Hike training
Night 4 - Cooloola Great Walk
Why train for a hike
To be the best hiker that you can be, you need to be physically, mentally and emotionally prepared. As professional guides, we see unprepared people trying to tackle hikes that are beyond their ability, far too often. Those who are full of machoism and false bravado will throw their fists in the air and yell ‘go for it!’. Those of us who have been in the unfortunate position where we have had to rescue people from the bush and sometimes extract bodies, we say ‘you’re a damned fool’. Don’t get me wrong, we understand and respect people who want to challenge themselves but for those who endanger others due to their selfishness, ignorance and naivety, we hold justifiable contempt.
How to train for a hike
Physical
If you provide yourself with enough lead in time, this is arguably the easiest part of hike preparation.
There are a number of considerations here and the very basis of this is a no BS assessment of your current physical condition. ‘She’ll be right’ is an ignorant and dangerous mental place to be and not only sets you up for failure in your preparation but also sets you up for failure when it ‘hits the fan’ in the bush and there’s no one there to help you.
What you need to consider are things like;
Do you have any injuries
Do you drink or smoke
What’s your cardio fitness like
Have you worn your boots in
Have you walked with a 12 to 15kg pack on before
Have you walked for more than one consecutive day with a 12 to 15kg pack on (big difference)
Do you know if your body is used to the climate you will be hiking in
Do you need to adjust to the altitude of where you will be hiking
+ Injuries
This is where you need to be realistic. If you have an injury that will put you in danger or pain if it becomes exacerbated in the middle of nowhere, put the hike off, train more. Enjoy the hike, don’t endure the hike.
New injuries are relatively easy to manage, you have been managing them for a while now, their cause and progress is most likely pretty well known and with the help of your health professional, managing pain and exacerbation is likely to be relatively easy.
Old injuries. Hmmm these present some challenges. If you haven’t properly managed these, over time it is likely that you have made some adjustments that have set you up for failure. This includes adjustments to your gate, foot fall, posture and so much more. These things are generally great when managing your day to day. HOWEVER! Put a pack on, walk on uneven ground, do this for days and you will find that your body may not respond favourably. Your body will get fatigued and place extra pressure on areas that it has been trying to protect for years. Discomfort will start, this will turn into an annoying dull pain and over the duration of a couple of hours this will turn into significant pain. If it doesn’t turn into pain on the first day, it will on the second.
And if you think you’re tougher than that, let me tell you, you aren’t. I’ve had the privilege of leading some of the hardest people on the planet who have recovered from significant knee injuries. Included in these was an ex Senior Sergeant from the Special Emergency Response Team (SERT, Queenslands equivalent to SWAT). This guy was a heavily trained killer, as tough as they come. Hiking broke him like no man ever could. Hiking has a way of stripping away all of a persons strengths and laying bare the weakest parts of us so we may take the opportunity to identify these and work on them for next time.
+ Do you drink heavily or smoke
This affects your aerobic fitness and your ability to physically cope with situations. I’m not saying that you have to give up. What I am saying is that you will have to train harder than everyone else.
+ What’s your cardio fitness like
This needs to be good. Not just for the actual hike but just in case you encounter an emergency and you need move faster or longer than you anticipated. Over preparation is a good approach on this one. If you are feeling relaxed and comfortable because you over prepared, that is a great problem to have.
+ Have you worn your boots in
You hear this all the time. And yes, it is important. New boots tend to rub in unusual places and this tends to cause blisters, which leads to infection, so on and so forth. This also means that you may be adjusting how you walk and therefore placing stress on other parts of your body.
+ Have you walked with 12 to 15kg on your back before
Yes? When you were 15 at Scouts 20 years ago? Yeah that doesn’t count. That was a different life. You’re not that kid anymore (physically).
Put the pack on, fit it properly so the weight isn’t on your shoulders. Walk. Find out where it rubs. Find out how your body responds. Adjust where necessary.
If your pack isn’t fitted properly or you aren’t used to it, you risk complications such as Brachial Plexus (which is untreatable and debilitating) or just simply bleeding from the hips because of your nice soft office skin.
+ Have you walked more than one consecutive day with a 12 to 15kg pack on your back
No? Well let me guarantee you that your body may go to sleep on night one feeling a little tired, but the morning of day two, it will lodge a formal protest and the union will force you to listen. You see, overnight your joints will swell, bruising will form, inflammation will occur at sites that you didn’t know you had issues and you will hurt in places that you didn’t even know existed.
Sure hiking for a day, going home to sleep in a comfy bed and then hiking the next day seems like an unusual thing to do, but have a crack and if nothing hurts, you beauty! you’re ready for the next stage, sleeping on a self inflating mattress in a tent in between the two walks!
