If you are not a hiker because you feel like a little nervous, you don't know what you're going to encounter, you don't know if you're fit enough, you don't know how to prepare, you don't know what shoes wear, anything like that, you are going to love this episode of the movement movement, the podcast where people want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting to beat first, you know, those things at the end of your legs that are your foundation. That's what we focus on. That's what I focus on. Here we also break down the propaganda, the mythology and the flat out lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or to yoga cross it, whatever it is you like to do and to do that, enjoyably, effectively, efficiently, let's say enjoyably.
It's a trick question and anyone who listens to this knows that because I know that you know that if you're not having fun, you're not going to keep it up. So make sure you're doing something you enjoy, otherwise what's the point? You know what I'm saying? And I call this the movement movement podcast because we, and that includes me, I'm Stephen Sash on CEO and co-founder, CoC, CEO and co-founder of Zero Shoes, here's the teacher to prove it.
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So let us get started Marcus. First of all, hey, how are you saying they tell people who you are and what you're doing here? Good. I'm doing great.
So Marcus Shapiro, I am a hiking strength and conditioning coach. I founded fifthfortrips.com back in 2009. And I also think of myself as a hiking evangelist. My current business model since 2009 is I wait for people to come to me who want to hike iconic destinations, whether it's somebody in Kilimanjaro or Rim to Rim Grand Canyon, Inca Trail, wherever it is, they come to me and they ask if I can help them get in shape, which of course I can.
But as of late, I'm very confident with the formula and the philosophy after all of these years to train people and get them in shape for hiking that. I really want to reach out to people who are sitting there listening, your listeners and say, hey, if you want to go on an iconic hike, whether you thought it was too challenging, I want to assure you that you can do it. And I have the tools and hopefully that's what we'll get into very shortly. What the hell?
Why not? But so for people who are not looking for an iconic hike, who are just trying to get into hiking because it's kind of all the rage since COVID. That's when people realized they had nothing else to do but go outside and if they could get a hike and they could do it. Some people did that.
Some people were, again, anxious about doing that for whatever reason. I know around here, some people get anxious because we've gotten wildlife and they don't know which bear you run from and which bear you fight from or which thing you get from the people in which thing you're trying to be small for. And I was actually in Park City, Utah just last week and I couldn't sleep and I got up at before in the morning and started taking a walk. And the number of times where I turned around just to make sure there was nothing behind me was pretty high because there's a lot of wildlife up there too and I'm walking around during their daytime.
So, you know, people need to know what to do about that. So, but before we get into all of that, or actually, that was a really long way of asking the question. So we're going to be talking about things that are relevant for humans not looking for an iconic hike as well, correct? Absolutely.
Yeah, we're talking. I don't care if it's local. I don't care if it's domestic. I don't care if it's international.
It doesn't matter. And oftentimes you bring up a good point. You just want to start in your backyard and just start there. Sure.
I would like to walk on the moon. Okay. Well, I know that I can help you with that. Well, let's have another podcast.
Really good luck. Okay. All right. All right.
So, so, so I got to ask this question. Where are you living that you're a hiking person? Does that really happen? Okay, do I?
It would be tough, but a lot of people in Manhattan also dream of doing big hikes like some of the Kilumjaro and that can be done and that's something we can talk about that if you don't live where I live and that's in just kind of North of Atlanta. So we have the North Georgia mountains. Not too far from here. And there's some great hikes also along the Chattahoochee River, not too far from here, but people in Manhattan who don't, who are busy, do not have access to hiking trails could be very successful on even some of the most challenging hikes.
Well, I mean, I lived in Manhattan for 10 years. My wife had never been until very recently. I think on our second to last trip, we spent the entire day doing Central Park and there's parts of the North of Central Park that you can make a serious hike out of those. I mean, it's really, really fun.
And I think it's so cute having grown up on the East Coast now living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains that we use the word mountains for the Rockies and for those little things near where you live that never use that word. Are you saying something bad about our North Georgia mountains? Oh, just kidding. I love the Rockies.
I love the Rockies out here. It's kind of like I friends who live in upstate New York who, you know, have a couple of quote skiing mountains near them. And then they come out here and realize they had no idea what they were talking about. I get it.
Well, so then, but I'm curious, you know, personally, just for the fun of that before we get into the specifics or helping people learn what they need to do to prep and have a successful and enjoyable time, what's your hiking history? How did this happen for you? So let's go back to, I guess, let's actually go back to the late 80s. Okay.
Because I think that's kind of where the district gets. If we're going to go back, we have to do it. You got to air for it. Well, no, that's true.
We got to wait for world silence. Okay. So now we're back in the late 80s. Okay.
Let's go back to there. So in high school, I was fascinated with bodybuilding, working out. We had think of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He had just won Mr.
Olympia in 1980. And so there was this influence that he still had all the way through the 80s. And of course, beyond that, I was just fascinated with working out, but not just that, but also kind of the science behind it, the rigor, the discipline. So when I graduated from high school, I went to University of Alabama.
