Training guides for trekkers

Why these guides exist

Every plan starts from the trek's real stage profile: its days, ascent, descent, hours and longest day, from our canonical trek database. The weekend long walk grows toward that longest day, the Sunday walk makes the pair, and the taper lands you at the start fresh. The three science guides explain why: how to train the descent, what altitude does and what your itinerary does about it, and why most of the training happens in Zone 2.

Each trek also has its own page with the stage table, day by day: Kilimanjaro, Everest Base Camp, the Inca Trail, the Tour du Mont Blanc, the Annapurna Circuit, the Walker's Haute Route, the Alta Via 1, the Tour of Monte Rosa, the GR20, the Laugavegur Trail, the Toubkal Circuit, the Huayhuash Circuit, the Santa Cruz Trek, the Salkantay Trek, the Condor Trek, the Quilotoa Loop, the Inca Trail to Ingapirca, the Torres del Paine W Trek, the Torres del Paine O Circuit and the Michinoku Coastal Trail. If you want the plan built around your own date and your own week, see how the trekking plan works.