Recovery Best Practices: Why It’s Important for Runners and Hikers
You train hard. You push yourself up hills. You run for miles. You constantly challenge your body. The difference between runners and hikers who keep their stamina up for years, and those who burn out or get injured, is usually how you take care of your body between workouts.
Why Recovery is so Important
Every time you run or hike, you create small amounts of mechanical stress in your muscles, joints, and connective tissue. This is often called “training stress” or “adaptive stress,” and if you allow yourself to recover, it helps your body adapt, get stronger, and improve over time. Exercise provides the signal for the body to adapt, however, the majority of rebuilding and strengthening occurs during rest and recovery. Prioritizing recovery reduces injury risk, speeds up muscle repair, and helps you perform your best over the long term.
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Why You Need Rest Days
Many avid exercisers feel guilty about taking rest days; I know I do. However, rest days aren’t setting you back, but are essential in your fitness journey. For runners and hikers, most training plans recommend at least one to two full rest days per week to prevent injuries, allow muscle tissues to repair, and avoid mental burnout. What a rest day can look like:
- Don’t do high-impact activities
- Light movement like walking or gentle yoga is fine
- Focus on sleep, hydration, and eating well
- Mentally decompression from performance goals
If you’re someone who struggles to rest, like myself, I try to reframe my thoughts that a rest day is an investment in my next run or hike, and that I’ll come back stronger.
Why You Need to Focus on Getting Good Sleep
Nothing replaces sleep. Sleep is when your body does its deepest repair work. During this time, your brain clears out waste products, your cells build new proteins, and your pituitary gland releases growth hormones that help repair muscles and other tissues. Most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Even one or two nights of poor sleep can noticeably reduce endurance, coordination, and injury resilience. Here are tips on how you can train yourself to get quality sleep:
- Maintain a consistent sleep schedule, even on weekends
- Avoid screens 30–60 minutes before bed
- Keep your room cool and dark
- Limit caffeine in the afternoon
Hydration and Nutrition
Your body needs the right fuel and fluids to repair itself. Eating well and staying hydrated give your body the building blocks it needs to repair and rebuild. Drinking water during exercise is especially important to “prevent excessive (>2% body weight loss from water deficit) dehydration and excessive changes in electrolyte balance to avert compromised performance.”
What you eat after a workout plays a big role in how well you recover. Protein helps repair and rebuild muscle, while carbohydrates replenish the energy stores you used during your run or hike. To give your body what it needs to recover, aim for a balanced meal within one to two hours after your workout. If you won’t have a full meal that soon, have a snack of protein and carbohydrates, and replace fluids with water or an electrolyte beverage.
Mobility and Stretching
Tight hips, stiff calves, and restricted movement in the upper back are common complaints for both runners and hikers. Consistent mobility exercises help maintain range of motion, reduces soreness, and enhances movement performance. Even 10–15 minutes of focused mobility work after a workout or before bed can make a meaningful difference over time. If you have the time and money to invest in massage or other bodywork, these can also aid in recovery.
Warm Up and Cool Down
Moving gradually into and out of the more intense portions of any workout sets you up to recover well. Doing a brisk walk and dynamic stretches before launching into harder efforts makes tissues more pliable, ready to do harder work and absorb impact. And recovery starts as soon as you begin cooldown by bringing body temperatures down, returning blood throughout the body, and transitioning the cardiopulmonary system from stress back to normal levels.
Why Rest and Recovery Keep You Going Strong
Some aspects of recovery are subjective because we are each unique and have our own preferences. Some people love to get massages, others are uncomfortable with them. Some like gentle movement or walking, others find it tedious. The good news is if something gives you a feeling of well-being, that activity will have a recovery effect on you. When you allow yourself rest days, get enough sleep, fuel your body with the right nutrition, and stay consistent with mobility and strength work, you’ll be able to workout even harder and stronger. If you’re a runner working towards a marathon, or a hiker who wants to do a multi-day trek or harder day hike, recovery is what will get you there. Your body needs recovery days, so make sure you take them!
