How to Maintain Fitness After a Thru-Hike
Maintain a quality fitness base so you're ready for your next thru hike
October 16, 2024
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I love summer. I love miles and miles of sun-drenched hiking. Spending an entire summer walking a couple thousand miles is heaven to me. Not surprisingly, that amount of exercise will have you in some of the best physical shape of your life.
I know many thru-hikers who immediately sign up to run a marathon after their hike is over. It usually doesn’t go as well as they expected. Within a few months, the fitness of the trail has often ebbed away. There are a lot of complex reasons for this relating to our biology as mammals and sport specificity. While it’s impossible to maintain your on-trail fitness level off trail, it’s also a good thing because long periods of time at high levels of performance without a break usually results in injury.
However, there are some simple ways to maintain a quality base so you can be ready to hit the trail next season. This guide will help you learn how to recover from your big hike and then keep up your fitness for the next adventure.
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Rest and Recovery
In September 2018, I was ¾ of the way through my Calendar Year Triple Crown. All around me, leaves were turning colors, overnights were frosty, and the sun was no longer my companion for 12+ hours per day. I sat down on a hillside covered in red-leafed huckleberry and gazed across a landscape bathed in late afternoon sun. Plants were storing carbohydrates in their roots and letting go of summer growth. Bears and other hibernators were gorging – investing in fat to sustain them while they slept. Rodents were scurrying to and fro with mouthfuls of vegetation to stock their winter larders.
For the first time, I realized the value of what nature was modeling right before my eyes. Everything needs rest. It became apparent that, like the trees, I needed to nourish my body and soul in the winter, rather than pushing myself to stay as active as I did in summer. Resting would ensure that I wasn’t burned out or injured come summer.
While it isn’t necessary (or a good thing) to become completely sedentary and lose all fitness in the months following your thru-hike, it is important to prioritize sleep and eat nourishing foods first and foremost, until your body is ready for moderate exercise again. At that point, engaging in sport-specific and complementary workouts to stay strong without burning out is key to maintaining a fitness base.
This rest period is also an opportunity for any overuse injuries from the trail to heal, such as plantar fasciitis or tendonitis. By taking the time to let your body recover from the extreme demands of a thru-hike before returning to physical training, you will be rested mentally and physically as well as well-adapted to hit the trail again next season. Wearing recovery shoes may help your feet heal too.
Maintaining Base Fitness
Since most thru-hikes are done in the summer, they often dump us off trail right into late autumn and the impending winter. The cold, wet (maybe snowy), dark season can be a difficult time to stay fit unless you live in a place where the weather is conducive to getting outside regularly. Luckily, maintaining a base level of conditioning that will enable you to transition back into hiking season isn’t as difficult as you think.
In fact, winter training can actually help you be more fit than you were on trail because you can focus on being more well-rounded. Hiking for months is great for cardio, but it really only makes you good at one thing: hiking. This is why many thru-hikers are surprised to find that they cannot easily run a marathon after their hike or that they’ve lost a lot of upper body strength.
Your in-between-thru-hike training plan will be very similar to your training preparation plan (See my article on Preparing for a Thru-Hike). Building a cross-training plan that incorporates cardio, strength, and mobility training can not only keep you fit, but help stave off overuse injuries.
Your Daily Plan:
30+ minutes of easy to moderate cardio.
Strength training, alternating between upper body, lower body, and core workouts.
10+ minutes of stretching or mobility work (best done after your cardio).
Daily Cardio
Cardiovascular exercises can be any type of activity that elevates your heart rate. To keep a trail fitness base, moderate-level cardio should be done daily for a minimum of thirty minutes.
Getting out on a trail to hike or run is best, but it’s not the only option. If you’re stuck indoors or don’t have trails readily accessible then spinning, swimming, dancing, or any indoor cardio equipment such as stair-climbers, treadmills, etc. will all work. The key is to keep your heart and lungs conditioned through exercise.
If you live in a snowy climate, Nordic skiing, downhill (if you skip the lift), and backcountry skiing (skinning uphill) are great outdoor choices. While the main reason to do cardio is to keep the heart and lungs in shape, the more similar your cardio is to hiking, the more sport-specific benefits it will confer in other ways, such as foot, joint, and muscular conditioning. Ideally, your daily cardio sessions will be hiking, walking, or running. However, if that’s not viable, aim to do one or two longer sessions per week (60-90 minutes) that are either hiking or engage similar muscles.
Where should I go?
If possible, head to the trails and go for a hike on rolling terrain to keep your climbing and descending muscles in shape. If it’s too snowy, try snowshoeing. Still not an option? Find a hilly street and walk or run on it. You can also utilize staircases in tall buildings or parking garages. Be creative, but get your vert!
Strength
Since hiking is a forward linear movement that is extremely repetitive, it’s likely that you developed some imbalances during your thru-hike. The period between hikes is an excellent time to work on those imbalances through strength and mobility work. This will help you hit the trails stronger in the spring and help reduce your chance of overuse injury.