And I wanted to kind of continue, I guess, that journey. I guess, let's just call it inhuman performance. Bodybuilding was fun. It was kind of a hobby, but now it's time to think about what I was going to do for a living.
So I go to University of Alabama, and I study athletic training, which is kind of a misnomer. Athletic training is really, we are kind of the first responders, whether it's on the basketball court, the football field, the baseball diamond, whatever it is. So our jobs is more injury prevention, number one, and treatment and rehabilitation was another, you know. So that was interesting to me.
So that kind of started putting the pieces of puzzles together. So then, let's fast forward to kind of the, let's say, the 90, 98, 99, 2000. I meet my wife, my current wife in 97, and she had the travel bug, which I hadn't yet had. So we traveled to Africa.
We did safaris, which I'm sorry to say nothing will ever compare to the Africans. So I've already peaked in terms of my travel. But anyway, we went to Costa Rica, and we did a lot of things. So kind of go back one second to 93.
So 93 is when I graduate, I start doing personal training. So that's about seven years to 93 to 2000. At that point, it's time that ambitious bug kind of kicked in. Like, what am I going to do?
I can keep doing personal training. I love it, but I'm going to broaden what it is that I do. So I could have done more what I was trained for, you know, working with football players, and basketball players, and tennis players, more of the traditional sports. But having traveled on my thoughts myself, I bet there's really a void in this space for people who want to get in shape for these trips.
Although our trips weren't that physical, it was something that I was actually interested in getting more into. So I back in the day. So imagine, let's go back now to, let's say, 2000, let's fast forward. Let's go to 2006.
And if I lose you, let me know. Okay. Well, I don't know the I don't know the Wayne's world thing to go from to go forward. I only going backwards.
So we will make some of this. All right. So 2006, I really kind of decided that this is what I want to do. So I go online and I see what the recommendations are for hiking, getting in fit for hiking, getting in shape.
So I see online that they're recommending like three times a week on the stairmaster or for 45 minutes or throw on a backpack and, you know, go backpacking, which most people, most people do not have access to. Okay. So that's in that's 2006. So I then find some tour operators and I call the founders of the tour operators and I kind of pitch my idea.
I said, how would you like, you know, me to help your clients with getting fit for your hikes? And I had a tape recorder. Remember those things and I hooked it up to the telephone and I'd hit record and I would record our conversations. Hold on.
And the telephone, that's not the app on your phone. It's a different thing. It's a thing. Wait, did you have your phone sitting on top of what's it called?
A phone book? Was that the term they used? Yes. Yes.
Yes. I use phone books now to step on and off of with duct tape around them. Dude, I tried to find a phone book to do a video that I wanted to do about proper landing form and I had to get on eBay to find a phone book. So yeah, I don't miss them though.
I don't know about you. Oh, I totally do. Because I remember. I remember being a kid and you could just find someone's address.
So you look up their name, there's their phone number and their address. It was really, really helpful. You can't get all that now. You can maybe get their phone number probably not because it's a cell phone and blah, blah, blah.
But I don't know. There's something like I also miss having my world book encyclopedia. But that's a whole other story. So it's like going to a bookstore and browsing.
So you can't browse anymore. I miss browsing. Okay. Well, you know, anyway, that's what separate you and me, but we have a lot more in common.
I can tell you that. Okay. So you can go to the customer machine. Yeah, because, you know, I need to go back and see what they said, see if I get an inspiration from it.
And I quickly decide this is what I want to do. So I joined what's called the Adventure Travel Trade Association. And I go to an ATTA summit in 2006 to Seattle, which is an amazing, amazing event. And they've done many since then and they continue to do it.
And so I go as a service provider to talk to all the two operators. I have everybody's name and all the founders and the two operators. So I can again make my pitch. So the long story short from now, at that point, I hire some software developers.
I've got proprietary software that I'm going to develop so I can do online personal training. And this is back, you know, now we're more than 2007, 2008, I'll get all that done and launch in 2009. And I'll mention the company. My first partner was Thompson Separis near and dear to my heart.
So I have to, I have to mention them. And so that's kind of the origin story, me bouncing around everywhere for fit for trips. That's kind of how I got started with that. So I'll let you kind of take it.
All right. So the magic question then is what's the program that you developed for these people? And what you learned from talking to them, what was the kind of key thing from listening to those recordings and what do you develop and how are you deploying that? How are you sharing that with people?
Well, you know, the properties are focused on selling and booking trips. Right. So they don't have the expertise. So when they're screening somebody on the phone instead of saying, well, you know, you shouldn't, I'm not sure that you shouldn't do one of our trips.
