so if you're watching this video you've at least considered the idea of devoting some
time and effort to preparing for a hike in order to avoid getting injured and to enjoy the trip as
much as possible so in this video i want to share what i've learned over the years helping hikers
prepare for their trips throughout the video i'll be referring to other videos on my channel that
will help you get started and gauge where you're at and i'll also be referencing the programs for
my website that are relevant to each situation but before we get into it i want to plug one thing and
that is my patreon page i've just posted a video there detailing my next through hike
the new equipment that i have as well as my lighter pack page which has got all the
information on the new gear that i'm taking on my next through hike all right let's get into it
so this video has broken down into four things time resources injuries and experience and the
first one that we're going to get into is time both in terms of how much time you have available
in your day-to-day life for training but also how much time you have before day zero when you're
at the trail head and ready to go the more time you have before your trip the more time you have
to explore your body to find your weaknesses and hopefully to eliminate any chance of you getting
injured beforehand so for anyone that has say more than two months to prepare i would recommend that
your primary focus be on joint health so strength and mobility improving the mobility and overall
health of key joints like knees hips and ankles can take a lot of time you can't get this done
in two or three weeks so the longer you have the better like anything worthwhile it does take a
bit of effort it does take a little bit of trial and error but it's 100 time well spent the cardio
side of things is obviously important but we're going to get into that later working on strength
and mobility requires that you have a bit of an interest in your own body and this knowledge can
be really useful when you're out on the trail if things start to go wrong so the training is about
exploring the limitations that you may have with those key joints and making improvements in the
areas that are the highest priority so again knees hips and ankles this can be done in as little as
20 minutes a day by following this routine this is designed with the hiker in mind and is designed to
help you understand your body and start figuring out where your limitations are it's really the
best place to start and no matter where you're at i think this is a really good first point of call
for just about anyone but if you have less than two months to prepare i would still recommend
doing that video but it just means you've probably got to put a lot more time in and with that time
i would suggest you begin working on your aerobic function or for lack of a better word
cardio that's a big topic and i go into quite a bit of detail on exactly how to do that in this
video i'll link it up here so you can check it out so just those two videos alone really cover the
basics in terms of how to prevent getting injured and also how to develop your aerobic capacity so
you're not huffing and puffing your way up the mountain every single day if you wanted a plan
laid out for you with exactly what to do i would recommend checking out my elements program for as
little as 10 bucks we cover all that and more including lower body and upper body strength
which is surprisingly important so that's where i recommend everyone start no matter what even
if you're a professional athlete if you go through that program i guarantee you there's
going to be a weakness in there something you can discover that's going to help your overall
performance and enjoyment when you're out in the mountains the only caveat to that would be that if
you're a really young person say 21 or under and if you've been constantly active you've never had
any injury concerns then you could kind of skip the queue and jump straight into something like my
uphill endurance program but my advice is to not take shortcuts so the second time factor that we
have to consider is how much time you have in your day-to-day life to be able to devote to training
some people have hours and hours and if you're busy you've got a family maybe you've only got
half an hour maximum 45 minutes but no matter what there's something you can do that's going to
push the envelope in terms of how prepared you are most of my programs require about 30 to 60 minutes
per day depending on which phase you're at but if you really short on time then you really have to
choose to prioritize either strength and mobility or aerobic function it's better to do one really
well than to do both poorly so if you're short on time whether it's throughout your week or in
the lead up to your trip it's best to focus on one and do it well but obviously with more time
to devote to training the more you're going to be able to thoroughly cover those bases of strength
and mobility and aerobic function to give you the best possible result so now that we've
talked about time the second category of things to consider is going to be resources so if you live
close by to trails that have some elevation or even if you live in a city that's got some hills
nearby it's going to make things a lot easier obviously it helps having mountains nearby but
we can't all live in chamonix so even if you live in a region that's pancake flat without a hill
in sight there's definitely things you can do you just have to be a little bit more creative
about the way you structure your training and what you do in those sessions and those sessions can
be useful to anyone because it's quite likely that even if you have mountains close by you
won't have the time to go out there three to four times a week and that's where simulated elevation
comes in handy i'm not talking about simulated altitude i'm not really a fan of altitude training
i've covered that in another video what i'm talking about is things like stairs
steps incline treadmills potentially other types of gym equipment but really only as a last resort
if you've watched the channel for a while you probably know how i feel about fixed gym equipment
already so we can skip over that as well but in any case the single best resource that you have
is just your own body there is so much that you can do that can be really effective only using
your own body weight and a little bit of space on the floor and the great benefit of this is that
you can do it anywhere you can even do it in the mountains if you so wish if you want to check out
this video i'll show you exactly how to do that but i design all of my workouts to either be done
at home or out in nature or a park because that's the way that i enjoy training i don't enjoy being
in the gyms and the more you enjoy the training the more likely you are to do it so with the
right exercises and a basic understanding of how the body works you can really challenge yourself
and build some serious strength and endurance in the process so if all you have is a step
or a box out in the park somewhere then you can try this follow along workout which is all about
developing leg strength what you may discover though when doing this type of training is that
training your own body weight with no equipment does come with its own challenges if you have been
