Hiking requires more than cardiovascular endurance. Your legs have to repeatedly climb and descend, your core has to help stabilize your body on uneven terrain, and if you’re carrying a backpack, your entire body has to manage that additional load for hours at a time.
That’s where strength training can make a big difference.
I’ve spent years hiking and backpacking, and my background as a personal trainer and licensed Physical Therapist Assistant has also given me a good understanding of how strength, endurance, and movement all work together. When I train someone for hiking, I don’t look at strength training as separate from hiking. It’s one part of preparing the body for what the trail is actually going to require.
Whether you’re preparing for local day hikes, a backpacking trip, or a multi-day trek, strength training can help you build the physical capacity to handle climbs, descents, uneven terrain, and carrying a pack.
Why Strength Training for Hiking Matters
Hiking itself is great exercise, but hiking and strength training provide different types of challenges.
During a hike, your muscles may have to repeat the same movements thousands of times. Strength training allows you to challenge those muscles with greater resistance in a controlled environment.
For hikers, that can mean developing stronger legs for climbing, better control during descents, more stability on uneven terrain, and greater capacity for carrying a backpack.
The goal isn’t necessarily to lift the heaviest weights possible. It’s to become strong enough that the demands of your hike are more manageable.
What Muscles Does Hiking Work?
Hiking uses much of your body, but your lower body does a significant amount of the work.
Your quadriceps help extend your knees and are particularly important when climbing and controlling your body during descents. Your glutes contribute to hip extension and help propel you uphill. Your hamstrings and calves also contribute as you climb, walk, and navigate changing terrain.
Your core helps maintain your trunk position and stability, particularly when the terrain becomes uneven or you’re carrying a backpack.
Your upper body becomes increasingly important when carrying a heavier pack or using trekking poles.
Rather than thinking about one individual hiking muscle, I prefer to train the body through the movement patterns hiking requires.
What Strength Exercises Are Most Useful for Hiking?
A good hiking strength program should include exercises that develop several basic movement patterns.
Squats develop strength through your hips and legs.
Step-ups closely resemble the repeated stepping motion required during climbs.
Lunges and split squats train your legs independently and challenge balance and control.
Romanian deadlifts strengthen the glutes, hamstrings, and other muscles involved in the hip-hinge pattern.
Calf raises build strength through the lower leg.
Rows and loaded carries can help develop upper-body and trunk strength for carrying a backpack.
Core exercises such as dead bugs, Pallof presses, and planks can help develop the trunk control needed while moving across uneven terrain and managing a load.
You don’t need to perform every possible hiking exercise in every workout. A good program selects exercises based on your current ability, goals, and the hike you’re preparing for.
If you want specific exercise ideas, see my 10 Best Strength Training Exercises for Hiking.
Building Strength for Uphill Hiking
One of the queries people frequently have about hiking training is how to become stronger going uphill.
There isn’t one exercise that magically makes someone a strong uphill hiker.
Instead, I like to combine strength training with progressively more specific uphill conditioning.
Exercises such as step-ups, squats, split squats, lunges, and Romanian deadlifts can help develop lower-body strength. Then you need to practice applying that fitness through hills, stairs, incline walking, or actual hiking.
As your trip approaches, your conditioning should gradually become more similar to the terrain you’re preparing for.
If you’ll be carrying a backpack on your trip, you can also progressively introduce pack weight during some of your hikes or conditioning sessions rather than suddenly carrying your full pack on your first big outing.
Don’t Forget About Downhill Strength
People often focus on getting strong enough to climb, but long descents can be just as demanding.
When you’re walking downhill, your quadriceps repeatedly work to control your body as you lower yourself with each step.
That repeated eccentric muscle action is one reason your legs can feel so tired or sore after a hike with a long descent.
Exercises such as step-downs, split squats, reverse lunges, squats, and controlled step-ups can all be useful when preparing for descents.
If downhill hiking is a particular challenge for you, I have a separate guide to Strength Training for Downhill Hiking that goes into this in more detail.
Does Hiking Count as Strength Training?
Hiking certainly challenges your muscles, especially when you’re climbing, descending, or carrying a pack.
But I wouldn’t rely on hiking alone as your strength program if your goal is to become significantly stronger.
Traditional strength training lets you progressively increase resistance and target movement patterns in ways that can be difficult to accomplish through hiking alone.