Where in fact, how about doing a lesser challenging itinerary instead they would have, they would be able to leverage my expertise and say we have somebody who you can talk to if you want to do this trip. So from there, there just wasn't that much information, but I had a good intuition on how to begin to craft programs. But I think it, yeah. So when you started putting that program together, I mean, I want to hear the evolution of that, but let's just start with what was the first thing you put together?
How were people responding to that? You know, what kind of feedback were you getting and how did that lead to the evolution of it? Yeah. So originally when I first started putting them together, there was a very heavily strength based, which was something I was obviously familiar with.
Like what specifically? You know, okay. So lunches. Let's think of functional type.
Let's think of movements that mimic what it is that you do. So step ups and walking lunges, even squats, which of course, you know, is not exactly look like something you would do on the mountain unless you have to go to the bathroom. Then you want to do calf raises and things like that. And of course, there was an endurance component to it.
So they would need to walk X amount of time. They would use, they would do a lot of HIIT training and stairs and those kinds of things. But that's where it's really kind of evolved since then. And that's probably.
So I mean, I'm curious to hear it evolve, but before I get there, I'm curious, what was your experience with compliance? I mean, you're telling people what to do, how are you, were you monitoring that? Were they actually doing it? I mean, this is always the issue when you give someone an exercise program.
Is they actually going to do it? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, their motivation is a little different. And that is they've already booked the trip.
So they have a goal in the end. And I'm pretty sure that you can relate or allow your listeners to relate. And that is sometimes it's hard to kick start a workout because you don't have an actual goal. So they have booked their trip.
So there's a lot on the line. So compliance for these types of people wasn't that hard. But with the proprietary software I developed, people I go ahead and I craft their program week by week. They fill in what they did.
I look at it based on what they've done. Then I will go ahead and craft the following week and so on and so forth. And most people I worked with for about 12 weeks. So there was compliance because I told them what to do.
And they had that goal at the end that they were, of course, really excited about. And so then let's talk about the evolution then. What you learned during that in the early days and what it's turning to now. Okay.
So it's evolved into what I call the Fit for Trips Big Five. So it starts with walking, walking stairs and we'll get into the detail of each. Do you want to walk stairs? Want to walk in clients?
Want to walk lunges? Which is kind of a catch-out term for strength. Sure. In the legs.
You want to walk far? That's number four. Okay. And then five is hit training.
So I don't have a clever one for that. So we come up with one. You want to walk short, fast and repeat. You want to lather in some repeat.
Yeah. Right. So how about I go into the detail of each of those? That would be perfect.
So let's talk about walking stairs and why that's important. So when you're walking upstairs and you do it repetitively, you're going to develop strength and you're going to develop endurance. If your listeners can kind of... Wait a minute pause.
You don't want to say walking stairs. You know, if you want to be more specific about other than just like going up A-Flare stairs, it's obviously different than just that. So say a little more if you could. Well, yes and no.
If you could literally just walk up and down stairs. If you're taller, you're going to probably want to take two stairs at a time. But what's most important is once you get started and you acclimate to the act of walking up and down stairs, and we'll get to the importance of going downstairs in a second. But once you acclimate to that, then what you're going to do is you're going to focus less on time.
Let's say I've never done stairs before, so I'll start 10 to 15 minutes. See how you respond to it. See what kind of feedback I get in my knees and my hips and quads and everything like that. And then from there, then you start doing it based on elevation gain.
Okay. So I'll give you an example. If you have 30 stairs to go up and down and they're eight inches apiece and you do 50 laps up and down 50 times, that'll be a thousand feet of elevation gain. So it's kind of starting to make sense to people.
It's not just this rot activity of just up and down, which let's just call that an evolution of it. Because as far as I know, on my website, I couldn't find it before, but I created somebody develop a calculator for me. So you go on there, you put in the height of your stairs, how many stairs and how many laps it's going to tell you how much of an elevation gain that you get. Because that's really important.
I just thought of the product that someone should do you in particular ready. So it's an augmented reality thing that basically combines what you're doing. Take your stairs basically and overlays on them so you're using AR glasses. So it actually looks like you're hiking something, but because it's AR, it knows the basically to put a rock where every step is.
And if you have a landing, then it knows there's a thing. And what it would do is instead of just having you up and then all the way back down and then all the way back all the way back down, it could have you go down a little bit and go back up and then go down a little bit and then go back up and then go down a little more and come back all the way down. It could make it do something, but the fun part would be where it just doesn't seem as boring as just walking up and down your stairs over and over. So you're getting some kind of VR AR thing.
So it feels like you're actually going out and doing like you can even do similar thing if you do it on a treadmill frankly. But anyway, just that's my idea. Well, I'll start with raising money now. So how much you got there?
Perfect. You're my first pitch. Okay. Well, here's the thing.
I talked to people about that. It might be boring, but everybody gets it. It's a means to an end. And nowadays, people can throw on the movement, movement podcast and just the areas.
What was I thinking of? Yeah. I agreed. So what's our next principle?
Okay. So that's what I call it. Oh, yeah. That's what I call it.
