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Tune in as I go over some tips on how to physically and mentally prepare for big summits or bigger hikes than you have done in the past! I have learned from a few mistakes and want to be the resource I wish I had, for you!
Additional Resources Mentioned:
Shelby Mann with @groundupadventures
Podcast Episode: Trail Nutrition for Hiking and Backpacking
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
Additional Resources Mentioned:
Shelby Mann with @groundupadventures
Podcast Episode: Trail Nutrition for Hiking and Backpacking
To try a free week of my signature Fit for Hiking program to get you fit from the trails (gym AND at-home options) start HERE.
For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE.
For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE.
What is Fit for Hiking?
Where fitness and outdoors meet. In this space we chat all things hiking, exercise, wellness, adventure, motherhood, and metabolic health from a female perspective! Get ready to learn + be inspired to live your fullest, most adventurous life!
Hi, my name is Brady and I'm a longtime fitness professional and Midwest girl turned mountain living hiking addict. In combining my knowledge of fitness and passion for hiking, I've helped hundreds of women get lean and strong for the trails. Think of this as your onestop shop for both education and inspiration on all things female wellness, trail talk and adventure hiking, female metabolism, motherhood, nutrition, travel and fitness are all topics you'll hear discussed here. If you are outdoorsy and active, looking to level up your health, unlock your potential, and become inspired to live your most vibrant life, you're in the right place. You're listening to the Fit for Hiking podcast. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. Today we are going to get into a topic that I think is really fun to talk about, which is how to prep for big summits. If you have never completed a big summit hike before, meaning you're like hiking to a peak of some sort, usually in Colorado we think of like 13,000 foot peaks or 14,000 foot peaks. You might hear them called 14 ers. They're very popular out here because we have a lot of them. But this can really apply to any sort of big summit local to you that you're wanting to take on. And maybe it's just a bit more of a challenging hike than you've done before. So we're going to be talking about how to both physically prep from a fitness standpoint and then how also to just prep in general, just general know how, things that I wish I would have known before I did my first big summit. Because you could definitely make some mistakes that you regret and leave you a little bit miserable in the moment 1s if you've just never done one before. So I want you guys to learn from some of my epic mistakes that I made when I first moved to Colorado and had no idea what I was doing. So let's start by talking about how to physically prep for hiking a 14 or just climbing a big summit. So we are going to talk about 1s a little bit of the strength side as well as the conditioning side, because we really need to be pretty well rounded. So. 2s Tip number one, if you are going to be prepping for a big summit, you want to focus on building strength. I know oftentimes we think of hiking as just all cardio, but the reality is your muscles have got to have some juice behind them to get you up a big summit because you are going to be doing a lot of 1s single leg movement up and down. Your body's going to need some strength to carry you. And especially if you have a big pack, you got to have a strong core, strong back muscles to support you on a ascent like this. So we really want to make sure that we're focusing on some strength work in a couple of different forms. So one is true effective strength training. You want to be doing some progressive overload. So that means that from week to week, you're repeating some of these basic movements that should be foundational in every single fitness program that you do. If you are doing a fitness program that doesn't include things like squats, deadlifts lunges, step ups or step downs, hip thrusts, presses, pulls, like rows, pull ups or lap pull downs, chest lies, chest press, overhead press, then you probably want to find a new fitness program. These are absolutely foundational. These are the most important movements that we need to. Incorporate in every single training session. Sometimes I think we get a little too fancy and see these workouts on, like, TikTok or Instagram that are just like all over the place. They look really unique and cool, but they're actually just not that effective. So stick with the basics and make sure you're doing them in a progressive manner. A solid strength training program is anywhere from three to five sets of about five to ten reps. Anywhere above that we're really kind of more tapping into muscular endurance, which we're going to talk about next. So three to five sets of five to ten reps. And again, you want to be each week kind of building on what you did the previous week. So some exercises that I recommend for strength training for a big summit would be step ups, holding dumbbells deadlifts hip thrusts, back squats or goblet squats, any sort of lunge variation. And then you're also going to want to do some upper body work. I know it might not seem super helpful, but doing rows especially, so those could be horizontal rows, bent over dumbbell rows and lap pull downs, pull ups. Pullovers if you're doing it from home. And some core work as well. You