Although we'd all love to be able to get out into the hills every day, in reality the vast majority of us are bound to our desks during the working week. Any exercise we do manage is usually limited to the soul sapping environment of the gym or health club. The suffering can be slightly eased however is you know that the work you put in will benefit your performance when you do manage to escape.
The routine described is designed to work on a number of different areas that all contribute to strong hiking. These include leg strength and endurance, cardiovascular fitness, upper body strength for poling and carrying the pack and core/lower back strength and stability. Aim to complete the session 2-3 times per week allowing 48 hours between workouts. Additional cardiovascular training can be done on the off-days either out walking with your pack on or in the gym. If in the gym consider doing some long sessions (60 minutes plus) on either the stepper or X-trainer set at high resistance to replicate long climbs.
Warm-up: 10 minutes on the cross trainer or stepper. Begin at a low resistance and build so that, by the end of the time, you're working reasonably hard.
The first eight exercises are paired and are performed as alternating sets without rest. This means that whilst the upper body is working, the legs are recovering and vice versa. This has the two advantages of making the workout time efficient and also increasing the cardiovascular demand.
The routine
Back-bench single legged squats X10 (each leg) X3
Narrow grip press-ups X max X3
High Bench Step-Ups X10 (each leg) X3
Bent Over Row X15 (each leg) X3
Walking Lunges X20 steps X3
Shrugs X15 X3
Calve Raises X20 (each leg) X3
Alternate Arm and Leg X20 X3
Ankle Drill X1"alphabet each leg" (see page 7)
Stretch
See the other pages of this article for more indepth information on each excercise