Yeah. So it's easy to train. I shouldn't say it's easy. The fundamentals for going uphill are that difficult.
You just have to put in the hard work. Yeah. Which is why people might want to do, well, I'm going to jump ahead. So let's do this.
Let's talk about going downhill. People going downhill might feel they might feel less sure-footed. They might feel pain in their knees. Their quads might cramp.
And so by going downhill, you're developing what's called eccentric, you know, eccentric control. So every time you're going down the stairs, you are putting on the brakes essentially. So it's a different kind of contraction than going uphill. And you have to do, you really do have to do both.
And I tell people, I'm like, even if you have one flight of stairs, it's really the carryover is really significant. Yeah. And it's important to do. Yeah.
People don't understand that, you know, they finish hiking. They're all sore. And that's mostly from the downhill part. Because the eccentric loading is just way harder.
And now granted, you're stronger eccentrically. But if you're not used to it, that's just going to be way harder than what you're doing going uphill mostly in part because I noticed when people are going down, you're like, you know, I noticed when people are going downhill, they just tend to like throw their foot out and just land on it. And they're not really thinking about it like in the, I'm trying to think this is going to sound weird. I think about like the opposite of doing going uphill.
So what I mean is when you are you place your foot, then you change your weight onto that foot and then you press out, you're basically doing, you know, single squat for all practical purposes. But people think about that when they're going downhill, they just like slam their foot into the ground and then kind of, you know, they're not controlling it on the way down, which is putting even more space. Yes. So that's exactly.
Yeah. I think good analogy I've used before is, you know, if you don't have eccentric control, you're going to take a step and then, you know, let's say your breaks go out and all this time, you're just going to go forward and then you're going to stumble. And so really it's kind of a breaking. Well, there's another one just from the people that I talk to where we understand the idea of running or walking and not over striding, not putting your foot too far out in front of you, which means putting the breaks on when you're walking or running.
Same thing when you're hiking, actually, if you're putting your foot too out far in front of you, you're having to spend more effort to get over your front foot than having it underneath you. But even more going downhill, people will say to me, well, how do I, you know, not, how do I prevent my foot from sliding forward in the shoe or in the sandal? It's like, well, don't put your foot way out in front of you when you're going down, like put your foot underneath you and bend your knees, use your legs instead of just like, you know, throwing your foot out in front of you. Yes.
And people are like, oh, I can do that. It's like, yeah, yeah. Yes. Absolutely.
All right. So we'll go to, how about we go to second one, kind of dig deep into that. So we went from walking stairs to walking in clarnes. Yeah.
Okay. So you got to walk in clarnes because you've got to lengthen and strengthen your Achilles, your calf, your planar fascia, and now I'm talking your language. So that's, that's very important. So there is, you can do treadmill.
It's not so much in, it's not so much in, or, you know, treadmill, or actually hills, repeats, or if you're left in the up hiking with hills, they're both important, but I would say to people you can diversify. Now some people don't have access to hills and inclines and like hills and hiking, but they can still lengthen and strengthen their Achilles and calf. And that's, I think, important to know because you can do stairs and you can get the ascending and descending, but you don't, you don't get that stretch on your Achilles and calf. So if you don't do the inclines, you might hit the trail and you can develop some acute tendonitis or, or, or something like that.
That's, that's not cool. And the other thing too is when it comes to treadmill verse, actually going up a hill, you know, this, we can work together on, on what ground reaction forces are, okay? Swinging through your audience. Well, no, the, the simpler thing is this, talk to anyone who has spent the winter running on a treadmill and then it's the first nice day and they go out and they can't figure out why they can't run.
Now there's research showing that the way your body is moving is fundamentally the same, but what your muscles are doing completely different because the treadmill, you can just catch the treadmill and then it'll take your leg behind you. You'll get off again. Exactly. You're not using your muscles the same way.
And it's kind of, it reminds me when I was in high school, I was a gymnast and one summer I was at gymnastics camp and I broke my foot and I'm thinking, while I'm in a cast, I'll just do a whole bunch of strength moves, which will just be great. You know, because I got this three pound, five pound weight at the end of my leg. And so I got really good at doing all these strength moves and then when I cast him off, I couldn't do them because I could only do them out of balance. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. I mean, that makes sense. Absolutely.
So that then takes us back real quick to stairs. What if I just do Stairmaster and you don't get their same forces. It's not the same thing. It's like, you're keeping up with it.
You're not actually producing. You're not actually moving forward. Like this is analogous to Stairmaster or stairs. Yeah.
But there is a formula for Stairmaster, by the way, for elevation gain. And somebody has to diversify and say, hey, I can't get all my elevation gain on stairs and hiking. Well, if you do a floor, let's say you go 10 floors on a stair, a typical stair master or the one that go around and around, okay. You multiply every floor by 10 feet.
So 100 floors, 1000 feet. Okay. FYI. Okay.
