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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 long time 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 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. What's up you guys? Welcome back to the show. This is your host Brady. Today we're going to be talking about how to get bulletproof legs for your hard hikes. Right now. If you're listening to this in real time it's January. So you're probably like not even really thinking about hiking season. If you live in, you know, a lot of areas of the world are pretty cold right now. So like, I'm in Colorado, not really thinking about hiking much, but I'm telling you, this is the time that you want to start prepping your body physically for summer hiking because it's not going to happen overnight. We got to get our body ready for this, got to get it strong. Especially if you are wanting to get serious about your hiking performance, building muscle, you know, body recomposition, all the things, in addition to just being able to perform well on your hikes and and really crush it. Okay. So we're going to talk about specifically how to get really strong, capable legs for your hikes because let's be honest, we've probably all been on hikes where we felt a little bit miserable because we weren't physically prepared. I know I definitely felt that way before I learned how to train well for my hikes. I was working out, but I like really had no clue what I was doing when it came to actually preparing strength wise for my hikes. I was just doing like a ton of hand cardio and and thought that that would be enough. And yes, it helped me with the conditioning side of things, but that doesn't really prep you to prevent injuries, to help with proper muscle activation, to make sure that you're not crazy sore or just feeling weak and unstable while you're hiking. So this can really kind of make or break your experience and your recovery. So let's get into it. We're going to talk about. Exactly what to do and how to make hikes a little bit less hard on your legs in general. Okay, so if you have things like quads feeling wrecked on the way down, knees feeling unstable or in a ton of pain, glutes not firing, or you feel like you're very quad dominant or feeling strong at the start or and then wrecked halfway through, or feel like you got hit by a semi truck the next day, then this episode is for you. The goal is that we have strong, resilient legs that can last the entire hike, not just the first mile. And you can say yes to every adventure that comes your way. Like the last thing you want to be thinking, if someone invites you want to backpacking trip or to go do like a really epic summit is oh crap, I am not in conditioning shape at all. I haven't been doing any strength training like I could maybe try like white knuckle my way through it, but it's probably gonna suck, right? So this will help you feel more prepared. So why is hiking harder on your legs than you think? Because it is very repetitive and long duration, so it's not just the same as walking. Yes, you're spending a lot of time on your feet, but there's a lot more to it that's going on as far as like the mechanics of your body than just a simple flat walk when you're going downhill. That's eccentric loading, which is the biggest cause of soreness in the quads and knees uphill, you're doing a lot of glutes, quads and calves and they're working continuously. So lots of repetition, lots of muscular endurance, especially if you live somewhere like where I live. Or maybe you're traveling somewhere to do a bucket list hike where you are gaining a ton of elevation. You need to have strong legs for this, so cardio alone is not going to get the job done. Yes, your aerobic conditioning is important, but that's only going to get you so far because if you are extremely well conditioned, but your legs are super weak and you don't have good stability, mobility, muscular endurance, muscular strength, then you're still going to feel probably a little bit unprepared on hard hikes. So endurance without strength is going to lead to breakdown, especially as we get older. So let's talk about the four pillars of bulletproof hiking legs. So number one is to actually build real strength. And this is something I am so, so passionate about. Um, there's just like literally never any benefits for women to build strength. And this does not diminish as we get older. If anything, it actually becomes much more important as we get into 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. So, ladies, if you're listening to this and you are not doing actual strength training, and I'm not talking about 5 to £10 weights, I'm talking about like actually progressively overloading your muscles over time, whether it's through, uh, weighted machines, dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, resistance bands can be great to a certain point. Then you might need to get harder tension. Right. So it needs to be progressively challenging into your muscles. You got to be doing this like, I'm not even just talking about the hiking benefits. I'm talking about brain benefits, cognitive benefits, quality of life, bone density, metabolic benefits, body composition. Like it is literally the best thing that you can be doing for yourself as you get older. Okay, so let's just set the stage there. Very very important. So when it comes to hiking and bullet proofing your legs from a strength standpoint, you're going to really want to prioritize some big heavy hitter exercises. So not just things where you're like doing some little kicks with some bands or doing air squats and things like that, you're going to want to add some lows. So things like squats. Yes. If you are doing absolutely nothing for your muscles right now, starting with air squats is great, but you will want to progress that over time to doing, you know, dumbbells, barbells, kettlebells, things like that. Um, step ups, step downs, lunges and deadlifts. Hip hinges. Hip thrusts. All of those are some of the biggest, most important compound lists that you can be doing for your legs. Not only are those going to help your legs and hips and glutes, but they're also just some of the best all around exercises that you can do in your workouts that every woman should be doing. Okay, so definitely got to be incorporating those like the standard versions variations of