They might. Since you also want to work on improving grip, it is better to use them intermittently or less.
Another practical problem … senile purpura. I get sizable bruises on my forearms (which my wife frequently then points out) as it is just from trying carry all the groceries in in one trip. Even bumping them during yard work. I can only imagine what an intentional heavy carry with straps would do!
Aging man. It’s a trip.
Another problem I ran into recently has to do with protein, I have been losing weight pretty fast 30# in 3 months. For some reason, I always assumed I was getting enough protein, but I was not, and my recovery was taking too long, the soreness after each workout was starting to feel more like pain. I added a couple of eggs, some cottage cheese, and some meat to my diet and got pretty fast relief from the soreness and pain. I am expecting to get better muscle growth as well, I will have to wait and see.
Question for the experts here:
I have a year to train for a two week hiking trip in the Alps next summer. I’m 69 (and female) and I don’t seem to be able to build muscle easily but I need to get much stronger, especially my legs. I always figured that the best way to build muscles for hiking was to hike but I’m wondering if I should add strength training. I really enjoy hiking and walking but not squats and (especially) lunges. Any thoughts on a workout? We won’t be carrying heavy packs–just day packs and water.
I also have no idea how much protein I should be getting but I suspect it’s more than I’m currently consuming.
Thanks for any thoughts on the matter.
First, I’ll just say that the human body is pretty well made for hiking with a pack strapped to our backs. Even if you’re a devoted couch potato, given a year to prepare, I don’t think that you should have too much trouble getting fit enough for it - if you do follow the advise, that is.
Probably the hardest thing to get strong would be your overhead strength. Unless you’re lifting heavy things - bags of dog food, bags of rice, etc. - onto overhead shelves, pretty regularly, there’s not much in daily life that prepares us for lifting things overhead. But, I can tell you, when you’ve got a heavy pack it can be pretty tough to get it on your back if you have bad posture, poor shoulder mobility, and weak overhead strength.
Endurance to walk for miles and miles, you can build up pretty quickly. Shoulder mobility and strength, quite slow to improve.
The next hardest, and especially for a mountain hike, would be your stair climbs. You will want to build up your quads, glutes, and calves. But, in general, I’d expect that to come more quickly and easy than the shoulders and arms.
Anyways, like I said, I think there’s probably plenty of time to prepare, so the real question is what’s the best style of preparation for you, to keep you motivated an on task? So if you could answer some quick questions, I might be able to give some better advice.
- How complicated an answer do you want? Just one routine that you can do a few times a week, or like a whole progression with different cycles and buildup, etc.? Note: The progression might allow you to do less now and more later, but could get long and gangly to read though and follow.
- How likely are you to actually want to do any of this? If you hate hitting the gym, then are you into sports, swimming, or other outdoor activities? Or are you perfectly fine with weight training?
- What all equipment do you have access to? Do you have a membership at a gym and would you want to get one?
- How would you feel about tracking your diet for about three days and posting it to us? Would you be willing to install an app on your phone and track measurements (again, for just 3 days)? Feel free to say no, if that’s just getting more involved that you’re looking for.
A simple routine would likely be best at least to start. I have been thinking about joining a gym and I’m not opposed to weight lifting. In the past, I’ve liked the weight machines in the gym better than free weights. I have a few small weights (max 10 pounds at home). Don’t really do other sports except for the occasional kayaking.
I more or less eat a Mediterranean diet plus too much sugar which I’m trying to cut back on. I also use protein powder but I don’t much like it. Lots of tofu, some fish, some chicken. Beans, lentils, veggies, and fruit. Probably too much bread. Some whole grains.
My lower body is much better than my upper body–can’t do a single push up for example. Overhead strength the worst. We won’t have heavy packs though. We’ll be staying in hotels or huts with luggage transport so we’ll just need day packs. Still, I know I need to build more upper body strength and that that will be the hardest.
I frequently walk 6-7 miles and do 10-11 once a week or so except in the summer when it’s too damn hot. Relatively hilly roads. Hike at least once a week with a vertical rise of at least 800 feet. Have hiked a few NH 4000 footers and will do a lot more over the course of the next year.
Not sure if I’ve answered all your questions but hope this helps. Thanks!
I had asked and gotten advice here for the four day Grand Canyon Rim to Rim I did in late June.
IMHO after reading those answers your frequent hiking is your best prep and I don’t think you particularly need to add much strength training for that specific goal. Endurance is more important. Maybe some weighted step ups and downs onto a step stool or stable chair or weighted up down stairs. We’ve been discussing the Farmers Carry and that would be good to do a bit of. (I had added weighted backpack plus Farmers Carry up and down my stairs specifically with my hike in mind.)
Otherwise a well rounded strength program for half an hour or so twice a week is generic good advice to add to your hiking just to balance out your fitness plan! Machines are fine!
Of course cut down on added sugar and more whole grains but your diet otherwise sound great
I am jealous!