That's important with the formula because keep in mind with hiking, we're looking at the itinerary. What's our elevation, what's our feet? So that's why that's important. Okay.
So let's go to walk lunges. So walk stairs, walk in clients, walk lunges. So walking lunges, like I said earlier, it could be step ups or walking lunges. And the reason why that's important is because first of all, you want to work your muscles, your hips and knees through a full range of motion.
Let's say you have to step up onto a high rock, an obstacle of some kind. If all you're doing is used to striding on a hike or a treadmill, you're not going to develop that full range of motion and full strength within that full range of motion. So that's one reason. And the other reason is you have to be able to recruit that energy system, which I look at the opposite spectrum of let's say you go for a hike and you're going to do thousands and thousands of steps.
But on a typical walking lunge, you might fail at 30 steps. So that by itself can't be the end all be all. You've got to do kind of both ends of the spectrum. So that's that.
So we're actually going to pause there. So when you're having people do walking lunges, talk about, I mean, people have different opinions about how to do lunges. So there's a question of how deep you're going, you're getting like your back knee, like touch the ground, or you're not going to have to do, are you not having your knee go in front of your front toe? Are you keeping your body upright or not?
I mean, there's just a lot of different opinions and thoughts about form for lunges. Do you want to talk about that, please? Yeah, absolutely. So I don't mind somebody, I actually prefer them to bring their knee all the way down to the ground.
Back that way. That's where e-center strength comes in because if you don't have it, you're just going to, when you do a line, your knee is going to just hit the ground. So you have to go down slow. Tap your knee gently and then come up the floor.
So I'm okay with that. I'm also okay. I think most of the time you want to try to keep your knee kind of, let's say, between over the front of your toe and ankle. Does that make sense?
I think that's where most of the more percentage of your lunging time should be. However, if you're, as an avid hiker, maybe some people in your audience can imagine, your knee, their just times when your knees get away over your toe. Or maybe you're going to stumble a little bit. What happens when you stumble and you're used to this pristine form?
Sometimes you just have to mix it up a little bit. And if your knee goes way over your toe, sometimes it still be. I'm not very. Yeah.
I mean, I think the bigger thing is people have been told, and I would argue incorrectly so, that if your knee is going wherever your toe, that's a problem. So there's a lot of people who are just afraid and not really that that's a viable thing. You don't need to be afraid of it. Yeah.
Sure. Yes. Okay. So let's go to the fifth one.
So now let's talk about hit training. So hit training. Wait, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Yeah, wait, wait, wait.
Sayers, incline, lunges, do we miss something? I'm a bar. I'm a bar. That's why you're the host and I'm the guest.
Okay. So yeah, walking far, exactly. So walking far is important. I kind of alluded to it a little bit earlier.
So you can't just focus on all high intensity exercises. Hiking in general is more of a lower intensity endeavor. But your goal is to make sure that after thousands of steps per week and from week to week that you really develop strength in the soft tissue and in your bones and your ligaments and your tendons and your muscles and that over thousands and thousands of steps will give you more of that. We'll provide that for you.
Whereas just strictly doing hit training, which might last for 10 minutes total, let's just say, a high intensity work total. It's not going to work. So when I say walking far, a lot of times in the program, it's usually one time a week like a long walk or hike on the weekend, whereas during the week, it's more of your shorter workouts. And that's just evolved over time because people are busy.
It's just the way it is. It's just how it works. Yeah. So walking far.
Okay. So I was so excited. I wanted to get to hit training. So here we are.
So hit training isn't always critical where it is. Let's pause for probably the very few people who don't know. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. Intensive general training.
Yes. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.
Hit training is, I guess not everybody knows about it, but backtrack one second. Do you remember the rage, the hit training range where it's all you had to do is hit training and do nothing else? Remember that? Oh, yeah.
Were you buying into that back in the day? Well, dude, I'm a sprinter. That's all I ever do. So I don't do long distance.
I don't do slow. You know, my workouts are all the same. Here's my argument about hit training. Especially if it's not in your wheelhouse.
So for the people for whom it seems to be most effective are people for whom they're not used to going all out, but for sprinters, that's all we do. So I, and my argument is that people who are wired for sprinting, hit training has no metabolic benefit because again, that's what we are wired to do. Now the other problem I've seen with hit training and there's two. One is that people, when they try to go all out with whatever they're doing, their form tends to break down and they're setting themselves up for injury.
If they're, for example, running and decide to start sprinting, but all they're doing is they're bad running form faster. Or if you're rowing, I mean, my God, I did a little bit of rowing. I watched people's rowing form and it's like, no, you're setting yourself up for back problems because you don't actually know how to row. Now you're just doing it worse faster.
You know, I just see things like that over and over. I don't know about cycling so much. That's a different story or can be a different story. But that's that's that.
