No hills, no problem

This is one of my favorite workouts especially for hikers that live in flat areas. All you need is a set of stairs and you’re off to the races. Training for hiking on stairs can be done in an apartment complex, condominium building, or  parking garage. It really doesn’t take anything special, you just need somewhere to go and do this.

For the first round you’re gonna hit every single stair on every flight on the way up. Once you reach the top, you’re going to turn around and come back down.

Round number two you’re going to go every step the first flight and on the second flight every other step. When the third flight comes up, go back to every step again. Really, you’re just alternating your step pattern each flight until you reach the top.

When round three comes up, go every other step all the way to the top. Turn around and come back down. Now the pattern will repeat from the beginning. So your fourth set will be every step on every flight just as the first round was.

Turn up training a little

As a note, I usually start clients out doing this workout with no pack on to build up their strength and endurance. After that, we add 10 or 15 pounds to a backpack for the workout. This process continues until we’re fully comfortable again before adding a little bit more weight. Slowly build up and progress the amount of weight that you’re carrying with the workout like this.

Sets, reps and progressions are a little difficult to call out specifically here. Simply because the set ups are so different for everyone. Generally speaking, if you’re sore after three days and you’ve done this workout that was too much. You should back off a little bit; the sweet spot for soreness is 1-2 days. Once you’re feeling fully recovered after for a couple days consistently, go ahead and bump up your intensity. That can be the amount of stairs that you’re doing or weight in the pack.

Give these a try let me know what you think! Happy trails!