don't have to get too crazy with this. Just some planks, side planks, hollow body positions. We want to make sure that we have a good wellrounded strength program. We're not just hammering the legs because, again, you need a strong back and core to carry a pack up a mountain, especially once you add kids into the equation. And you're also a baby. So that is the first form of strength that I would focus on. It's just true, heavy, progressive, overload strength. The next is muscular endurance. So really what this means is repetitive movement, maybe like a lower weight that you're using, but you're doing higher reps. So when you think of workouts that really burn, it's usually because they're kind of tapping into that muscular endurance of just doing tons and tons of volume at a lower weight. So you're probably not going to feel anything at like ten reps, but if you're doing 50 reps at a smaller weight, yeah, that's some muscular endurance. You're probably going to feel that burn. So with hiking, we are absolutely going to need muscular endurance because we are doing repetitive movements over and over and over again that aren't necessarily super hard initially, but a few hours in, yeah, your muscles are going to need to be able to carry you through. So muscular endurance, this is going to be something for more than twelve reps. So maybe like twelve to 20 reps, three to four sets of twelve to 20 reps. The same exercises can apply. You can do the exact same ones that you would do in a strength workout, but you're just using a different rep range to activate a different stimulus on the body. So, muscular endurance. The next is you really got to prep for the duration, endurance wise from a cardiovascular standpoint. So I think that there's also something to be said for time on feet. If you aren't able to go for long walks on a flat surface, you're probably going to struggle a little bit to hike a big summit, because that's going to require you to be on your feet sometimes for like 8 hours, depending on the duration of the hike and how intense it is, how many breaks you're taking, all these things. So getting in the habit of going for long walks or just going for long hikes that don't necessarily go all the way up to a summit. Maybe you don't have as much incline gain, but you're just spending time on your feet with a pack on, getting used to how that feels of just kind of your body starting to get tired. Because if you get tired and you still have 5 miles left, that's not a good feeling. So to prepare for that, so putting in the time and miles for your body to perform well is going to be huge. So a couple of ways that you can do this, one is like I said, going for just standard walks, like going for hour long walks a couple of times a week leading up to a big hike incline. Walking on a treadmill for longer durations is also awesome, especially if you don't live somewhere where there's a lot of inclines or you don't have a lot of altitude changes. While nothing can actually prepare you for altitude like oxygen deprivation, doing things at an incline is one of the best ways to prepare your cardiovascular endurance for that stimulus because it is going to be something where you're probably going up up for a long duration. So incline walking, you could do intervals on an incline walk, you can just do a steady state where you're keeping it the exact same intensity and pace for 45 minutes plus. But the more you can do this, the more you're letting your body get used to similar movement, right? Incorporating one long bike ride a week or one long run a week. So four plus miles of something that's a steady state cardioactivity. 1s Or just going for long hikes. If you have access to do that, even if they're not the most strenuous, again, you're getting that time on feet, you're preparing your body in that way or doing something like an elliptical or stairclier at the gym for 45 minutes or so once a week. It doesn't have to be something where you're like beating your body up five times a week. Truly doing one or two cardio sessions a week is so helpful and just going for walks, so you really don't need to overthink it here. And if you're not sure at all how to put all of this together, you could check one of the links in the show notes is for a free week of my Fit for hiking workouts where we put it all together in a plan. So really takes the guest workout and makes it quite easy and you can just get it done. So those three facets of fitness, the muscular strength, muscular endurance, and then cardiovascular endurance are all really needing to work together to get you in the shape that you want to be in, so you can show up with confidence. Another thing that I recommend is doing these things for at least two to three months leading up to your big summit, starting to work out like a week or two before. Sure, you might be able to do it if you're a generally active person, but you might not feel your best. And of course, all of this is really just to optimize how you feel, like the same way that you wouldn't just show up for a marathon without training at all. It's kind of the same thing, right? If you are going to show up and not be physically prepped, you haven't been doing anything that kind of imitates the movement that you're going to be doing on the trail. You're probably going to struggle a little bit and it's not going to be very fun. So you want to make sure that you begin a program two to three months before. And the Fit for Hiking program is a monthly thing, so you could start and get a couple of months of some good workouts in if you feel like that would be helpful for you. So that is kind of how you want to approach it from the physical standpoint. So now we're going to kind of shift gears and talk about just general things to prep that you might need to know that maybe you don't know if you're a total newbie at this. I know when I first moved to Colorado, I literally had no idea how to hike a 14 er. I just thought it was going to be like a regular hike, but maybe a little bit steeper. And I didn't take into consideration so many factors about weather and safety and all of these things and it really ended up biting me in the butt on my first. 