And the other thing just for the fun of ranting for a second is that I hear people talk about hit training and they say, oh, sprint for 30 seconds, rest for 30 seconds, repeat that eight times. I go, well, if you're really sprinting, you can do that once, maybe twice. They're like, well, I don't mean you don't have to get the same speed. I mean, just go all out.
Seriously, I don't think you get it. Like all out, if you go all out for 30 seconds, you should be dead and not being able to get up for 30 seconds later. If you can, what you're doing may be going as fast as you can go, but you're not sprinting. So and you know, and you might not be going all out, but you're definitely not sprinting.
So finally, there's like some 25 year old guy who is telling saying sprint 30 seconds, 30 seconds. And I finally said him, when you sprint for 30 seconds, how far do you go? And he says very proudly, 150 meters. And I said, I am well over twice your age and I go 250 meters.
So whatever you're doing is not sprinting. Whatever you want, but not that. He was a little upset. Okay.
He was humbled. No, he was upset. There was no difference. Yeah.
Okay. So so hit training is most important. I would say for hikers that are going to experience some high altitudes. So so there's a couple of reasons.
So one is it helps you kind of tolerate just the discomfort that that comes with being up and high altitude. Your aspirations are up, your heart rates up. And if you're not comfortable with that, you haven't experienced that before you can panic from that situation. And the other one is just from kind of a physiological perspective.
And that is when we talk, you know, I've mentioned energy systems. And so when you're up, when you're up that high, there's very little oxygen. So to produce energy, you have to recruit, you have to recruit, you have to recruit the ability to generate energy in any way that you can. And I'd say if you've left out hit training, it's just one more tool in your arsenal, you know, where you have it's important to do.
So it's, um, so let me throw a couple of other things in the mix. To see what your take is on that. I mean, since you mentioned altitude for any of the trips where people are going to be experiencing massive altitude, not even change, just, you know, going to be at altitude. I mean, my God, when I first moved from New York City to Colorado, for the first month I was here, I thought my bike was broken because I just could not breathe enough to get any energy to move my bike.
That's right. Do you do anything or recommend things like hyperbaric or hyperbaric training? It's not, it's not practical. I mean, I wouldn't discourage somebody from doing it back.
I just, um, I just started working with somebody a couple of days ago who's doing killing and they asked me that question. I said, look, I said, let me first tell you that none of my very few percentage of my clients ever do that. Yeah. Um, and they're very successful with, uh, summoning, um, kill, even, you know, ever space camp and things like that.
I said, but I said, but I don't want to discourage you from doing it. If it's something you want to do, it's certainly not going, not going to hurt, but you've got to do it. And the right doses and you have to follow the instructions and, you know, it's, you got to look, I mean, this was not, this was an unofficial hypobaric oxygen training. I did the first time I came to Colorado and I went and gone straight from sea level and I ended up in Breckenridge at about 11,000 feet.
And the second night, uh, I was there, I just woke up just gasping for air in the middle of the night. And it was the kind of thing where they had oxygen at the top of every flight of stairs, which at first I looked at that and thought, well, that's silly. And on day three, you know, I hit a long flight of stairs and I just needed a suck on a tank for a couple of seconds. So, you know, it was shocking to me.
Um, right. So then here's another hiking accessory that I'm wondering what your take is, which is poles. Yes. I'm a believer.
I'm a believer. By, well, let's just put it this way. Um, yeah. Um, so let me just tell you a story.
I never use polls. Okay. Never use polls until my last draft. Okay.
So we went to ask him and I don't like training with polls. I don't like using polls. I like having my hands for a, I could just crush it with my quads and my legs. And then, you know, I'm just like a, like a new one.
I can just go for it, right? And everyone else is using polls that I hike with and everything. And that's great. And I'm okay with that.
But we were heading to, we were going to an aspen trip where we were going to do kind of a warm up hike and then we're going to do a Mount Soapers, which is 13,000 feet of elevation gain. And then we were going to do Castle Peak, which is 14,000 feet of elevation. Not elevation gain. Yeah.
Yeah. Good call. Right. Altitude.
So on a layover, I must have picked up something, some kind of bug or something like that. So we do our first hike, which is an easy hike. And I'm feeling, it's supposed to be easy and I'm feeling, I'm feeling kind of off. Um, you know, sorry audience.
I got to tell you, but you know, I've got diarrhea. I don't have much of an appetite. Um, but, you know, I make it through. That's fine.
But day, day two is we were going to do about 10 miles and 3,500 feet of elevation gain getting up to 13,000 feet. And so I was like, I feel horrible. I feel horrible. I need every advantage I could get.
So we went to the local outdoor store and I got myself some polls and I learned really quickly how to use them. And it wasn't hard. And then two things got me to the top of Mount Soapers. One was the fact that I was in great shape, even though I didn't feel good.
I was able to kind of work through it. Yeah. Had I not had my poles with me, my heart, my quad would have been working so hard. My heart rate would have spiked so high that I'm not sure that I could have done it.
