welcome today we have something a little bit different for you on the channel I am here
with my friend Paul an athletic trainer and he's also an avid hiker and he's going to go through
some of his top leg exercises for hikers so this is really all about building strength and before
we dive into the exercises I really want to have you kind of touch on why should we even strength
train because I know as a hiker I used to kind of go with the just hike more approach and I would
say over the last five years or so I've really started to build some strength in my legs and
my overall body and it has been amazing so before we dive in can you touch on why we're even doing
this absolutely and so that's a super common thing it's like oh if I want to get better hiking why
don't I just hike more which makes a lot of sense and uh you're gonna get your Trail legs under you
that way but what we really want to do is build our top end strength that way when we're going up
the trail we don't have to rev the engine so to speak as much to be able to do those hard climbs
we all go outside and hike because we want to be outside right we want it to be enjoyable we want
have that dopamine hit that stress relief and if we're just grunting up the whole hill it's
not nearly as fun so if we can build that top end strength to where we're not pushing
as high into that intensity is sometimes we might the Hike's going to be so much more enjoyable
we're going to be able to go further we're going to be able to do harder climbs and we're just
going to have more fun and that's what this is all about so yeah that's why I would say we really
need to strength train for our hikes yeah and I've come to love it I mean it's one of my favorite
aspects of exercise and working out is lifting heavy weights and building that muscle it just
feels really good and it obviously supports all the things I love to do outside let's get into it
so the first one we want to do is a Bulgarian split squats this is so awesome for the glutes the
hamstrings the quads and because it's unilateral or single leg we're really working the hips for
balance which we need while we hike anyways so how we're going to set up for this is she's going to
start pretty much right up against the bench and we can do this in two ways we can just take one
big step forward and put that back foot up or if you don't really know what the distance is we can
go by the three foot rule where we're just going to take three little steps out the only thing that
I don't like about that is everyone's foot is a different length everyone's legs are different
lengths so find something that feels really comfortable for you go ahead and step forward
we're going to drop that foot right behind and from here when we're doing our single leg squat
she's going to go down and what we're really looking for is this knee isn't coming way past
our foot but it's also not back here to where she's like you know losing her balance we want
that knee right over the insoles of her foot and we want this to where it's coming about parallel
with the ground she's going to drive right back up and the other thing you're going to notice
is her hips kind of shift backwards and then back forward as she Rises we also want to make
sure our feet aren't in a straight line we're kind of separating them out just a little bit
it's hard to hold that it's hard to hold yeah these get you really really quick which is why
I like them again it's hitting the hamstrings the glutes the quads and then we're actually going to
add in a little flavor to hit the calves as well so after we do our set we're going to talk about
the Reps at the end we're going to pause on the last rep and from here we're going to do some
calf raises driving up driving back down this hits the Soleus which is the deeper muscle in
the calf which is our sustainability muscle in the cap we're doing long hikes these smoke you yeah so
I would definitely say start with two sets of ten maybe 12 if you're feeling froggy go up to 15 and
work yourself up to three maybe even four sets of these if you're feeling like oh I'm super strong
these feel good we can also add in weights with some dumbbells kettlebells just about any weight
next we have the back squat and I know it's one of the basics but it's the basics for a reason
they work the best right they're they're one of my favorite exercises absolutely so they're so good
at building that top end strength that we're talking about and the great thing of why it
correlates over to backpacking is we're carrying weight on our back which we do when we backpack so
this also helps to strengthen the core strengthen the spinal Erectors and even the shoulders which
we need to carry those heavy packs especially if we're going multi-day trips or anytime we just
have a heavier pack than what we normally would a couple key things that we want to talk about
with the back squat is where we're going to put our feet where we're going to put our hands and
then making sure that we're looking at a point so the first thing we're going to do is as she
grabs onto the bar she gets it on her back once she sets up here these hands are going to stay
tight the whole time a lot of people will like to open their hands we don't want that we want
to actually pull that bar into our shoulders and keep it on our back and make it basically a part
of us so then she's going to step back right into a nice strong position and here her feet are just
wider than her hips again we all have different lengths of our legs our femurs our feet so this
might vary from person to person but in general we want our feet just wider than our hips and
our feet are going to be wanted to toe out just a little bit we don't want it out like this but
we don't also want it perfectly straight just a little bit of a tip out as she starts descending
