I have several friends and readers who have asked me about my weekday training and recovery exercises. This post is going to be long and I’ll update/improve it for a while.

Stream hiking, coasteering, trail running include a variety of movements that are somehow associated with several big sports. Mainly running, climbing, and swimming. Thereof the cross-training recommended for avoiding injuries and improving your performance would be a mixture of all the exercises associated with the previous.

It can be good for you to know all the basic injuries that you can suffer in these types of exercise. As quite some of us have suffered them. In my case, most of them in a mild manner, that I was able to solve before creating too many problems. But I would have preferred to know about them beforehand and avoid them completely from the beginning: ankle sprains, Iliotibial band syndrome, runner’s knee, plantar fasciitis, etc.

First. I am not a doctor. Just a first aid specialist and certified personal trainer, although I have not been working in any of those sectors in a long time. So this is not medical advice. If you are in pain go to your doctor and physiotherapist.

Starting from the very low. Your feet. To be honest, until I started running long distance and started feeling strange pain on my sole, I had never thought about the muscles on my feet much. And definitely, there are a lot. If you do not train them and you go too long running or hiking you might get plantar fasciitis. You can feel hill pain or, as it was my case, pain closer to the ball of your foot. For me, it felt like having a pointy pebble in my shoe after a long descent. But there was none… I researched a bit and I discovered that my feet were really weak, little flexible, and completely non-dexterous. So I started training with something simple like these.

And later on, start learning how to stretch the feet and make them more dexterous, rolling a towel with the toes, or picking up things with them (marbles is the physio classic).

The previous exercises can help with your ankles. I had sprained mine uncountable times, playing basketball, before I learned how to make them way more resistant. Twisting your ankle badly is the usual sprain mechanism. Your muscles are not able to hold the foot in place and the ligaments overstretch. Acute pain, swelling. Usually after a week’s time (depends how severe the sprain is) the pain disappears but still the ligament is not recovered and it is really easy to re-injure. That’s why usually longer resting time and light recovery exercises are recommended for the initial stage.

As soon as the pain and swelling disappears, start moving the joint gently. Stretching it. So you start to recover mobility soonest. Apart from the aforementioned exercises, you should be focusing, in the recovery stage, in balancing exercises. The ankle is stabilized by a lot of different muscles. Most in the gym only train consciously, if any, the main calf muscles (gastrocnemius & soleus mainly) with calf raises and alike. You need to do more to reinforce your ankles to prevent sprains or when recovering from one. You might want to train expressly the tibialis a bit, but above all the lateral musculature. Tons of little muscles in the lower part of your leg that keep the joint stable. The easiest way to do so is to gently make yourself unbalanced. Just stand on one foot. Easy? Start rotating slowly like in the video above. Easy? Close your eyes. Easy? Do it on a half ball. Easy? I guess you got the point already. You can be incrementally increasing the difficulty. You will be activating the lateral musculature that prevents you from rolling your ankle. You can also use elastic bands initially to exercise them. Barefoot beach walks are great too. In the long run, the most effective way for me is to include full-body balancing into my regular training. I love to do one-legged strengthening exercises,

or even full squats on a Pilates ball.

Do you need a gym for training? Not really. To give you an idea here a video with exercises you could do at home.

He is focusing mainly on the glutes. Why? For power but also for stability. Quite some runners and hikers can feel knee pain and never associate it with their glutes. There are different reasons for knee pain but a very common one, pain coming from the outer part of the knee, can be caused by weak lateral glute muscles and too tight iliotibial (IT) band. If you feel the pain while hiking and with a light glute stretching reduces… You need to cross-train seriously. You can focus that area of the musculature with lateral movements again, or using an elastic band. I like to do overhead squats with heavy bands focusing on the outer movement of the knee, for example. Another video with ideas.

We are already in the hip area. As mentioned poor conditioning here could be affecting your legs, but also your back. You need to think that the body is a long connected chain. Any unbalance in musculature at one point will create problems all around the chain, with final injuries wherever the links are weaker. A classic Personal Trainer talking point is girls and high-heels. These shoes can affect the plantar fascia and be painful on your feet. But they can also shorten the calf muscles and create tension in the Achilles. To compensate tense hamstrings pulling the pelvis generating lower back pain… If you really need/want to wear them you would need to stretch the tense muscles and strengthen their antagonistic, meaning stretch your calf and train your tibialis, or stretch your hamstring and strengthen your quads.

How much should you stretch (the science behind)? Tricky question, but to simplify, the more intense your usual activity and the older you get the more intense that you may need to stretch. There are runners that advocate for not stretching whatsoever (someone intermediate explaining why). Not really viable if you are trying to hike, but also climb, swim, run, and others. The muscles get tighter and tighter making some movements more complicated or finally even tearing. Find the exercises that work for you and that help you stay healthy. Static stretching is not the only option, consider for example this type of mobility exercises too.