Strength training doesn’t require heavy weights or hours at the gym, especially while you’re working on maintenance. Focus primarily on basic bodyweight exercises initially. You can build up from there when you get closer to your next hike. Check out my How to Train for a Thru-Hike article for more specific exercises and training recommendations.
Start with the basic bodyweight moves below. Focus on more of the things you find challenging. Mix together movement styles by doing some exercises slowly on the lowering phase (eccentric) and some at tempo with a high number of repetitions which will improve muscular endurance. When things feel less challenging, branch out into other movements or add weights.
Your top 5 moves:
Bodyweight Squat: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/135/bodyweight-squat/
Lunge: https://acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/94/forward-lunge/
Side Lunge: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/50/side-lunge/
Pushups: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/41/push-up/
Crunches: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/52/crunch/
Flexibility and Mobility
The last piece of the fitness puzzle is mobility work. After your thru-hike, you’ll likely find that you’re pretty stiff, especially in the lower body. This is a normal adaptation your body makes to protect your joints over months of walking. If you’re planning to thru-hike again, don’t try to completely reverse this. However, you do want to loosen things up enough so your body can move through its whole range of motion.
Completing a few basic stretches every day before and after your cardio might be enough for you. Or you may find that you’d like to delve deeper by utilizing a regular yoga practice. There’s no one-size-fits-all method. I also recommend using a foam roller or therapy ball to work on releasing bound-up tissues and getting regular massages.
Your Top 5 Stretches:
Toe Touches: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/213/seated-toe-touches/
Quad Stretch: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/149/side-lying-quadriceps-stretch/
Side Stretch: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/225/standing-triangle-straddle-bends/
Cobra: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/16/cobra/
Leg Crossovers: https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/231/leg-crossover-stretch/
Nutrition
In addition to exercise, maintaining your post-trail fitness until the next season requires you to nourish your body. After months of eating as much as possible, without needing to think about things like weight gain, it can be difficult to adjust. No one really needs to be told what to eat. We all know we should be eating more veggies and less processed foods. Your attention to nutrition will help you achieve your training and health goals.
Manage Your Calories
In the aftermath of a thru-hike, your appetite will not go back to pre-hike levels immediately. That’s because your metabolic rate has dramatically increased due to all the exercise you have done over the past few months. It’s crucial that you don’t starve yourself by trying not to eat “too much” in the first few weeks following your hike.
It’s equally important not to fill up on the same things you were eating on trail. This is the time to really focus on fruits, vegetables, and lean protein. This will give your body the micro and macro nutrients necessary to recover from the huge undertaking you just finished. Don’t worry, after a few weeks, your appetite will lessen as your body adjusts to the lower energy output.
Is Weight Gain Inevitable?
Yes, and that’s a good thing. Most likely, you finished your hike the leanest you’ve ever been. While that’s a great feeling, it’s also not a sustainable body composition year round. Unnaturally low body fat over long periods of time can lead to disorders such as exercise-induced amenorrhea or injuries such as stress fractures.
Between your hikes, it’s natural to gain 5-10 pounds (maybe slightly more if you have lost an extreme amount of weight). This fluctuation, especially if it’s coinciding with winter, is a normal function of being a mammal. Continuing to eat well and exercise will keep you from gaining out of control, and with a return to the trail in the spring or summer, you’ll find that that weight melts away rather quickly.
Sleep
Prioritizing sleep quality—not just duration—is a key component of recovery and training. On trail you likely slept 9 or more hours per night quite soundly. This correlates with the high level of activity you were maintaining. Off trail, many people get fewer hours of sleep — and often poor quality sleep. Sleeping fewer hours with higher quality rest is better than many hours of poor sleep.
Your goal is to establish good habits, enabling you to sleep well as you recover and train. Keep your bedroom very dark, don’t watch TV or use your phone/computer within an hour of bedtime, try to go to bed and wake up at the same time of day, and exercise in the morning. All of these things will help your body function optimally and be ready for whatever your next adventure is!
About the Author
National Geographic Adventurer of the Year, Heather Anderson is the first woman to complete the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide National Scenic Trails each three times. This includes her historic Calendar Year Triple Crown hike in 2018 when she hiked all three of those trails in one March-November season, making her the first female to do so.
She holds self-supported Fastest Known Times (FKT) on the Pacific Crest Trail (2013) and Appalachian Trail (2015). She has logged over 47,000 foot-miles since 2003, including over 16 thru-hikes. She is also an avid mountaineer.
As a professional speaker, Heather speaks regularly about her adventures and the lessons learned on trail. She is the author of Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home (2019), chronicling her Pacific Crest Trail record, and Mud, Rocks, Blazes: Letting Go on the Appalachian Trail (2021) about her 2015 AT record. She also co-authored a guide to long-distance hiking preparation with Katie Gerber called Adventure Ready: A Hiker’s Guide to Planning, Training, and Resiliency (2022). You can find her online at Words From the Wild or follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
