] So with that being said, what I'm trying to get across is if you do have questions about training for hiking, if you're curious about this, and I'm sure this applies to other topics. It's probably not the best idea to use this generative AI in this situation, just because it just lacks context. It lacks nuance. And the quality of information out there around training on average is not great,

[12:47] which means the average that gets spat out by AI is not great. And then every once in a while, it just decides to change things and is completely wrong. So there you go. So what I would recommend when it comes down to this.

[12:59] If you are looking for advice around training for hiking, find sources you can trust. Not AI, but find sources you can trust. Obviously, I believe I am a source you can trust. So ask me, come into my community group, post up groups, come to our live Q&As on YouTube, ask me these questions. There's a lot of free options out there. There's a few other great coaches around training for hiking who are out there and who are doing great things. If you're struggling with pain or injury, go and see a professional. See a physio. Sit down. Give them your context. Get the right advice. Don't use this as a training tool because, as I said, it's just not amazing.

[13:36] So there we go. I never thought I would do it, but there's my little rant about AI. I've joined the masses. I feel a bit disappointed in myself after this, but it did need to be done. Hopefully, that's the only time I ever talk about AI in the years ahead, but there we go. So if that doesn't make sense, if anyone has any questions about that, please let me know. But hopefully, that helps. Hopefully that gives a little bit extra context and maybe that highlights for a few people.

[14:00] Yeah, just to maybe seek some better sources of information. So thank you for listening today. Hope you've enjoyed it and we'll talk to you very, very soon. Bye.

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