Your Hike Didn’t Injure You. Your Capacity Wasn’t Ready for the Load.

Written by

Mario Fares | CSCS, Certified Running Coach
Mountain Strength Studio

Hiking can be demanding on your body.

Every hike creates stress. Your muscles, tendons and joints have to absorb and produce force repeatedly. However, stress itself isn’t the problem, your body is designed to adapt to it.
The problem appears when the demand of the hike becomes greater than your current physical capacity, especially when this happens repeatedly without enough recovery. When stress keeps accumulating, your body may reach a point where it can no longer tolerate the load.
That’s when pain and injuries can start to appear.

This is why I look at hiking preparation through three important factors:

• Build capacity

Strength training helps your muscles and connective tissues become stronger to handle the forces.

• Manage the load

Don’t increase distance, elevation, intensity and frequency all at once. Progressively expose your body to more work.

• Recover

Sleep, nutrition and stress management are not optional. They are part of the adaptation process.

No training program can guarantee that you will never get injured. Hiking involves uneven terrain, fatigue, unexpected movements, environmental conditions and many variables that we cannot completely control. However, we can improve the body’s ability to tolerate the demands we repeatedly place on it.
That means: Build the capacity, manage the load, recover properly, and then progressively challenge yourself.

So before your next big hike, don’t only ask if I can finish the hike, always ask is my body prepared for the demand this hike? Hiking isn’t the problem, the problem is that your capacity hasn’t caught up with the load.