HIKING TRAINING TIPS to Avoid the Most Common Injuries

if you have a big hiking or backpacking trip coming up and you want to get in shape so you can complete that trip injury-free then this video is for you the information this video is going to be especially useful if you want to get the most bang for your buck out of your training maybe you work a desk job or if you have a busy life with a family and kids then this video is going to help you out because we're focusing on the three most common types of hiking and backpacking injuries foot and planner fasciitis issues knee and hip pain and then overuse injuries I came to the conclusion that the these are the three most common type of hiking injuries by looking at surveys done of CDT and PCT through hikers by the halfway anywhere website and then reading and listening to information from a specialist in hiking and backpacking injuries Blaze Physiotherapy in order to help you guys avoid these types of injuries I'm going to share with you what I've learned through research and personal experience that has led me to be able to hike over 2,000 miles in the last 3 years without any trip ending injuries we're going to go over how you can train before a trip in order to get in shape and then what you can do on trail in order to help with injury prevention and just just note that I'm not a physiotherapist I'm not a doctor and this is just what I've learned and what has worked for me we're going to start with the most common injury and that's foot injuries with the biggest culprits being planner fasciitis and achilles tentis luckily while these are the most common injuries they're also probably the easiest to address about 6 years ago I spent an entire year dealing with planner fasciitis and it really limited what I could do because that I did did a lot of research into how to prevent it and how to deal with it and it led me to basically one big realization and that's that I needed to go barefoot more often the issue was that I wasn't spending any time strengthening my feet when I was walking around the house I was wearing really supportive slippers when I went for walks around the town or running errands I was wearing shoes with insoles in them and then when I was going for hikes and runs I was also wearing very supportive Footwear supporting my feet in this way and essentially bracing them never allowed them to move in a way that allowed them to strengthen what really changed the game for me and allowed to address my planner fastis was going Barefoot around the house more often and then introducing Barefoot and Minimalist Shoes into my everyday life so if I was going to the grocery store or taking the dog for a walk I was wearing Minimalist Shoes and this really allowed my foot to strengthen up so that when I got out on trail even if I was using a really supportive piece of foot while I was hiking my foot was strong enough that I wasn't going to get really tired over the course of the day and I wasn't going to start dealing with those foot injuries while Barefoot training is good before you get a on trail I don't recommend it for most people when you're actually hiking because your foot's going to be getting really beaten up and you probably want a cushion shoe something more supportive and you might even want to introduce insoles into your shoe in order to provide a little bit more support so that your foot isn't getting as fatigued and then resulting in injuries some other things that you can do while on trail in order to avoid foot injuries is taking smaller steps that's going to really reduce the amount of impact on your foot and then hopefully help prevent injuries also don't jump into a new piece of Footwear for a big trip so if you see someone on YouTube talking about Ultras and zero drop shoes and how they're the best thing ever but you've never used a zero drop shoe before then don't just jump into a zero drop shoe you're probably going to end up with a foot issue likely achilles tendonitis or planner fastis because your foot and entire lower leg isn't used to that kind of Footwear I also highly recommend calf stretches when you're on trail and we'll we'll kind of go through stretching a little bit more later because there's a lot of information around that that I want to share with regards to specific stretches that I recommend as well as when you should be doing your stretches in order to make them the most effective the second most common type of injury has to do with knees and hips with IT band issues being probably the biggest issue that people encounter I've dealt with it band issues as well while running as well as for a few days when I was threw hiking the Great Divide Trail but was really helped me in order to address it band issues as well as just kind of that entire history area has been training both my glutes as well as my hips I find that when my glutes and my hips are strong I don't have as many issues in those areas and then it doesn't translate down into issues with my knees the most useful tool I find for training in order to strengthen my glutes and hips is a kettle bell I can do my two favorite exercises for strengthening with that item I can do kettle bell swings which really helps strengthen my glutes as well as my hips then I can also use it for squats which basically help strengthen everything in my posterior your chain and my legs some other targeted exercises that I found super helpful are hip thrusters for my glutes and then leg raises in order to strengthen my hips in general I find strength train to be super helpful for me in order to prevent injuries as well as to make me a better hiker once I get out on trail and there's a lot of evidence that putting weight on your body is really good for your joints and helps people prevent injuries whether that's through running or hiking or backpacking before we get into what you can do on trail in order to prevent hip and KN injuries I want to share with you guys my home gimmy because I'm super proud of it I converted a guest bedroom into a super functional home gym area that I can train in do weight training strength training but then also convert it back into a bedroom really easily welcome to my gym this is I'm I'm stoked about this home gym the first thing that we have right inside the door here is a pulley system I can use just standard weight plates with it throw them on the pins and then have more than enough weight in order to do pull down shoulder raises tons of different exercises then back here we have the full weight tree I have about 300 lb of Weights here with the barbell