1s 14 or experience. So I'm gonna just talk you through some of the things that I wish I would have known. One is to break your shoes in beforehand. So if you just got a new pair of hiking boots and you're planning on doing a fourteenr or a big summit or just a long hike in general backpacking trip, whatever it might be, break in your shoes before seriously, go for some small hikes and see how it feels because boots are so not a onesizefitsall. Like, I have my favorites and then I have friends who are like, oh, I hate those, but I really love these. I don't even necessarily like recommending boots because I just feel like they're so personal and it depend on your foot shape and so many different things. So make sure that your boots feel good for you if you're getting blisters every single time where you feel like your feet are half broken after short hikes, trust me, it's not going to be any better when you're doing a long like eight hour hike or a big summit. So make sure that your shoes feel good. The next is to bring more snacks and food than you think. I made this mistake on a 14,000 foot hike. It ended up being way more miles than I thought based on what I was seeing on a hiking app. And so it ended up being a good nine hour experience. And I only had like two or three granola bars and they just were not satiating enough and I was so hungry and literally could not get to a Mountaintown fast enough to go get like a big sandwich because I thought I was just going to wither away and die. You're exerting a ton of energy when you're hiking up that high at low oxygen supply. So just make sure that you opt for more food than you might think. Even if you're not someone who tips eats a lot on hikes. That's how I was and I really was kicking myself. Same with water. I mean, you're definitely going to want several liters if you're going out for a long strenuous hike like that. So make sure that you don't skimp in those departments. Yes, it's extra weight, but trust me, your body needs. The energy. So definitely make sure you do that. I have a whole episode on trail nutrition that I will link in the show notes if that is something that you're interested in diving into next. And maybe the most important one is to check trail reports and understand the seasonality of hiking big peaks. My first 14 year I ever did, I hiked in June, right? You'd think, okay, late June for sure. You're good to go. Like clear trails. When you are above treeline and you're above about 10,000ft, there's going to be snow in June, most likely especially in places like Colorado. So you got to make sure that you're checking those trail reports. I was so underprepared. I did not have any sort of spikes. My socks got completely soaked. My pants were soaked. Everything was wet. It was so tough to hike, you guys. I literally ended up sliding down the mountain on my butt because it was just like a snow louge. So you got to make sure that you are checking trail reports, see what the snow looks like. Bring spikes if you need, but I honestly would just recommend waiting until July. August are usually kind of the only months 1s for really high peaks above 10,000ft that you're probably going to want to attempt to do those. I recommend July August for sure. I don't even bother anymore anytime other than that because I know that it's just going to be a snowy, wet, kind of miserable experience, to be honest. 1s Watch weather closely and go early is the next tip. So one thing that I didn't know when I first moved to Colorado and started hiking was that there's thunderstorms pretty much every single afternoon at that high of altitude. So you need to go early, like, start really early because it might end up taking you longer than you think because it's hard and you're sucking wind the higher you go up. Even if you're an experienced hiker and you really don't want to be on a mountain past like noon or one, because you're really at high risk for getting caught in a storm, lightning strikes are real and it's very dangerous. So you don't want to be caught in a storm on the top of an exposed mountain. Trust me, I've been there, and it is really scary and vulnerable and zero out of ten recommend putting yourself in that situation. So go early. That way you can get to the summit and start your way down well before any storms come. And along those same lines, look at the weather reports. I mean, you have to know that in the mountains, weather changes on a dime, and it's important to just check it out, because if you're coming from. 1s Like in my instance, Denver being the closest city to the mountains here. If you're coming from a place like Denver and then you're going up to the mountains, it could be literally like 80 degrees and sunny and hot. And then you could get to the trailhead of where you're headed, even if it's like an hour and a half away and it could be 40 and windy and sleeting, literally. So it's important to check the weather, even if