5 Tips to Improve Hiking Stamina Before Spring

If you like being out in nature, the prospect of nice spring weather in the near future might make you excited about hiking. Whether you’re an experienced hiker or someone just starting out, building stamina and endurance is an important aspect of enjoying your hikes.

1) Walk or Run

Going on walks or runs is a good way to build stamina for hiking. If you’re just starting or getting back into hiking after a break, you can start with walking on flat terrain. Build up to a walk-run practice and/or walking where you can go uphill and downhill. If you track your steps, gradually increase your target goal until you’re walking 10,000+ steps a day.

2) Climb Some Stairs

Many hikes include stairs or uphill walking. Even if you’re planning to hike mostly flat trails or ones with gradual slopes, practicing on stairs or uphill slopes helps build your endurance. Climbing stairs or working out on a stair climber also helps strengthen your legs and glutes, which are important muscles for hiking.

3) Try Strength Training

Unless you go on long hikes and carry a heavy backpack, you might not think of weight training in relation to hiking. But even if you don’t carry a lot of gear, weight training can improve the strength of muscles that you use when hiking. Muscles used in hiking include the leg, core, hamstring, hip flexor, and glute muscles. Strengthening those muscles will build your hiking stamina.

4) Practice Breathing

Something often overlooked when talking about fitness is breath. People typically take shallow breaths, but if you’re doing that when exercising it won’t give your muscles the oxygen they need. Practice breathing deeply, expanding into the lower part of your lungs and diaphragm (it will make your stomach move when you breathe in rather than your upper ribs).

5) Work on Cardio

Hiking is a cardio workout. It gets your heart pumping. To build hiking endurance, you can incorporate cardio workouts into your routine. Outdoors, that can include walking, running, cycling, swimming, and more. Indoors, you can do dynamic cardio routines or use a variety of exercise machines like ellipticals.

A fitness coach at a gym like Extreme Studio Performance can help you find cardio workouts that you enjoy, and which will help increase your stamina. Working out at a gym can also help you stay in shape and work toward your hiking goals even when the weather isn’t good for hiking, or you don’t have time to get out on the trail.