which is more than enough for me I don't think I'll ever need more than that and then the bench over here that I can fold down slide into the full rack here or use for a whole bunch of different exercises the centerpiece of the entire home gym system is my squat rack this is a full squat rack basically what you'd get at a commercial gym and squats are one of my favorite exercises so being able to do that inside of a full rack is is amazing this combined with the pce system allows me to do basically any exercise that I want to do and then I still have enough room on the ground in front of the squad Rack in order to do deadlifts or bust out the kettle bell and do some swings or some squats but what made putting this home gym together a little bit more difficult was that Steph and I still wanted to be able to use this room as a guest bedroom so we had to kind of get a little bit creative with how we're setting everything up but the key to the entire system is this squat rack and and then this Murphy bed that you've been seeing behind me what's really cool is that when we want to have the room set up as a gym we can fold the Murphy bed up and then get all this space down here but then this squat rack is a folding squat rack the system is really cool you just remove the chin up bar here take out these pins at the pivot Points and then the entire rack folds in on itself and sticks out from the wall less than a foot so that gives us a ton more space in here we just roll the bench and the weights into the corner here fold down the bed and then our GS have a ton of space budget was also a constraint for us we didn't want to spend a ton on gym equipment which you can do gym equipment gets really expensive really quickly so I did a bunch of research into it and ended up coming across a company that's local here to Calgary but they ship all across North America they're called bells of Steel and based on the reviews that are out there on the internet they make really high quality gym equipment but then at an affordable price so this entire system the rack the pulley system the bench the weights it all cost me under $3,000 which is kind of crazy with a lot of I was looking at just just the squat rck alone would cost about $2,000 I'll will link down the mid description to bells of Steel if you want to check them out for yourself it is an affiliate link so I get a small commission at newor charge for you but that kind of thing really helps out with the channel when I was on trail dealing with it band issues stretching basically saved me and prevented any sort of long-term injuries stretching up my glutes really helped take the strain off of my IT band which relieved all the pain around my knee so once I got to camp and throughout the day I'd be stretching out my glutes I'd be doing standing kind of static bends with a locked knee and a straight back in order to help really stretch out throughout my entire hip and glute area I also highly recommend calf stretches when you're at Camp find a rock or a root and just kind of really stretch that calf out that's going to help out with both planner fitis and Achilles tendinitis the key of stretching is to stretch when you're warm so you don't want to be stretching at the very beginning of the day before you've done any hiking and you don't want to stretch right before bed when all of your muscles have kind of cooled off best time to stretch is about a mile into your hiking once you've kind of warmed up a little bit and then once you get to Camp right away when your muscles are still warm and haven't had a chance to cool off the third most common type of injury is overuse injury General overuse of something whether it's your feet your knees your hip or your back it's an injury that arises because your body just isn't ready for the type of load that you're putting on it there's three ways that I train in order to help prevent overuse injuries the first one is strength training like I mentioned strength training is a great way to just prep your body and help prevent injuries the second way is getting in volume whether that's going for runs which is a really efficient way to get a lot of steps in very quickly or using my standing desk when I'm standing I'm kind of putting load on my body and then I also have a walking treadmill that I put underneath my sing desk in order to get want more steps in the third way I train in order to prevent overuse is using my gear in a way that kind of pushes a little bit my favorite example of this is loading up my pack with extra weight if I'm going to be going on a trip where I know that my pack is going to weigh around 20 lbs then I train with my pack on whether that's going for walks or using it on the walking treadmill with a weight of 30 or 40 lbs in it and this is where that kettle bell that I talked about earlier is going to come in use again you can put it inside your pack add quite a bit of weight and then help with that aspect of training for over use injuries I think there's a lot that you can do once you're out on trail first of all take a lot of breaks you don't want to be kind of just pushing and pushing and pushing take breaks stretch and make sure that you're addressing any issues as soon as they come up if your feet hurt then do something in order to address that if your knees hurt if your IT band is acting up then make sure you're stretching in order to help make sure that that doesn't become a longer term issue and when you're planning trips make sure you're easy ing into it don't just jump from the couch into a 40 km 40 mile day that's going to just beat you up and you're definitely going to end up injured and if you do end up planning a trip that's a little bit too much don't be afraid to change your plans always kind of have an option to get out get off Trail a little bit earlier or adjust the pl so that you're not going to end up having to push yourself and then end up with an injury check out this video if you're curious about how to increase your enjoyment when on backpacking trips by lightening your pack I go out on a trip with a pack that has a Bas weight of only 5 lb but I don't really sacrifice much comfort in order to do that I'm still very comfortable and warm on trail

Channel: Justin Outdoors

Views: 9,515

Keywords: Backpacking, Hiking, Camping, ultralight, backpacking gear, backpacking gear list, camping gear, hiking gear, ultralight gear, best backpacking gear, best hiking gear, Appalachian Trail, ultralight backpacking, hiking trails, gear review

Id: XMPZ6qzPEw4

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2024