Training Hiking Muscles

Video Transcript

"Something else that you need to think about, when you're going to go on a backpacking trip, is maybe you think you're prepared because you're an athletic person. Maybe you play football or basketball or something and you think "I'm in really good shape; I should be good to go." It's not necessarily true. There's a concept that, basically, that makes it a really simplified version of understanding how muscles work and it's the idea that there's two kinds of different muscles. There's fast twitch and slow twitch muscles. They're actually different muscles, it has to do with why springers, in the Olympics, look like giant beefy football players and marathoners look really skinny. It's just a different kind of muscle, it forms differently and it works differently. If you're really athletic and you think that you're in good shape, you may be fine for the backpacking trip but you should put your pack on and you should go and check out and see if you have the endurance for it, if you have those slow twitch muscles and try to build them so that you'll be ready when the time comes to actually go hiking."