5 Tips for Day-Hiking Success

This post is sponsored by Emerald® Nuts

How do you stay in shape? What motivates you? If you’re like me, you probably have a gym membership and try to eat a healthy diet. Having an exercise ‘variety-plan’ can help keep workouts fun and fresh and motivation high. A ‘variety-plan’ consists of several, diverse activities that raises your heart rate, increases your circulation, and improves your overall health.

Day-hiking is a great ‘variety-plan’ activity. Besides being a great cardiovascular workout, day hiking also works the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteal, abdominal, and arm muscles. Here are some tips before beginning a day-hiking adventure.

Pre-Hike Conditioning

Pre-hike conditioning is vital due to the various terrain encountered during hiking. Day hikes may involve long stretches of hilly, rocky terrain, and require large motions to bypass big obstacles like boulders. Before embracing a day-hike, enhance your gym workouts to incorporate strength and cardiovascular training to increase muscular and cardiovascular ability.

Know your Trail

It is essential to know as much about it as possible about the trail you will be hiking before venturing out. Be aware of the distance, time, terrain, difficulty level, and elevation changes of the trail.  Here are a few ways to find the best trails for your hike.

Be Prepared

Day-hikes can sometimes present challenges. Being prepared can ensure that you have an enjoyable outdoor expedition by being ready for unforeseen hurdles. You can find a comprehensive essential day-hiking checklist (HERE) that will help you remember the important items to bring on your day-hike.

Snack Responsibly

Your body uses up a lot of calories during a day-hike. This means you use up carbohydrate stores faster than with traditional gym exercises. To maintain the strength and energy needed for day-hiking, incorporate healthy snacks like nuts into your hike. Nuts provide a great source of energy dense nutrition like healthy fats, carbohydrates, and protein for your day-hike.

Emerald® Nuts has a wide variety of tasty nut snacks, including almonds, pecans, walnuts, cashews, and Breakfast on the go! ™ Plus, with unique flavors like Cocoa Roast, Sweet & Salty Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter, Salt & Pepper Cashews, and Breakfast Nut Blends, Emerald ®Nuts offers something for everyone’s taste. Additionally, Emerald® Nuts offers a variety of package sizes, like the Emerald ® Nuts canisters (exclusively sold at Walmart), which fits right into a day pack water bottle holder, perfect for healthy snacking while on the trail.

Hydrate

Adequate hydration is important when day-hiking. Sweating can make you lose vital electrolytes. Drink plenty of water in addition to an electrolyte supplement is important to your health and helps you maintain the energy to complete your day-hike.

Make Emerald A Part of Your Day, Anytime

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I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Sverve and the content and opinions expressed here are 100% my own.