she's going to drive her hips back into that position and drive up back strong the last
thing we were talking about is that eye position she's going to pick a point and stare at it the
whole time we want that position to be about chest level on ourselves she's going to pick that point
squat down and squat right back up what we generally have a tendency to do when this bar
gets heavy we look down and then as she squats if she looks down her hips are going to rise up
into this nasty position here this is no good for the back do you need help back I was like that's
probably went too far but that will happen as soon as it gets heavy we have a tendency to look down
and that's no good for our back it's no good for our hamstrings so make sure to pick a point and
start it go ahead and re-rack the bar and as far as the reps and sets go we can do a little bit
less reps with a little bit more weight on these if it's a New Movement we want to still stay with
that 10 to 12 but if we have back squad or as we start to get better we want to cut these down to
about eight to ten for anywhere from three to five sets and that's where it's going to be the
the best four specifically backpacking and if we don't have access to a barbeller we're not quite
fueling up to that we have a couple options that we can do as well as easy as with just the legs no
weight what we can do is jumping squats what we're getting down into that position jumping as high as
we can reach setting getting down jumping as high as we can and if we do have access to dumbbells
we can get some dumbbells up into what we call a front rack position and just do squats here
we might have to do a few more reps since it's not as heavy but it will get the job done the last
exercise that we want to show you is airplanes you'll need a pretty lightweight Paul's going to
go over it but this is something I have learned from Paul and I try to incorporate this into my
workout at least once a week because I hated them at first and they're really hard and you're going
to look at this you're going to be like that's stupid but just try it and trust us it's going
to help you a lot it works so anytime you get the little weights out you know it's going to
be really rough yeah and this one is but it's so great because it just builds so much stability
into the hips we use this a ton for all of my athletes across the board no matter what sport
they're doing this is a staple because it's so so so potent and it's perfect for backpacking because
we don't think about it but the entire time you're walking and Hiking you're on one foot sure so we
should be able to build as much stability into those hips as possible how we're going to start
this is uh it is going to be all on one foot so we're going to take the weight in either hand to
start with and we're going to go into a single leg RDL position if we'd done those before and a
couple things that we want to keep track of here is we want to straight As line as possible from
our head all the way to our heel we don't want it slouching down we don't want to bend that knee we
want to keep it up nice and Tall the second thing is we want to keep the hips as level as possible
keeping this hip down right here that's going to put more tension on the balancing leg we also
want a soft knee Bend here once we get that good position she's going to reach out into a rear delt
fly coming back down switching hands coming to the other side switching back and forth go ahead
and rest it requires like all my focus all of the focus goes into this yeah and the reason why we're
switching from side to side and not doing both at the same time is we're taking a lighter weight
when we're producing a long lever which is forcing us to find that balance and stay in a position
which is all the glute meat does and that's what we're focusing on here is mainly the glute Mead
yeah so don't skip this one how many reps and sets should we doing yeah so this one is going to be
two to three sets and we want to do actually more reps because it's a stabilizer muscle so we're
looking to 20 to 30 reps per Lake this is going to be challenging it's going to be hard if we
are falling a lot a couple things we might want to try to do is pop the shoes off I'm a big fan
of doing this Barefoot so we can start using the strength in our feet the other thing is count how
many times you fall and make that your challenge say maybe we're doing a set of 20 and we fall
three times next time I only want to fall twice and then once and then we'll be doing yeah that's
what I did I mean when I first started doing such a 20 it felt like a lot and now I can actually get
through a full set of 20 without falling so it is something that you can really see some improvement
on which is encouraging and we don't need a lot of weight you might do this with no weight the
first time she's using a 2.5 stronger guys that I work with professional athletes they only use
like fives maybe tens for very strong individuals you don't need a lot and it's very very potent so
those are some of the top exercises for hikers I hope you enjoyed this video got some value out of
it if you want to really dive deeper into hiking fitness Paul and I have made a program together
Paul is the mastermind behind all the programming and there is strength there is endurance there
is mobility and flexibility it is really the complete program so we would love for you to
join us in that program check some resources in the description below and thank you Paul
for being here on the channel absolutely sure we'll have him back so yeah comment
below oh he's an athlete welcome today we have a something welcome can you see me can you see me
is this weird though
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