Ep. 105 Want to Hike Stronger & Longer? Here's the Training You’re Missing

If you’re training for hiking season or want to stop feeling like you’re dragging behind on the trail, this episode is for you. I break down exactly how to train with purpose—covering strength, endurance, balance, and injury prevention so you can feel confident and strong on every hike. You’ll learn how to structure workouts that actually translate to the mountains. I also share my own postpartum hiking comeback and a special coaching offer just for podcast listeners. Let’s get trail-ready together!

For next level fat loss strategies, hormone/gut health help, serious performance goals and unparalleled support, apply for Mountain Metabolic coaching. Learn more HERE. Mention you're a podcast listener during the application call for $100 off your program!

For more free wellness resources, hiking/travel guides, and other blog posts, check out my website HERE. 

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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. And 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 one stop 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. This is your host, Brady, and today we are getting super detailed about what exactly to do if you are training for hiking season, maybe you have one particular hike that you are trying to complete this summer or, um, you know, like a bucket list thing that you want to do with a big group or you're just tired of kind of being in the back of the pack when you go hiking with your family or friends. Whatever your motivation is. We're going to talk about how to get stronger and build endurance for your hiking. Because let's be real. A lot of people just walk or think that, like, doing some small hikes is going to be the perfect solution for getting in shape for hiking. And while walking is a great start. If you want to perform at your highest possible level, then we need to be focusing on more than just walking. We need to do things like injury prevention, muscular strength, muscular endurance, agility, and aerobic cardiovascular fitness. So as you can see, there's a lot of different things that we want to be implementing in our training protocols, and it can be overwhelming if you hear those words and you're like, I don't even know what that looks like in a practical sense. Um, if you're not a fitness trainer, that might kind of just go over your head. And so let's break down in a simple manner. How can we actually get stronger and better endurance for our hikes? Okay. So one is you want to train with a purpose. You don't want to just show up to the gym or, you know, do your at home stuff haphazardly without any sort of plan. You really want to make sure that you're implementing all the things that are going to really translate to your hike. So what are the things that we need to focus on in our weekly routine, in addition to just your basic walking, which definitely is beneficial to do on a daily basis for more than just your hiking, but just for your mental well-being. Physical well-being. It's a really positive habit to have in your day to day life. Additionally to walking, you also want to focus on aerobic cardio, so this is something that's going to benefit you when you are looking at long endurance style hikes, things where you're just kind of keeping your heart rate at a decently high place for a long amount of time. Next is single leg stability work. Um, single leg work is what you're doing while you're hiking every single time you take a step. So we want to make sure that we are stable and strong on just one leg at a time, especially if you're going to be hiking over big rocks, doing a lot of steps, things like that. Um, leg strength for your workouts. We really, really need to make sure that our legs are strong. And also, in addition to the legs, we do want to focus on core, glutes, and back. Okay. So those are the things that we're going to be getting into. So let's talk about top compound strength moves that we want to be targeting our lower body primarily okay. So these are going to be working multiple muscle groups in the lower half. So like your quads glutes hamstrings hip muscles things like that. So number one would be step ups and step downs. There is a difference in kind of your anchoring point and how you're positioning yourself on the step. I love to do a lot of different varieties of step ups and downs, both up and down, facing forward, laterally. Things like that. Crossovers are also great if you are a bit more advanced. So, um, the more that you can implement these, these are going to perfectly mimic what you're doing when you're hiking steep inclines, especially if you have big rocks that you're trying to step up and down from. You want to make sure that you are stable and strong in that movement. And oftentimes it can actually be tougher, um, stability wise, coming down, but it can be harder muscular going up. So we want to make sure that we're doing both. Um, and this is really going to help strengthen the glutes, quads and hamstrings all at once. So really, really positive exercises to be doing. Um, this is something that I do with pretty much all of my mountain metabolic clients, especially if they do have big hikes that they're training for. Number two is the Bulgarian split squats. So this is just a fancy way to say you have one foot in front of the other. Your back foot is elevated and you're performing split squats. This is going to be really, really helpful for building single leg strength because you're completely removing your back leg from the equation. So your front leg is taking all of your body weight. And