those to keep it interesting. We're doing so many cool variations of these within Mountain Metabolic coaching every single week, every single client. It does not matter if their goal is to hike Mount Kilimanjaro or just to maintain muscle mass. Like these are important for everybody, okay, but definitely for hikers. You got to be doing these slow, controlled reps, especially for the descents, because we want to be in control when we are descending. So when you're going down steep rocks or steep steps, you don't want to feel like you can't handle your own body weight. And then some, like if you're having a huge heavy pack on you and you're trying to do a single leg step down from a massive boulder and it's uneven and there's gravel or there's ice, like you need to be strong enough to handle that. So going slow and controlled in the gym to kind of mimic some of those experiences that you're going to get out on the trails. So you got to be doing this at least 2 to 3 times a week. Okay. And don't wait until two weeks before your hike. Right. Do it all year. Start now if you aren't doing it yet. Pillar number two is training the muscles that hikers tend to neglect. So these would be glutes, especially glute. Meade. So this is kind of the side of the booty side booty right there on like the kind of the meaty part of your hip. Um, you're going to want to do that for stability purposes. And in general when we have stronger glutes, then our body's going to activate them better instead of always relying on the quads, which then you're putting a lot of strain on the knees. Okay. So glutes are definitely your secret weapon when it comes to training for hikes hamstrings, another one like we tend to really focus on our mirror muscles. So that means like the front side of the body. So like your quads, your abs, your biceps, your chest. A lot of people in general are not working posterior chain. So that's the backside of the body nearly as much as they should for posture purposes. And just to make sure that you're evened out, we need strong glutes and hamstrings. So hamstring work is going to help protect the kneed knees and balance out the quads, calves and ankles. This is often overlooked and critical for climbs on uneven terrain. So here are some simple examples. Obviously, if you have no clue what I'm talking about, you can write these down and kind of look them up. Or you can enlist in a program like what we have, where we are walking you through this. You have the demonstration videos. You know exactly what you're doing, right. Um, lateral band works great as a warmup, especially, um, cable abduction, single leg tells. Table stepped downs. Calf raises. Those are just some basic ones that are going to hit some of these more neglected muscle groups. That will make a big difference for you as far as your strength and stability on the trails. Pillar number three is single leg and stability work. This is a huge pillar of what we do in our program for hikers. I find it so, so massively helpful. Um, so hiking is essentially just a series of single leg movements, if you think about it. Right. And you're putting yourself in these kind of awkward positions where sometimes you're kind of doing like a lateral step down, sometimes it's a massive step up, sometimes you are like just in these awkward, like stepping positions, lunging, half lunging, whatever that looks like. Right? So you want to be strong in those different positions. This is going to help reduce knee pain and improve balance and stability. So you can feel confident to take on these situations. So some examples of this would be step down step ups lateral step ups. All of the step variations. We have a lot of these in our program because they make such a difference. And definitely loading these. So yes again body weight is great up until a certain point. But adding load because you're going to probably be wearing a pack when you're doing this right. So you don't want to only train body weight. Bulgarian split squats reverse lunges. This can be elevated. This can be with a cable barbell dumbbell lots of different options there. Landmine. single leg deadlifts. Love love love. Single leg box squats. Okay, so get those single leg varieties. Because oftentimes if we aren't doing this, we are majorly weaker on one side of the body. Like either one glute, one hip, one hamstring, one quad, one side of your body is like not firing the way that it should. But you don't know because you don't ever put yourself in these single leg positions to see. Are you majorly out balance. Like, is your balance way better on one side and terrible on the other? And then you're out in the, you know, on these hikes and you're putting yourself in these positions and you're not really evened out. Okay. So that's going to be a big one. And then pillar number four is progression and recovery. So you can't really weaken warrior your way to resilient legs. You got to be doing this stuff gradually over time consistently. So gradually increasing the load that you're using in your training sessions your time under tension. So not just rushing through the reps but really going slowly, especially in that lowering phase, the deficit phase of a lift. How slow and controlled can you go? Anyone can kind of just like go through the reps as fast as possible, but are you getting the full range of motion to really receive the benefits? And the more time under tension you have, so the longer that you're in each rep, you're going to get much better results basically from your muscle activation. Um, and this is going to really, really help you with your control when you are out on the trails. And then recovery basics like what are you doing in the other 23 hours of your day? Are you treating your body like a garbage bin or are you really prioritizing good whole foods? Protein intake, sleep, nervous system recovery, delayed weeks when you need things like that? Okay, now we're going to move on to biggest mistakes that keep legs weak on the trail. Okay, so only hiking or doing cardio and never strength training is probably the number one thing that I see from my female hikers coming into Mountain metabolic coaching, doing high reps with light weights or like circuit based training and hit forever skipping warmups and mobility work and ignoring soreness until it becomes pain. Just trying to like, kind of white knuckle your way through the hikes