limited and your mobility if your joints and muscles are stiff and sore and achy
then things are going to be a little bit harder for you and again that's why i
developed the elements program that was really designed with my 60 year old mother in mind
she can go through and do these exercises and so really anyone with any level of fitness can begin
with that program so if you find my other fall long routines too difficult
then elements is really the place to begin so no matter what resources you have whether you've got
mountains in your backyard or hills stairs steps or just your own body weight and a bit of space
then you can make the most of your time and your resources by using the videos on my channel
and the videos in my programs if you want to go in that direction so the third thing to consider
i think is your experience level so how much time you've actually been out on trial if you've been
hiking regularly and extensively and you consider yourself a reasonably experienced hiker then
frankly it's a miracle that you're still watching this video because what often comes with that
experience is confidence which don't get me wrong confidence is great but with experience and
confidence often comes the notion that your body is bulletproof and is capable of anything simply
because of the miles that you've put in on trail which unfortunately is not the case i wish it was
our joints will wear out if we don't give them that daily time and attention so
if hiking is your only form of movement that your body does then you are gradually losing the range
of motion that you have and we've all experienced this after a long day's hiking you're immediately
a lot tighter and a lot stiffer than what you were and the same thing happens over the long term
i mean yes that tightness and soreness eventually goes away but we don't automatically gain more
range of motion if we're not doing anything other than just walking most of us are also gradually
losing mobility as we age and when you couple that with limited range of motion repetitive movements
consistent use over days weeks or months then that's really a recipe for injury
so if you are an experienced hiker and you're looking to devote some more time to training
then my advice would be this if you want to spend more time doing strength and mobility that's going
to give you the biggest bang for buck in terms of both preventing injury but also dealing with the
stress of being on trail for long periods of time yes you can also work on your fitness in general
and things like cardio especially if you wanted to hike faster for instance but hiking for the
most part is not a performance pursuit it's mainly about not getting injured so you can continue to
go for longer and longer speaking of injuries that is the fourth thing we're going to talk about this
video i'm going to break them down talk about some of the more common injuries and how you can avoid
them and i'll be focusing just on musculoskeletal injuries for this video and they come in really
two categories so firstly there's trauma so that's hard impact like a bad fall or jerking movements
fractures dislocations direct blows to muscle obviously there's certain circumstances where
things like this are avoidable being strong and mobile is not going to help you from falling off a
20 meter cliff but in the vast majority of cases being strong and mobile will greatly reduce your
chances of getting an injury you know accidents happen even to those with a lot of experience
and it only takes your knee or your ankle to move slightly out of its normal alignment for starting
to get torn or sprained or ruptured in some kind of trauma i made a video with some basic stretches
and some sitting patterns that you can use both in prevention of injuries and your training
and also if something was to come up on trial you can utilize that information as well so that
one's also a must see i'll link it up here and then there's movement capacity injuries that are
generally produced by muscle imbalances postural strain repetitive movements lack of mobility
these are the common injuries that i'm generally dealing with some of the most common ones are to
do with the feet the feet are so important to us as hikers things like plantar fasciitis or rolled
or sprained strained ankles a lot of injuries like these and others with the foot can be
prevented by doing my ankle mobility and my ankle strength routine they're all in my injury playlist
as we move up the leg things like shin splints and other things to do with the tibialis any kind of
strain on the front of the leg or the calf can be prevented by just doing some general strength and
conditioning of both the calf muscles and the tibialis anterior the muscle that runs down the
front of the leg moving up then we've got knees and of course there's loads of different knee
issues one of the most common ones is valgus knee so weakness on the outside of the hip which causes
the knee to cave inwards so if you notice that your knees are often caving inwards towards the
midline of the body when you're either walking or running it's probably got something to do with the
outer glute and funnily enough a lot of these other knee issues come from either problems with
ankle mobility or problems with hip strength and mobility so if you're working on the daily
movement practice and improving your strength and mobility both of the ankles and the hips then the
likelihood is that you're going to be making some progress towards preventing those injuries if you
have a knee issue and you want to dive into that a little bit more i've got a couple of videos about
how to reduce knee pain when you're hiking as well as one specific to iliotibial band
pain which is something that's really far too common and from my mind so far is relatively
easy to fix there's a bunch of people that have commented on that video that have said that has
helped from doing that routine and it's all free and you can find it on my channel i'll link it
up here for you to check out the thing with hiking is that it's a simple movement pattern
and it uses only a fraction of the range of motion of key joints like knees hips and ankles and it
does that over and over and over again in a very repetitive way so the answer to preventing those
kind of injuries that come with overuse and lack of mobility is to include more movement complexity
in your everyday life if you hike a lot and do nothing else then your body is going to
thrive from doing something different and getting some more stimulus this should feel good it should
give you energy it should boost vitality because movement complexity is the antithesis it's the
yang to the yin of hiking but the point here is that if you look after your joints if you
challenge their range of motion regularly and build a habit around more complex movements then
the likelihood is that you won't have to worry so much about training and being prepared for a
hike so i realized this video has basically just been a gigantic map to lead you to other videos
but i really need to get out my kind of mind map in a form of video for you to understand how all
these puzzle pieces fit together with my programs and my videos if you enjoyed this video i'd love
to do more stuff like this in the future hit the like button to let me know and subscribe because
i've got lots more gold coming for you soon thanks for watching i'll see you on the summit