if you want to load it up with additional dumbbells, barbells, as you get more advanced, you're going to get really, really strong in that single leg movement as well as the stability, because you're forcing yourself to balance on that front leg while moving up and down. So this is going to really help with your balance stability on the trail. Number three deadlifts. So this can be any type of deadlift really. So your conventional Romanian as well as single leg I love for balance or split stance. There's also Bulgarian deadlifts. So lots of different varieties here that I like to do in my own training and with my clients. This is primarily focusing on the hamstrings and glutes as well as the core. So you really need to brace as you're lowering, as you're hinging at the waist. And so this is going to help with strength as you're carrying your pack. But also you want to have strong glutes and hamstrings so that your quads and knees don't take the brunt of every single step that you're taking. Number four. Lunges. There's a lot of different varieties of these, similarly to what we were just discussing with deadlifts. So many variations. So you can get creative with this. My favorite ones for hiking purposes are reverse lunges, lateral lunges, and walking lunges. You can even do a little step up to reverse lunge combination, which is amazing for stability balance strength in the single leg format. So you really want to be incorporating in some form of lunges. This is really going to help with lower body strength and endurance and prep you for uneven terrain. Number five our final one here for the lower body. And obviously there's way more that we can do. But just to keep it simple we're sticking with five. And these are going to be squat variations. So this could be a back squat a goblet squat a single leg um kind of like sit down squat where you're tapping your butt to a bench standing back up. That's going to be more advanced because you're only relying on one leg. This is going to build overall leg strength and core strength, especially as you start to go heavier. The heavier go with these compound lifts, the more you're going to have to be bracing your core. And a lot of people think that core work is just sitting on the ground and doing crunches or planks, but honestly, lifting heavy weights in a compound manner like what we've been talking about, is one of the best things that you can do for building a strong core. You don't have to be doing ab exercises to build a strong core, and this is also going to just help with your uphill and downhill control. So these are the five exercises for the lower body. I definitely, definitely recommend implementing and get creative with it. You can do a lot of different varieties if you're unsure of where to even start with your programming, make sure you stick around. I'm going to be offering a little discount for our Mountain Metabolic coaching if this is really, um, you know, resonating with you, but you have no idea where to start, and the thought of putting together a program feels very overwhelming. Okay. Next let's talk about core back and stability work. So this is going to be really essential for being able to balance properly on rocky trails to reduce injury risk. Um it's also just not fun if you feel like you're going to fall the whole time, or if you're having some back aches from carrying your pack, you don't feel like your core is supporting you. You just feel unsteady. So a couple things that you can do for these different areas would be one. Focusing on your core with plank varieties. Um, this is going to help build deep core strength and support posture with a backpack. So there's a lot of different plank varieties. Again this is something that we incorporate tons of different varieties within our mountain metabolic coaching to keep it fun. Keep it interesting. So you're not just holding a front plank every single time. You can also do things like, um, heel lowers from a line back position called the dead bug, bird dogs, things like that. And that's going to be amazing for core strength and stability. Um, and enhancing cross-body control. Um, also additionally, uh rotational movements and anti rotational movements with bands or cables in the gym are amazing if you have access to those forms of equipment. So working the core in multiple different, um, movement planes, instead of just doing crunches or just doing planks, is going to really, really serve you as far as targeting the core. Um, for your back strength, we're going to want to focus on different Ro varieties. A lot of people who go to the gym do not focus on back at all is a really, really neglected muscle group because it's not a mirror muscle, right? We don't like see our back while we're exercising or doing curls or push ups, things like that. So oftentimes people forget about the back, especially ladies. So the reason why we want to train back is because that is what's going to support your posterior chain, your posture. So if we don't have strong back muscles we tend to hunch forward, especially when we have the weight of a backpack. So not only just on the trails, but in life in general, we want to support our postural muscles, so we need to have a strong back. So they're not just starting to round forward, especially because we do so much in our day to day life from a rounded forward position, such as working on laptops. Looking at our phones, it's just kind of our natural state, honestly, with how much we're on devices these days. So you've got to counteract that with lots of back side of the body work, meaning your back and hamstrings and glutes. So we already talked about