Open your hips. Improve your overall range of motion. Some love their yoga classes, some struggle with anything stretch related. Find whatever you are comfortable with and works for you. Massage/rolling, electrostimulation, cold and hot treatment, etc are things you could consider for recovery and keeping your muscles tightness and injury-free.

Getting into the upper body. One of the most important, and sometimes neglected, areas might be your core. Mainly the inner abdominal musculature. It is involved in any activity that requires balancing, as the main body stabilizer. The main exercises to train this area would be variants of planks. Here a video of someone who hates the plain vanilla option 😛

You can follow his links to find more info.

Back, chest, and shoulder musculature is heavily involved when climbing and swimming. If you are relatively a beginner and/or you do not have much strength yet start with the basics.

Lat pull-downs, shoulder flys, push-ups, etc. Research a bit to know their mechanics so that you do them in the safest and most effective way. I’d be writing forever if I would need to explain each one of them. Tons of videos on Youtube or others. To summarize, try to understand how the load and gravity are affecting the exercise, the correct range of motion and your position to keep your joints safest, inhale while you are in the eccentric part of the movement, exhale while concentric, increase loads slowly.

If you are more advance you can increase the difficulty and make it more specific. Climbing related.

If you had access to a climbing wall or a swimming pool you could be doing even more specific training drills in both.

The last muscle group that I would like to mention are shoulder Rotators. Shoulders are one of the most versatile joints in the body, able to move in all different planes. This also makes them very susceptible to injury, above all among climbers and swimmers. I include weekly a few basic exercises to strengthen them.

Weight. One of the simplest performance indicators might be your fat percentage. If you are, for example, relatively new to running and looking to improve your times; focus in losing that extra fat and you are good to go 😀 Definitely it is complex subject and I am not advocating for anorexia. But you should be aware of your weight. The older you get the more important that this might be too, as by default there is muscle mass loss starting from your early 30s. Another reason for strength training. An increase in your fat percentage will affect you in different ways: how easily you will get tired, difficulties climbing, injuries, etc. For those extremely skinny be cautious too: girls should be above approx 12% to continue “functioning” correctly, guys can go way under 10% (six-pack time).

So how does a week of training look for me? Let’s start with the availability and requirements. I work at an office and relatively long hours. Therefore I am able to train “only” around one hour on weekdays. Most of the time at the gym under the office during lunchtime. My cardio fitness is already very solid. I lose muscle easily. High power to mass output. I have had several injuries that limit my activity, but not greatly. Goal: to keep me in the best performance conditions no matter if trying to follow trail runners, swimmers, climbers, etc. improving my balance and trying to avoid old injuries. Top speed or stamina are not my goals anymore. My girlfriend would appreciate me gaining back some of the muscle lost after elbow surgery done months ago.

Back and chest. Once my elbow is feeling better I’m starting to do more complex exercises, similar to the climber video above. Tons of rotations, complex abs exercises etc to keep my old rowing time core strength.

I seldom do same speed continuous flat runs. On the treadmill most of the time I run with max slope (15% at current gym, missing 30% of Pure IFC), or I do speed intervals and others. If possible I highly prefer to run up & down the hills, usually in exploring mode. At the gym I could be using sometimes the elliptical machines instead of the treadmill, although not frequently. I should swim in the pool way more often than what I do.

Legs. I seldom use machines. I love all kind of plyometrics, balancing exercises with balls and free weights. I try to focus on my lateral musculature and definitely do some feet strengthening exercises. Kinda old school shoulder training and very little else of my arms. I think that triceps, biceps, forearms are already trained with other exercises. I isolate train them sometimes anyhow.

One day a week I like to focus on mobility and little muscles for stability.

Long outing. Quite some of the adventures written about here. 6 hours coasteering with a couple of kilometers swimming in Nine Pins. Even when I take friends to easier/ shorter routes (Yin Ngam for example) I may add a few hours of trail running after. If I go specifically trail running max distance is around 40k at 7kph pace if not too technical or steep. I like to keep it easy enough to be able to talk. But usually, when on my own I mix it, run a bit and explore streams or else midway. I usually return back home stretching in public transportation (MTR back wagon is perfect).

Short outings could be anything from open water swimming, a really easy hike (for me) with less skilled friends, or easy pace short trail running.

I moved close to the office so that I can walk there daily (year long, no matter the weather). I try to stretch several times throughout the day: meanwhile resting between sets in the gym, while on work phone conversations with the hands-free, just before going to sleep.

Do I really train every single day? Not really. There are always extremely busy working days, social commitments, very bad sleeping nights, etc when it is impossible. But I plan as if I would do so. So that those non-training days are the exception, not the norm. I alternate between sports and activities and also intensity levels (a few super easy days now and then) so that I do not get overtrained.

I have added tons of Youtubers and links for you to check further. Enjoy your training journey!