even though you're feeling a lot of joint pain. So what does a bulletproof week actually look like? Like how do you implement this into your life? If you're busy and you're like, I don't have time to be training full time for my hiking, right? Like hiking is just a hobby, but it is important to you to be able to say yes to all the adventures. So what I would recommend is 2 to 3 strength sessions per week. And before you like, freak out and come up with excuses, that is not that much. Okay, 2 to 3 hours out of your week is hardly anything. So if you're serious about this and you want all the health benefits that we've talked about in this episode and pretty much every episode of this show, we will reiterate that. So if you go through and listen the other ones, you will see why strength training is so, so important for healthy body composition, metabolism, bone density as we age, avoiding osteoporosis, all of these things, you got to be doing 2 to 3 strength sessions per week. And if you're not sure really where to start, keep listening because I'll give you some opportunities to kind of get some guidance because yes, a workout is better than no workout. But if you don't know what you're doing, if your form is terrible, if you don't have any idea what exercises are going to actually move the needle for progress, or you're just kind of like rushing through them and not progressing, then yeah, you're probably not going to get as much out of it. And that's why a lot of people will do the same workouts for years and actually not ever look like they work out or feel the benefits. I experienced this for years where I was working out all the time, but the workouts I was doing weren't actually getting me to where I wanted to be from a from physique standpoint or from a performance standpoint. So it was kind of just a waste of my time because I was putting so much time and energy into these workouts that were just not effective for what I was trying to accomplish. Right. So you've got to make sure that what you're doing in the gym or at home actually aligns with the results that you want. Um, 1 to 2 hikes or cardio sessions per week, ideally. So maybe a longer one and a shorter one. So maybe save your longer one for the weekend. Um, if you're able to get out and hike where you live, awesome. This is going to give you that real time hiking experience. Build up your confidence. But if you live somewhere where that's just not really feasible, then you can always opt for a longer cardio session. That's going to kind of mimic what you're doing on the trails, mobility work before your workout, and stretching at the end of your workout. That's really important. You don't want to just sit and do static stretches at the beginning, because that's not really going to warm up your body the way that you need to get into a really proper strength workout. So having good mobility drills and then at the end you can focus more on that static stretch and then daily walk, spending time on your feet, spending time out in nature. Again, millions of benefits here. But definitely if you're wanting to do longer hikes, you do need to get used to spending more time on your feet. You can also add like a weighted vest type of situation. Not necessary, but it definitely helps, right? It's getting you in that position where you are used to carrying a bit more load when you're going on these long distance walks. Um, so who is this really important for? Definitely women 30 to 60 plus. You need to be doing this. Okay. This is kind of a non-negotiable for you. Um, so if you love to hike but want stronger legs, less knee pain, faster recovery, and more confidence on technical terrain than you really should be implementing. What we've talked about today, big time. And we have so many other episodes like you can go back through. We have tons of hiking focused episodes, so if this is like your main focus, like that's why you're listening to this show right now is you are wanting to get in shape for a big bucket list hike, or you want to be able to carry your kids up up a mountain this summer, or you want to do your first 14 or whatever it looks like, and that's why you're here. Then go back and listen to some of those episodes. We have a ton of them, but also want to give you a couple of different opportunities if you are wanting some next steps. So one is you can DM us the word checklist and I will send you our leg strength checklist for hikers. Okay. So this is going to have some of those exercises that we talked about today and get you started there. Our Instagram is fit underscore for hiking. Okay. So that's linked in the show notes. Make sure you DM us there and we will send that over to you. Um, if you are really serious about this and you're like, I don't want to waste any time, I need like customization, personalization around injuries. I have a very set timeline for this. I also want to, like, work on my body composition and get lean, get toned, work on these different health issues, and prepare for a hike. Um, then you should talk to us about coaching because that's what we do. It's very all encompassing, working on all of those things at the same time to give you the best, most personalized results for you. Um, and we've worked with hundreds of women to get them there. Okay. So if that appeals to you, you can always book a consult call. We can go over what your goals are looking like, make sure the program makes sense for you and go from there. So there is an application link in the show notes. Just click there. It's going to take you through a few quick questions. If you're serious about this. Answer those questions and we will reach out and get a call scheduled with you. All right, you guys, thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show and you're a consistent listener, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a message on Instagram, share the show, rate the show, whatever you can do. All of those little things really helps if you gain value from us week after week. If you can just take a few minutes to shout us out, give us a rating and review. Those things really help little shows like this and I appreciate you so much. Thank you for listening and I will chat with you in the next episode. 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 Underscore for hiking, and find more free resources at ponytail on Etrailer.com. Happy and healthy trails.