hamstrings and glutes. Let's talk about the back. So rows are going to be the best thing that you can do. And this can be done just with dumbbells cables TRX straps regular bands barbells kettlebells. You can really do a lot of different varieties of rows, but this is going to help promote good posture while hiking as well as strength when you're hiking with a pack so you don't end up having back pain or poor posture. Um, so definitely recommend adding rows, at least multiple varieties to each, uh, workout that you're doing. Other exercises that you can do to support the back muscles would be things like lap pull downs or pull ups, pull overs. Anything that's a pulling motion is going to be working your back muscles. All right. So let's talk about injury prevention. We're going to want to focus on keeping our ankles knees and hips feeling good. So one thing that you can do here is calf raises both bent and straight leg. This is going to help strengthen ankles and Achilles and reduce risk of rolling your ankles on the trails. Also lateral band walks or monster walks. Um these are where you have a band wrapped around your knees and you're kind of doing that lateral movement side to side. You can also do things like your squats and glute thrusts with the band around your knees applying outward pressure. I love implementing this for better glute activation. This is going to help strengthen glutes and hips to make sure activating properly again so that your knees are not doing all of the work. So do these for activating your glutes and hips and improving knee tracking and hip strength. The next one is single leg balance drills. I cannot recommend single leg work enough. Not only load it up, but also just the balance. And you can implement these in your warm ups and cooldowns really nicely, especially your dynamic warm ups before getting into a lift. This is going to prepare you for uneven terrain, and it's really, really important to feel steady in kind of weird positions when you are hiking. So laterally coming down, going up laterally, going up, forward, um, and just kind of all these different positions that you find yourself in when you're hiking. If you can't do these things just with your body weight, it's going to be really hard to do it. When you're on uneven terrain with a pack on, you're already tired from hiking, right? So we really want to make sure that we're prepping our body for these types of scenarios that we are going to be in while we're hiking. So some programming tips, kind of bringing this all together. Um, for the strength side of things would be to focus on strength 2 to 3 times a week. Ideally, if you are a bit more advanced, you can absolutely do more. Um, but we're going to want to focus on progressive overload. So that would mean increasing the reps the weight or the difficulty intensity over time. So we're not just doing the exact same thing week after week. Well, I do recommend repeating the same exercises week after week and month after month. Really, you're going to be doing these kind of basic exercises for your entire life. Um, but we want to be progressing the volume. So either doing more reps, more sets, or progressing the weight and intensity with which you are exercising. So if you're just doing, you know, for instance, let's say you're doing a goblet squat and you're holding a £10 dumbbell to start out, that's going to feel challenging when you haven't been doing these things in the past. But if you continue week after week, day after day, just using that exact same £10 dumbbell, yeah, you're going to start to feel like, um, this isn't really challenging anymore. And while that's a good sign that you're getting stronger, we don't want to stop there. If you want to keep progressing, you need to keep progressing the weights that you're using. Um, so continue going up another way that you can progress the intensity would be by playing with your tempo. So you can do really slow on the eccentric phase of the lift. So that would be lowering slowly into that squat. You can add pulses or pauses at the bottom. Um, you can add a hop at the top. Those are some different ways to add intensity without necessarily adding weight, though you might still find that you get diminishing returns if you never, never progress the weight. So having the means to do that is really important. Um, and then training with your pack when possible. So if you can throw a dumbbell or throw some weight plates in a hiking pack, or you have a weighted pack that you can use a weighted vest, those are going to be really helpful because it's going to simulate what you're doing on the trails. Um, so you're not just getting used to doing these things with your body weight. Um, also mixing heavier strength and higher rep endurance set. So what I mentioned before, as far as muscular endurance versus muscular strength, this is how we achieve that. If we're focusing more on lower reps, higher weight, that's going to be more strength focused. If we're focusing on, um, lower weight and higher reps, then that's going to be really helpful for developing muscular endurance. So kind of training your muscles to do the same movement over and over and over again without tiring. Okay. So you really want to kind of switch those up from time to time. So you're not always training your muscles to expect the exact same stimulus. The next thing we want to do is boost endurance. So yes, strength and stability, injury prevention a lot of that comes from doing weight training. But we also do want to focus on the cardiovascular side of things so that you feel well-rounded and ready aerobically as you show up to your hike. So a