Train!

Stairs... Accept no substitute

Not just "take the stairs", but "do the stairs".... and lots of them!

I am in what I would consider to be pretty good shape, I spend 2 or 3 lunch hours a week at the gym, and usually do the stair climber for half an hour followed by moderate weights. I ride a mountain bike several times a week, and feel pretty good about my endurance levels. I felt like I was pretty prepared for hiking until my Dad said: "Forget all that stuff!"

His opinion was that the stuff I had been doing would help me, but stairs were going to make or break my hike. His regular preperation routine for hiking is to get to a point where he can go up AND down 3000 steps in a session... without cardiac arrest. His reasoning wasn't as much for the endurance part of it as it was to prepare the legs for going downhill. He told me about a fellow hiker (who will remain nameless until he reads this and says I can use his name!) who he found going down the stairs backwards at the hotel after his previous Grand Canyon hike because his legs were just shot from the downhill hiking.

A couple months before the hike, I figured I would give it a try just to prove to him that he didn't have to worry about me being ready. So one day on my lunch hour, I decided to forego the gym and hit the fire exit stair well in my office building. I began heading up and down the 80 stairs. About 400 or so in, I thought "well, this is pretty challenging." About 1000 in I was thinking "Oh my God! 3000?????" After about an hour, I had hit 1600 steps each direction, and decided I would quit. The next day... I was crippled!!!! I was hobbling around like an old man who desperately needed a walker. It was terrible. I was hurting for about 3 days. The lesson? I decided that day that I needed to keep at the stairs from that point up until the hike, and I did them religiously from that point on. I knew that in order for my trip to be the most enjoyment with the least work, I simply had to put the effort in ahead of time. My efforts paid off enormously. I can't imagine what it would have been like learning that lesson only after making it to the bottom of the canyon. Actually I can imagine that. I saw a number of people limping around Bright Angel Camp who were blessed with this new knowledge!

I never met my Dad's level of 3000 steps. In fact, I don't think I ever did more than 1600, but I did them about 2 or 3 times a week the last 2 months preceding the hike. That number worked out well for me. I must have mentioned how glad I was for the stairs a dozen times on the trip, and thought about it scores more than that. We went through the entire hike, without either of us getting any sore muscles, which was quite an accomplishment in my mind.

So that said, I cannot stress it enough. Do the stairs. If you don't, I could almost guarantee you will remember reading this while you are nursing your legs in the bottom of the canyon! If you are like me and think you don't need it, at least go knock out a thousand and see how ready your muscles are. If you are just starting out, start small. Start with 400 steps or so and work up to it. If you are new, I bet those 400 steps will give you a pretty good idea of how important it is.