Hiking is fun and requires a strong back and legs. The best training is sports specific, so hiking is best. In many gyms, the StairMaster machine would be the best choice to get you used to harder climbs, possibly adding a backpack or weighted vest. Outside of the gym, jogging up slopey roads would help - walking at first, alternating jogging and walking, then adjusting that ratio.
The best gym leg exercises depend on your experience and desire. You could get great results just using the leg and back machines and doing leg presses, hamstring curls, leg extensions, pelvic thrusts, lunges. Using the Smith machine to add rows, squats and partial deadlifts would help too. A more complete program would incorporate more extensive exercises like squats and deadlifts which are easy but take more effort and technique.
Strength training has many other health benefits and is worth doing for other reasons. The biggest factors in hiking difficulty are pack weight, slope angle, distance, remoteness and altitude. High altitude hiking requires climitization, rescue medicines, expertise and much more physical preparation to improve VO2.
This is all so helpful. Thanks!
Ah okay. I’m remembering from a multi-week hike I did with my brother, where we were both carrying 50 pound bags full of tents, sleeping bags, etc. 
If you’re just doing dayhikes then, yeah, as the others say I don’t know that you really have to do anything special past general physical fitness and some practice hikes. Muscle is slow to build but endurance you can add in just a few weeks of doing progressively longer walks.
I’d just caution that anything you’d do on a hike that you don’t do on your walks, will likely come back to bite you. If you’re not carrying weight when you do your practice walks, then you’ll probably realize that you should have practiced carrying weight. If you’re not walking up slopes, then you’ll definitely realize that you should have been going up hills.
Otherwise…I’d certainly say that you shouldn’t skip building strength because it’s not necessary. If this is a good incentive to start improving your fitness, I can guarantee that you’ll enjoy the hike a lot more if you felt good while doing it, and not like you’d been kicked around like a bean bag, at the end of each day. The more fit that you are, in general, the more likely it is to be the former than the latter.
If you like machines, I’d certainly recommend a gym. Not because a gym is necessary but simply because you want to reduce friction against doing your physical fitness. If doing it at home works better for you, then do it at home. If gym is better, do that!
Kettlebell workouts would actually be a pretty good fit for you. Kettlebell swing is a good one to build leg, core strength, and endurance all together. Though, it would be good to have someone review your technique first. I know that I was doing it wrong for probably the first year of doing it! Likewise, stepups with/without kettlebells, windmills, goblet squat, lunges, etc. You can do these with dumbbells (except the kettlebell swing), but kettlebells feel nicer.
Personally, I take the long view: Don’t drive yourself into the ground. Lift/move a heavy enough weight 8-12 times, such that you feel like you were doing something more serious than swishing a blade of straw through the air, but not so much that you feel so beat up that you don’t want to continue doing your regimen. If something’s hard enough without a weight, go ahead and do it without one. Bodyweight exercises work perfectly well!
Once you can do something 12-15 times, consider raising the weight, if you feel like you should still be stronger. Just think of the sorts of things that you’d like to be able to do in your life: Get a heavy pack onto your back, carry heavy groceries, pick up a dog, etc. Based on that, you might get a sense for whether you’re as strong as you want to be.
A basic routine might look like:
Kettlebell Swing 3x8-12
Or… Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift 3x8-12
Or… Smith Machine Squat 3x8-12
Box Step-Ups 3x8-12 per leg
Bent-over Dumbbell Rows 3x8-12 per arm
Floor Press 3x8-12 (maybe try some pushups every once in a while, instead, to see if you can do some, yet)
Arnold Press 3x8-12 (seated or standing)
2-3 times a week and you’ll probably see some good progress.
There’s some evidence that - for the majority - switching over to sugar substitutes causes them to eat more sugar. It maintains your body’s desire for that flavor and so you continue to seek it out, even when you come into contact with something that’s not wholly sugar free.
So, personally, I try to cut sweetness out altogether and slowly drive down the total amount of “sweet” that I enjoy. Most desserts and bakeries that I go to, now, I try their stuff and it tastes like I may as well have just taken a spoonfull of white sugar and put it in my mouth. You can try to find asian sweets, reduce the amount of sugar that you put in your tea/coffee, etc. If you look through jams and jellies at the supermarket, you can try to find the ones that are in the 4-8g of sugar per tablespoon realm, instead of the usual 12-15g.
I also do use sugar substitutes at home, so I can make things like sugar-free avocado chocolate pudding, chia pudding (coconut cream, chia, and jam to flavor), etc. Dried fruit are also a healthier alternative to candies.
In terms of protein, I’ve found that you can usually add at least one of:
- Chia
- Eggs
- Peanut powder
- Peas or edamame
To pretty much anything, if you feel like it might be low on protein. E.g., if you’re eating oatmeal, you can quickly whip an egg in during the last 30 seconds of cooking. Doesn’t change the flavor, it just changes the nutrients. Edamame go well in a salad. Peas can be thrown into a stir fry or most cooked dishes. Chia can pretty well go into anything, even water.
In general, I recommend trying to eat a little bit more carbs (rice, bread, etc.) in your meal before your workout. That should help to keep you energized while you’re there, doing your workout.