couple things you can do here. I would focus on doing aerobic style cardio at least two times a week. So this is a type of of cardio where you're doing a the same movement over and over and over again, like a repetitive movement such as elliptical biking, jogging, hiking is a really great aerobic activity. Things like that. Incline walking, but you're going at an easy enough pace that you can hold a conversation. You can breathe in and out through your nose by closing your mouth, and you're still able to kind of maintain level breathing. Once you reach the point where you're just mouth breathing, you're panting like crazy. You can't hold a conversation. You've kind of moved more into an anaerobic, um, type of zone. So you want to make sure you're staying aerobic because that is more so what you're going to be doing when you're hiking. So doing that for about 30 to 60 minutes, 2 to 3 times a week is going to be really helpful. Um, especially ramping up as you get closer to the big hikes. I would say if you're not like, actively training for a big hike at that moment, just doing that like one day a week is still going to have amazing health benefits for your heart. Um, but if you do have something coming up or it's summertime and you know, you want to get out and hike a lot, um, doing that a little bit more often is going to really benefit you. And then you can even mix in some intervals. So this would be like doing some hill sprints or really, really pushing yourself on a run for a 32nd intervals. You can do intervals really with any form of cardio, just by pushing the intensity and the pace for small little bits and then going back down. So you're going up with your heart rate, down with your heart rate, and doing that even just one time a week. Because realistically, when you're hiking, there are going to be times where you are encountering more challenging terrain, where you're getting your heart rate up way higher, and then it comes back down again as the terrain levels out. So this is going to be really well, um, really helpful for mimicking that type of cardio situation. Um, another tip here is, if possible, train at altitude. I know that this is not doable for everybody. Um, and I encountered this a lot with my clients, but the more often that you can train an altitude, the easier it will be to perform at altitude. And then ensuring you're getting enough carbs before your training session so you have energy to perform things, especially, um, hard lifts and cardio sessions. And then if you are embarking on a big hike, definitely that morning, you're going to want to focus on carbs and a little bit of protein. Um, that's kind of the sweet spot as far as your macronutrients, you don't want to be doing a ton of fat or dairy or or high fiber things that might kind of upset your stomach. Um, just focusing on kind of more simple carbs and protein as you get ready for a big endurance event. All right, you guys. As promised, I want to give you guys a little discount. So if you are an avid podcast listener, I really appreciate you. I want to offer you $100 off of our Mountain Metabolic coaching program. So this is really our bread and butter. And kind of why I started this coaching program is because there's not a lot out there for hikers. And not only do we focus on getting you in shape for your outdoor goals, but we also focus on things like body recomposition, getting more lean, getting more toned. Um, focusing on addressing kind of root issues such as maybe some hormonal imbalances, gut issues in women, metabolic resistance, type of issues. Um, so it's not just about getting in shape for your hikes. We really take a holistic approach so we can look at all of these different components to get you feeling your best as far as your nutrition, your workouts, your metabolism, bringing it all together so you can reach more than just your outdoors goals. Um, so if this sounds like something you're looking for, if you really just need help putting all of this together, then definitely. Hit the link below to apply and make sure that you let me know on our call together that you are a podcast listener and you will get that $100 discount when you sign up. Okay, so start with the application. I'm going to book a call with you from there. So we can just kind of chat about your goals, see if the program is a good fit for you, and then you can get access to that discount. All right, you guys, I hope that this has been really helpful. Um, as you are looking into getting stronger for your hikes, I personally did my first kind of longer hike postpartum this past weekend, and it was honestly so cool to see all of this in real life. Um, because I have been working really hard to get in hiking shape for the summer with not a lot of time because I had my baby three months ago. And just by applying these principles for a few months, um, not even multiple months because I got cleared at six weeks to exercise again. So really, just the past six weeks I was able to hike so confidently. I felt really agile, I was fast, I felt like my aerobic capacity was amazing, even while gaining a ton of altitude. Um, and I felt strong. So just all of that to say it does make such a difference. So if you have been neglecting your training and you want to feel better on your hikes and you want to have more fun, I definitely recommend looking into this. Awesome. Thank you guys so much for tuning in today, and I will chat with you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to 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 Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at ponytail on the trail.com. Happy and healthy trails.