+ Do you know if your body is used to the climate you will be walking in
The number of ‘prepared’ people that I see crumble when the weather is humid is beyond count. The body simply can’t get rid of the heat fast enough to be able to cope with the physical exertion. THIS IS DANGEROUS. All of a sudden you find yourself pushing too hard and the risk of dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke become very real. If you are intending to hike in a location that is hotter than you are used to, plan A LOT of breaks and take a lot of water.
+ Do you need to adjust to the altitude of where you will be hiking
If the answer to this is yes, work with your personal trainer or health professional to develop a training plan that will help you deal with altitude requirements.
Your training should be steady and progress from where you are now to where you need to be via a number of steps over time that include;
Stretching
Core and stabiliser muscle strengthening
General strength conditioning
Cardio
Endurance
Physical conditioning to hiking specific activities (carying gear, over a number of days)
Don’t break yourself during training by going too hard too fast. If you do this, you’re just making the whole process longer and harder. Take as long as you need. It’s an investment in your future enjoyment.
Mental
Mental training is merely referring to your ability to apply the correct mental processes at the correct time. A lot of this is to do with practice and conditioning. If you are a person who is good at problem solving under pressure, you will be good at this, as long as you have the knowledge that you will need at the time.
If you don’t have the knowledge that you need (navigation, logistics, gear etc), get it. Attend courses, talk to experienced hikers, join hiking groups, read blogs, monitor Facebook groups, watch youtube videos etc.
If you aren’t someone who is able to make decisions under pressure, you can either make sure that you travel with at least two companions who are, carry a PLB at all times or practice. Go for short walks into the bush, imagine you are lost, what do you do. Imagine you are having a medical emergency, what do you do? Imagine you have a fire approaching (imagine it from every direction), what do you do? Imagine the weather goes to pot, what do you do?
Emotional
This is a big one. If you haven’t been on a hike where at some stage you’ve felt like sitting down, putting your head in your hands and having a bit of a sook, you haven’t really pushed yourself. This is where a massive amount of emotional growth occurs and is awesome. However, if you’ve never experienced this outside the bush, it’s probably not the best to have this happen for the first time here.
If you’re not someone who is great at pushing your own boundaries, a great way to practice this is through the use of a Personal Trainer. Personal Trainers are often able to push you to and beyond the boundary that you would normally push yourself. You need to be very clear with your personal trainer about what you want them to do though, and you need to be prepared for the Personal Trainer to push you hard and in some cases, break you, so you can get used to the feeling and process of being broken, repairing, repeat. A good PT will help you through both the breaking and the repairing/recovery phases.
This is conditioning.
Other
There’s a massive amount of training and personal development that you can undertake as well as what has been mentioned above, this includes logistics training (how to plan a hike), navigation training (how to find your way in the bush), gear familiarisation (what gear to use).
Check out our blogs to see if there’s some information there that you can use.
How Can Outdoor Adventure Australia help?
Outdoor Adventure Australia provides a range of options to assist you in your hike preparation. These include yoga, walks, trail running, Hikes, PT and Nutrition. You can participate as a casual and book through the website or you can join Adventure Tribe. Adventure Tribe members get up to 90% off all of our activities and you can create a personalised program that can help you ensure you’re on track (so to speak) to enjoy your adventure.
For those who are looking at getting ‘adventure fit’, we suggest you start with the easy stuff and work your way towards the more demanding and higher impact. This allows your body to build it’s strength slowly and lets you deal with any challenges before they become problems. The ideal strategy would be;
Yoga sessions - to help you stretch your body and assist you to become more in tune with it while building core strength and strength in stabilising muscles.
Nutrition coaching and Personal Trainer - If your diet isn’t great or if you have some injuries that you’re nursing, talk with our professional to get a bit of advice on how to manage these.
Short walks (1-2 hrs) - undertake some short walks just to get the body moving again. See if anything hurts, remind your body what it’s like to get out and moving.
Medium walks (2-5 hrs) - undertake some medium walks to see if the constant foot fall and wearing of a day pack causes you any challenges. Once this is achieved with no concerns, do it again, with a full hiking pack on.
Full day walks (5-8 hrs) - If you’ve achieved the medium walk with a full pack on, undertake one of our monthly full day walks with a full pack on.
Try some gentle trail running to improve your cardio. Make sure you warm up and cool down!
Walk two days in a row with a full pack on - this will give you a really good idea of whether you are ‘pack ready’. This could be the Thursday afternoon walk (which needs permission because it’s a very challengin walk) followed by the Friday morning walk.
Short multi-day walks (2 days) - Full pack, all your gear, two days in the wilderness. We recomend our Rainbow Beach 2 day hike for your first try.
Large multi day expedition (3-5 days) - Join us on any of our multi day hikes!
And finally, if you anticipate a bit of pain after your walk, we’ve got massage covered as well :)