If you’re feeling any soreness from your workout, the next day, consider that to be your body telling you that it could use some protein to help heal up the muscles. That might help to incentivize you.
I see that someone else suggested half hour workouts. You’d just split the one I gave into two, to have two half hour ones.
Agree that decreasing “added sweetener” would have been a better phrasing. Lots of reasons.
FWIW hemp seed have twice the protein of chia seeds (chia more fiber and healthy fats). But
Probably doing fine on protein.
Could be. She said that she had a hard time putting on muscle. That could just be genetic or not increasing the weights, but it could also be a matter of only eating protein for dinner, having a toast for breakfast, and a salad for lunch. For muscle gain, you should try to have protein in every meal.
Well first off it’s pretty hard not to? She believes she is eating “probably too much bread” but even there she isn’t protein free. A medium plain bagel has roughly 11 g of protein.
Second that having to have protein every meal is not really such a big deal, despite its (and the need to have protein right after working out) are widely believed , summarized well here.
OTOH protein and fiber in a meal satisfies!
A Mediterranean Diet approach may get less protein than the typical heavier red meat one but it is excellent for health and fine for building strength. That said nothing wrong with adding extra of your list!
I’m not sure what @JaneA 's build is, but if we assume that’s she’s 5’2", then she would ideally weigh about 120 lbs. If we’re aiming for 1.2g of protein per kg, then we’d be hoping for about 65g of protein per day to maintain her current level and if we want to add say 5 lbs of muscle then we’d want to add an additional 3g (68g, total)
A bagel for breakfast (11g) a salad with some shredded chicken for lunch (30g), and a salmon slice with a sweet potato side for dinner (say 25g). That puts us at about 66g - so not bad.
But if you have a fairly small amount of chicken in the salad or completely forego it, then you’re down to say 0-15g for that meal and consequently down more in the 35-50g zone for that day. Or if she does a block of tofu instead of salmon, then she’s liable to go down, for that meal, by about 15g. If we say that an older woman who has a hard time putting on muscle is eating around 0.8g of protein (per bw kg), then we’d expect that she’s landing around 40-45g per day, so it’s very believable that this could be a better approximation of her diet. She may be hitting the 60s sometimes but may also be staying in the 40s most days.
If you throw an egg on the bagel and some edamame to your salad, then you’ll probably go up by about 10g. That’s liable to significantly improve our average.
Of course, as said, the issue could just be that she has a 10lbs dumbbell rather than a set of dumbbells. That’s probably not enough to drive significant change in body composition. It would probably be good to have a better variety up to 30 lbs (e.g. two of these).
Happy to play the hypothetical!
Calorie needs vary but that 120 pound moderately active woman likely requires and is likely eating roughly 1700 calories a day.
To get that amount of protein in that hypothetical woman’s dinner you are serving her a 3.5 to 4 ounce slice of salmon and a medium sweet potato. Maybe a 350 to 400 calorie dinner. Go with 400, heck go with 450. 280ish, call it 300 for the bagel. Up to 750. Let’s throw a good amount of dressing on that salad and call it 500. Your imagined typical day has this hypothetical woman at a 450 calorie deficit! But we don’t want her hangry…
Let’s instead let this hypothetical woman eat enough to maintain her weight guided by hunger. Keep the same protein ratio at 1700 calories and she’s taking in 90 g!
Real person probably a bit less. But even subbing out the chicken in the salad for beans or tofu and adding a couple of hundred calories from fruit, she is likely close to your hypothetical target. Lowering her down to just 15% of those calories from protein (considered low end on a typical Mediterranean diet plan, mostly plant origin) and she is roughly at your target.
Our actual person is already prioritizing legumes, tofu, along with modest amounts of fish and chicken, and even forcing down some protein powder.
I seriously don’t think she needs to be more protein focused than that.
I don’t want to waste too much space speculating on hypothetical people. I’d just say that there’s a difference between prioritizing selection and prioritizing quantity; likewise, there’s a difference between forcing something down because you’re trying to max out your protein, and forcing it down because it tastes like bleh. These are reading ambiguities that you may be interpreting correctly. But if you’re not, then it’s an entirely different world.
The advantage about hypothetical people speculation is that we can have more general principle discussions.
I’d be interested in understanding your thoughts about quality versus quantity prioritization.
My belief is that as long as the quality is good, inclusive of it being what gets labeled as “real food”, inclusive of vegetable, fruits, and at most modest amounts of red meats but decent plant proteins, not highly processed, not lots of added sweeteners, so on, then quantity and even “the macros” usually take care of themselves well enough. Even with a goal for supporting increases in muscle strength and/or hypertrophy.
The problems generally arise when crap is able to become a significant portion of intake.
Why don’t I lift weights? Because I don’t think I ever need to pick up a giant dam catfish.
Something that confuses me about protein recommendations. They say to eat some protein before your workout. Intuitively, I would think eating protein especially while the muscles are healing from a workout, makes more sense as it doesn’t seem the body could utilize protein all that quickly. What is your take on how the body utilizes protein?