Building up to do weekend then one week hikes...

Hello all,

My first post here.

I have always been a day hiker, but my wife and I would like to branch out into doing some weekend hikes and then build up to doing a week long hike.

We live in Georgia, so I'm guessing some chunk of the Appalachian Trail will be involved.

After a back injury I'm just not in the shape I used to be, and so I'm working back up slowly and trying to figure out a good way to build up to longer hikes again focused on getting up to multiple day hikes up to a week.

Right now we hike one night after work at RedTop Mountain in GA, and one day at Kennesaw Mountain in GA, but these hikes are really only 3.5 miles which is pretty light.

What would some experienced hikers advice be to build up to weekend hikes, and then eventually to doing an entire week?

Many thanks,

Lance

If you can carry the pack, backpacking can be as vigorous or as easy as you would like. I've spent a weekend backpacking trip going less than 3.5 miles, so if your back is healthy enough to carry a pack there is no reason you can't backpack right now.

In terms of building up your stamina... any cardiovascular exercise is good. Walking up hills (or stairs) is probably the best training for... walking up hills....

All those years I thought there was an over-abundance of young homeless people in my town. Turns out, they were probably long distance hikers training their bodies for the upcoming trip. My suggestion is to go for walks around your neighborhood with a full pack, let your body (shoulders and hips especially) get used to the weight going up and down hills. This "during the week" training will only add to your weekend day hikes from training perspective.

You will also give yourself a chance to break in any new equipment (boots, etc.)...

I would slowly increase the miles if you can find the time. The quickest way I've found to prepare for climbing with a pack is to load the pack and do stairs. I did this through March preparing for the Grand Canyon and it worked very well. We had no problem doing the river to rim in a day. My training varies for each intended long hike, it seems. Some we've trained for distance, others for large elevation gains. The AT has a combination of the two. Nothing beats the real thing for training. The Roan Mt. area (Tn/NC border) has some beautiful hiking without tremendous ups and downs. Perhaps start with a section of that nature. Do some reading on lightening your pack, too. Carrying less weight will help the back issues and make hiking far more fun. Don't be afraid to ask questions here about gear. This is the best forum I've seen for getting good, honest, helpful answers with no snark and BS.

+1 except I recommend going without the pack first and once you can do a fair bit at a decent pace, add the pack, progressively increase the load as you get closer to trip time. We use the stadium bleachers at high school or college.

One thing we don't do enough of sometimes is doing it quick enough to keep the heart rate up for a long period so I plan to work on that more this year (we just started a week ago).