Guide email 18
The hardest part of planning your next hike
Something that has been on my mind lately—something I think a lot of us struggle with when we're recovering from injury or illness: How do you know what you're capable of when you're...
Something that has been on my mind lately—something I think a lot of us struggle with when we're recovering from injury or illness:
How do you know what you're capable of when you're planning a trip?
How do you make good choices about doing the things you want while honoring the robustness of your body? Finding the right balance between pushing yourself and staying within your capacity and ability is one of the key challenges as you build back.
This can be really hard because there can be things we really want to do. We feel like, "Oh, I should be able to do that by now." Or, "I'm just going to do it. I really want to do it. I'm just going to do it."
Sometimes you just got to do it and go for it. That can be a reasonable thing—having trust that it will work out.
But your capacity and fitness level are real as well and not biting off more than you can chew is also smart. Getting this balance right is crucial to long-term progressive building of confidence.
Here's the thing: this is a slow process.
It's easy to get impatient and push too hard. It's also easy to not push hard enough—to get stuck in ruts of what you've always done, what you know you can do easily. To be afraid of pushing into the unknown and uncertainty.
All of these emotions are reasonable as you plan and complete trips.
So what helps?
First, being routine about hiking and walking helps you develop the base and the confidence to know where you're at.
Second, getting honest about your capacity and ability. That routine helps you judge this better because if you're out there doing it, you know what small and subtle variations feel like on your body.
What does a little bit heavier weight feel like? What about a little bit longer? Where am I super confident I can perform even when fatigued? What do I need to be fresher to do?
Finding that balance is the key to progression. Practice is one of the only ways you can build the confidence in yourself and the knowledge of your own capacity and ability.
When something doesn't feel good after an event, it's generally because you've exceeded your capacity or ability—whether it was too far, too heavy, too fast.
You have to have progressive overload and go into that realm where you have to recover a little bit more. But you don't want to end up really aggravating or irritating old issues.
This is where having a really solid recovery toolkit can help. It allows you to have the confidence that you can push a little bit into what your limits and uncertainties are—and come back out the other side.
Inside Rebuild to Roam, I've built tools to help with exactly this—including trip calculators and confidence trackers that can assist you in finding that balance between ambition and wisdom, between pushing forward and honoring where you are.
You don't have to figure this out alone.
See you out there,
Jeff