it looks like a beautiful day, and make sure that you are prepared for whatever could come your way. When you are at the top of a summit, it's going to be windy because there's no trees, so you want to make sure that you're prepared for that as well. The next is to download a map and if at all possible, have multiple sources of navigation. So whether that's one digital map that you download and then a paper map or two forms of a digital, that way if one of your resources dies, then you still have another. You really just want to make sure that you are covered in the navigation department because it's a scary thing to 1s lose your way and especially if you are doing it and there is some snow on the trail and it's not very populated, then you could absolutely get locked super easily. And safety in the backcountry and on these big peaks is not something that you want to take lightly. So just make sure you're covered map wise. I really love all trails plus because you can download the maps in advance and that's a super great resource. We also have a garmin in reach so that we can have maps downloaded and you can reach out without service if needed. I just think with safety you can never be too careful. So having some way to reach out when you lose service because trust me, you probably will. I don't know really any large peak summit situations where you have great cell service. So making sure that you have a way to seek help or gain access to a map is going to be really crucial and coming prepared with navigation. The next is to bring layers and extra socks. Like I mentioned before, if there's any snow on the trail or you get rained on, you might end up wanting some extra socks to prevent blisters and bringing extra layers. I mean, you could seriously start and be wearing shorts and a tank top and then it ends up bleeding on you. So it's so important to have good rain jacket, a windbreaker type jacket, warm layers, even gloves and a hat. I'm not even kidding you guys. In the summer it still is really cold at 14,000ft. So make sure that you are prepared just depending on weather and how high up your big summit might be. 1s And then the next is bringing a first aid kit kind of along the lines of safety. You want to have just a little something where you can bandage things up and just in case something happens, you're able to take care of a small injury and it gets you through until you're back to your car. It's just not worth it to be in that situation and not have anything. So make sure you have just at least a bare minimum wilderness first aid kit that you can bring in your pack. And the final one is to tell someone where you're going. If you're going solo, especially if you've not done this before, you've got to be really communicative. Let people know exactly where you're going, send them the route, let them know when you're coming back and say, hey, if you don't hear from me by this time, please do something about it. You want to just make sure that you are covered in that department because it's just too serious of a situation 1s to not prepare and you don't want to take it lightly. And honestly, if it is your first time, I would probably recommend going with a buddy. The first few 14 ers I did, I always went with people who knew what they were doing better than I did because it is a bit of a scary situation, especially if it's totally new to you and you are doing like a really big summit that has maybe some scrambling or you have potential to get lost. Just going with someone who knows the ropes, maybe knows the trail, knows what they're doing is always a good thing. So if at all possible, you can even hire guides. I mean, I've definitely gone with guided services and that can be really helpful. I know like here in Colorado, I have a friend Shelby with Ground Up Adventures is her Instagram and she leads groups to do backpacking trips or big summits and things like that because it can be scary to dabble on your own. So definitely taking advantage of resources like that. I will link her Instagram in the show notes because she's an awesome resource if you are in Colorado or visiting Colorado. So that is all I have for you today as far as tips on how to prepare for a big summit. I hope that this has been helpful. I so encourage you. If you've never done a big summit before and you love to hike, it's a really cool way to challenge yourself and just bring it to that next level. I remember just feeling so accomplished after my 1st 14 year, even though with all the things that went wrong, like I mentioned before, it's such a cool feeling to do a big summit like that and you can just be so proud of your body. That's a big accomplishment. And even just coming from living in the Midwest, never hiking, never doing any of that, it is possible, you just want to show up prepared. So hopefully this episode empowers you to prepare properly, both from a physical standpoint and just knowing what to expect, checking the weather reports, bringing navigation, all the things. So I hope it's been helpful and I will see you guys in the next one. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Fit for Hiking podcast. As always, I hope it leaves you feeling inspired and informed on how to take your health and adventure into your own hands. For more content like this, be sure to follow along with my daily posts at ponytail underscore on a Trail. That's ponytail underscore on a trail. You can also stay up to date on my new episodes being released at Fit for Hiking and find more free resources@ponytailontrail.com. Happy and healthy trails.