And now I'm a believer. Um, and then definitely day three, day three was 10 miles and we were going to do, it was about 5,500 feet of elevation gain based on where we were starting. And there's no way that I would have made it without the hiking poles. Here's just how about a quick lesson for your audience.
And that is the other thing too. And tell me if I, if you want to ask me more about the polls, but I will say that if you, if you were sick and you don't feel good and you go on a hike, I'm not going to tell you not to do it. I'm stubborn. I was going to do it.
Okay. But, but the issue was is I was not eating and I didn't know it. I didn't know it. I told the guys ahead of me, I'm like, I'm good enough.
I'm not good. Don't mistake that for good enough. I'm not good enough. I can put one foot in front of the other, but I was so, I was back so far that I wasn't eating and I didn't know it.
So you're supposed to eat about, let's say 200 plus calories every hour, especially on an aggressive, I can even probably even more. Well, I didn't have the appetite. I ate a little bit and I get to the top on, I guess, I guess adrenaline. Come back down and then I just completely, completely bonk.
And I'm feeling very vulnerable telling this because I shouldn't do this, but I'm all the wiser for it. So I feel like I should share it. I should have been eating. I didn't, I wasn't aware of it.
And I'm telling you, you should eat. Well, what happened was I couldn't go any further. Yeah. I had a serious case of hypoglycemia, like really bad.
Like we're talking waffling between vomiting and losing consciousness. So in that moment, I knew what to do. So I had, I had pretzels and I had potato chips and I was stuffing my face like the cookie monster. It just, you could see it just going everywhere.
I didn't have the energy to chew and then I had to drink water from my, from my pack just to soften enough to swallow. So I did potato chips. I did pretzels. I did a bar.
I did two goos and I did one pack of what would be like gummy bears within five minutes and I laid there and after 30 minutes, finally, I was able to get the energy and I was able to finish the rest of the five miles. So it's just, just a tail for your audience there. Well, and this is Colorado. What was in those gummy bears?
They weren't gummy bears. They were, um, uh, I'm trying to remember the name of it. But anyways, mostly sugar, there was some electrolytes in it. The sugar was the big thing.
Had some electrolytes. Yeah. Yeah. See around here, gummy bears means pot.
So, uh, yeah. So you might have had, you might have had a pack of something that seemed like gummy bears and you thought you got down off the mountain, but you really hadn't moved. So it's no edibles on the note. No edibles allowed.
Um, so do you want to get people like the world's fastest instruction or thoughts about, you know, getting used to polls? Because the first time I tried them, I thought they were dorky as crap. And then I tried them and it's like having a superpower, but similar to, you know, having bad walking form, you're going to bad poll form where they're not helping you as much as, uh, or as well as they could. So do you want to chat about that?
Yeah. Um, I think probably the easiest thing for somebody to imagine is when you're going uphill or flat, uh, you can want your elbows to be, uh, 90 degrees. Okay. So you would adjust the polls to make your handle.
So they're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're elbows at 90 degrees. So make that adjustment. Okay. If you're going downhill, you want to lengthen the hiking poles, maybe three centimeters and just kind of experiment on see how that feels.
Uh, I'm trying to think what else the other thing with hiking poles too is, is you want to get one with a, with a, with a strap on it. Okay. Because you can, you can put your hands through through the top of the strap and then grab, grab the handle. And what happens is the strap is underneath your wrist and so you're not gripping the, the pole with it like a depth grip because you're former way out.
You can look almost just rest and push on, uh, the strap. If that makes sense. That's clever. Yeah.
Like that. Yeah. It makes a big difference. So, um, I feel required by law, of course, to ask the simple question, uh, let's, well, I'll do it this way.
Uh, rather than the question, I'll make it something of a statement slash command. Let's talk footwear. Uh, yes. I actually have this show.
You ready for show in town? Oh, sure. You ready for show in town? Okay.
So yeah, buddy. And you'll have to describe things for people who can't see all the describe what you're showing. Oh, okay. All right.
So I'm holding the, the pre-o here. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to show you how to do this.
And you notice, look at this. This is not a manufacturing defect. What I'm showing Steven is this right here. Do you see that right there?
Yeah. So on the, so the collar, the part that goes around your ankle, the outside top part of the collar and it looks like you've beaten up pretty good. Okay. Yeah.
And by the way, I had to write down the date for this. I've only since May of 21. Okay. I wear them all the time.
I should say that. Wait, I want to pause and say, I did not know this going into this conversation. So this is not a set up just for this. But so anyway, that is correct.
So by the way, I use these pre-os for everything, which we can get to in a second. But I also use them as my, I wear them around the campsite. So we were on the Chicago basin and luckily it was, it was our last day and we were going to hike out and our shoes and our backpacks were sitting outside of our tents, because we have small tents, we need the room and a, we, we wake up and the backpacks is completely destroyed. And luckily they only tour the shoe laces and you can see the springs right here.
