Castlereagh wrote:After blowing out my back this winter and feeling the weight of some peer pressure from my roommates (meatheads)I started lifting weights regularly for the first time since high school. Surprisingly I've actually gotten in to it and kinda enjoy it these days. I'm just wondering if there's any kinda consensus with people here on whether lifting is conducive to hiking. So far I'm thinking...
Pro's...Back strength has to be conducive to lugging around a backpack, right?
Con's...Takes away a little bit from cardio time at the gym.
Does it really make a difference though, to be a little heavier on the trail?
Well first, if you are really concerned about hiking performance, then your entire workout should be structured around 2-3 days that involve uphill walking specific cardio (i.e. inclined treadmill, stairclimber, and best of course- hiking). And then you should add other exercise techniques in to what extent time, recovery, and motivation allow.
The best way to improve lugging around a backpack is...lugging around a backpack. Get a sturdy packpack, walk into the gym, put in 40 lbs of weights (ok start smaller), and get on the stairclimber. Progressively increase with small % increments speed or duration or weight with each workout.
Now, if you do weightlifting at reasonable high resistances and eat a caloric surplus, you may hypertrophy, which of course is mainly aesthetic but does has some function. But, if you want to be some extremely fast hiker, it will likely be a cost, not a benefit.
Weighttraining lighter weights or not having a caloric surplus will tend to remove the chance of much hypertrophy. So you can add a little bit of function with less cost. Focus on compound movements.
Increasing "work capacity" can occur at many different intensities and durations all of which do not cross over 100%. You can do some 1 min interval stuff, but that isn't going to increase your hiking "work capacity" (unless you hiking short distances in 1 min intervals) like doing longer duration activity would (and "longer" can mean 6 min, 30 min, 3 hr...).
Unless you want hypertrophy, you can add some resistance training (whatever modes you want) on your cardio days. Seriously, 3 days a week (30-40 min for cardio, 20-30 min for weight training) could get you into awesome condition if done correctly.