Physical Fitness
This article originally appeared on The Trek, which you can read here.
How does one prepare your body for a 850 mile jaunt? This has been the question nagging in the back of our minds while we have been galivanting through Europe and the US. Some quick background on me, I had multiple leg surgeries in 2020 and did about 9 months worth of physical therapy to get back into shape. I had two backpacking trips planned for the latter part of 2021 and worked with the therapists to get me to a place where I could successfully complete them. The PTs were awesome, and I was able to work through their plan 4 days a week. The backpacking trips could not have gone better! To prepare for Te Araroa, I took my notes from the therapies, read other peoples’ blogs, and combined them into a workable plan for us. The high-level view is working out 5 days-a-week, 3 days of weights, 2 days of cardio, average time length of 2 hours, and lasting for 7 weeks. Since we were bouncing around to 4 different cities in that time, we got multiple trial or weekly gym memberships.
Each weight lifting session was split up into 3 groups of 3 workouts with 3 sets each. The goal was to set the weight to do 8-12 reps in each set. If we were unable to 8 reps, then we would reduce the weight, and if we could do 12 or more, increase the weight for the next set. We also tried to simulate the trail by incorporating as much twisting, balancing, and stepping up and down as much as possible. For our cardio days, we would incorporate stairs, rowing machine, elliptical, treadmill, and exercise bikes. Depending on the day, we would wear our backpacks with extra weight to get used to their feel. The warm ups were pretty standard for each workout. They started with 15 min of easy cardio, then dynamic stretching, and ended with dynamic resistance.
We ended the heavy lifting portion of the prep work about two weeks before we are due to start the trail to give our legs the best chance to recover. We are now doing lighter HIIT workouts and daily walking to balance keeping our bodies in shape and recover. Time will tell if we did enough to get ready for this next adventure. :)