So they ate my pre-os kind of. Wait, what? Wait, what? Do you know what they was?
Who, who? I think it was a, I think it was a rodent that was getting the fibers for their nest. Wow. So there's, so the spiders are still there.
We have a pair of sandals that were attacked by an actual Tasmanian devil. Really? Yeah, shredded, shredded is a staple. So, so anyway, so I, I wear these, I wear these shoes and then you can have any questions or whatever, but I'm just going to tell you, I wear the pre-os.
When I train in person clients, okay, I wear them when I do my treadmill work. I wear them when I do stairs. I wear them when I walk the dog. I wear them all the time.
And then I would wear my trail naysays for my training hikes when I, when I want to strengthen my feet, okay? When I went to Colorado, I was not confident enough that my feet were strong enough to be able to tolerate the granite. And I'll say this, I had a pair of shoes, not going to name the manufacturer. We can do that offline if you want.
I wear their shoes and in two days, it's the granite up there on those Rocky Mountains, they shredded, shredded them. The, the, the soles were gone. So anyway, but that's that what you want to talk about with them. Well, you know, there's, there's a couple things about, and I argue these are misconceptions.
The first thing is people think when they're hiking, they need a hiking boot for ankle support. And I say, well, if you have a shoe that's got a stiff soul and you step on something not centered on your foot, because you stepped on something off center, it's going to make your foot twist and then your ankles in a twist. And there's, there's frankly nothing that can support that, but if you have a shoe that's flexible, your foot can bend around it more and your ankles not as compromised. And you're fine.
I mean, I never, I've never hiked in an actual hiking boot. When I first came out here, I was hiking in running shoes, because that's all I wore if I was not wearing sandals of some sort. And since, you know, we make stuff that's super flexible. So I've never hiked in anything that wasn't really flexible.
The other part is most hiking boots way of, I think the technical term, this is a footwear term, they weigh a fucking ton. And so compared to our stuff, that is sometimes, you know, half the weight. And that's a big deal. You know, you're taking a lot of steps, you're lifting your foot every time to do it.
That's that actually really adds up. And people don't appreciate that. They also think they need a ton of cushioning and padding. And I'm not saying that you don't need some or let me say differently.
You can get away with none if you really are paying attention to how you're stepping and where you're walking and how you're using your feet and using the ground as part of the experience that I'm trying to get, just trying to get over the ground. But if you're not there yet, if you haven't had experience doing that, then yeah, you're going to want something to take the bumps out a little bit. But I think that like in the running shoe world, where everything has gotten super max and less and tons of cushioning and art sport and all that none of those things actually work, there's an even more insidious bit of propaganda about what you need for hiking. And again, if you're not ready for it, that's one thing.
Say when someone emails and says, I got a marathon in six weeks, what shoe should I get? It's like, no, no, no, don't do that. You're not ready for that. You're probably not ready for that.
Switch to getting used to a natural movement. And then you'll know when you're ready to handle it. You're going to build up your time, you'll build up your distance. It'll be clear.
Don't have some imagined goal in mind that you think you're going to get to without having any information about how your body responds, how your brain responds, how your brain and your body respond, et cetera. So anyway, that's my rant about shoes. Well, I agree. Yeah.
You know, so the conventional wisdom is if you have a boot, you know, you're going to increase the stability around your ankle and that's, I don't think that holds up too well. I do prefer to have the mobility because it's just you feel, you feel different on the trail. It's like walking on the trail is kind of an expression, you know, where you can walk and you can take different parts of the trail. You can do it however you want it and take whatever steps around things, on things, and it's really kind of fun.
When you do that and you want to feel, you want to feel your feet moving and not having anything around your ankles is preferable. I've worn boots before. And what I do is I'll actually just I'll tie them, you know, all in lace them from the top and I'll go as though, as though they're a shoe. Right.
You know, anyway, but I agree. It's something, you know, people who play basketball here, I need the ankle support. It's like, well, you may have noticed that with all that ankle support, still the number one injury for basketball players is ankle sprains, right? So it's clearly not doing the thing that you think it's doing.
In fact, Kobe Bryant, way back when did a video, talking about what he thought the ultimate basketball shoe would be and it was a low top. He said, you don't need support. You need to have flexibility and strengthen your ankles. And of course, what they made for him was a low top, but then had everything else wrong about it.
So that's all other story. OK. At least they did that part. So anything else that you can think of for human beings who want to take any sort of hike in terms of both either preparing or actually, you know, doing, I think the whole thing about getting nutrition along the way, hugely important, very overlooked here in Colorado.
The other thing, people never bring enough water with them because they don't anticipate how much they need at altitude with how dry it gets. That's a problem. By the way, your hypo, your hypo, play acemic story. I did a medical experiment where they literally injected me full of sugar and watch my insulin spike because they want to see how I would go.