That’s why I like combining the two.
Hiking provides the specific endurance and trail experience you need, while strength training develops additional strength and capacity that you can bring to the trail.
Is Hiking Cardio or Strength Training?
Hiking is primarily an aerobic endurance activity, but the exact demands depend heavily on the trail.
A relatively flat hike may be predominantly cardiovascular. Add steep climbing, technical terrain, significant elevation change, or a heavy backpack, and the muscular demands increase considerably.
This is also why simply being good at cardio doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll feel prepared for a difficult mountain hike.
Someone may have excellent cardiovascular fitness but still benefit from developing more leg strength, muscular endurance, balance, or experience carrying a pack.
For most hikers, a combination of hiking, cardiovascular conditioning, and strength training provides more complete preparation than focusing on only one.
How Often Should Hikers Strength Train?
For many recreational hikers, two strength-training sessions per week can provide a solid foundation.
Some people may train three times per week, particularly when strength is a major goal or when they’re farther away from their hiking season or trip.
Your schedule should also account for everything else you’re doing.
If you strength train three times, run several times, and attempt a difficult hike every weekend, recovery can quickly become an issue.
Your strength workouts should support your hiking rather than constantly leaving your legs too fatigued to hike well.
As a major trip gets closer, I generally like training to become increasingly specific. That may mean maintaining strength while placing greater emphasis on hiking, hills, stairs, pack training, and longer efforts.
A Simple Weekly Hiking Training Schedule
A basic week might look something like this:
Monday — Full-body strength training
Tuesday — Easy walking or cardiovascular training
Wednesday — Hills, stairs, or incline conditioning
Thursday — Full-body strength training
Friday — Rest or easy activity
Saturday — Longer hike
Sunday — Recovery or easy walking
This is only an example. Someone training for their first day hike doesn’t need the same schedule as someone preparing for a multi-day backpacking trip.
Your training should reflect your current fitness, schedule, recovery, and the adventure you’re preparing for.
Strength Training for Backpacking
Backpacking adds another challenge: load.
You’re no longer moving only your body across the trail. You’re carrying your gear with you, sometimes for multiple days.
That makes strength training particularly useful, but it also means you need to practice hiking with a pack.
I wouldn’t start by loading your backpack with your expected trip weight and heading out for hours. Build gradually.
As your fitness improves, progressively increase your hiking distance, elevation, and pack weight. You don’t necessarily need to increase all three at the same time.
If you’re preparing for a backpacking trip, my 6-Week Backpacking Training Plan provides a more structured approach.
How to Progress Your Strength Training
Doing the same exercises with the same resistance indefinitely won’t provide much opportunity for continued improvement.
As you get stronger, your training should gradually progress.
You might:
- Increase the weight you’re lifting
- Perform additional repetitions
- Add a set when appropriate
- Increase the height of a step-up
- Progress from bilateral to appropriate single-leg exercises
- Improve the control or range of motion of an exercise
Progress doesn’t need to happen every workout.
The goal is to gradually ask your body to handle more over time while maintaining good technique.
Strength Training Is Only Part of Hiking Preparation
A strong squat doesn’t automatically prepare you to hike 12 miles through the mountains.
You still need to hike.
Strength training is one part of a complete hiking program. Your preparation should also account for cardiovascular endurance, time on your feet, elevation gain and loss, terrain, pack weight, and the number of consecutive days you’ll be hiking.
The closer you get to your trip, the more your training should reflect what you’re actually going to encounter.
That’s particularly important when preparing for multi-day hikes and treks.
Build Your Training Around Your Hike
There isn’t one perfect strength training program for every hiker.
Someone preparing for a local five-mile day hike has very different needs from someone training for the Camino de Santiago, Tour du Mont Blanc, Kilimanjaro, or a multi-day backpacking trip.
Start by looking at what your adventure requires:
How far will you hike each day?
How much elevation gain and loss will there be?
Will you carry a backpack?
How many consecutive days will you hike?
What kind of terrain will you encounter?
How much time do you have to prepare?
Then build your strength, endurance, and hiking progressively around those demands.
If you’d like a complete longer-term program, start with my 12-Week Hiking Training Plan.
And if you’re preparing for a specific hike, backpacking trip, or trek and want a program designed around your current fitness, schedule, available equipment, and adventure, Aspire for Adventure offers personalized online hiking training.