10 reasons why you should start hiking

Hiking is a favorite outdoor activity for many. It's a great way to spend time in the fresh air, with loved ones, and physical activity that enhances both mental and physical health.

Here are 10 reasons why you should start hiking:

1. Improves general fitness

Hiking is a great calorie consumer. In just an hour of intense hiking, you can spend up to 500 kcal. If you still carry a heavier backpack, the figure may be even higher.

The surface on hiking trails is always more comfortable and safer for joints than concrete or asphalt, and walking is confirmed to have a better and safer effect on joints than running. Therefore, hiking is an activity that consumes calories and contributes to weight loss, but also preserves your joints.

2. You have control over your activity yourself

If you are hiking alone or with friends, you do not have a strict trainer who will keep pace and determine what time you need to reach your destination. Therefore, hiking is the ideal physical activity where you choose how long you will hike, whether you climb to the top or not, how often you will rest along the way, and finally, how often you will go to the mountains.

3. Tones the whole body

Usually walking contributes to form, but when you add to that the slope you have on the mountain, the use of hiking sticks to lean forward and climbing rocks with the help of rope, this is an activity in which you will activate your whole body.

In more detail, hiking is an activity that will involve the muscles of the quadriceps, the back of the thigh, and the gluteus. If you carry a backpack, you will additionally include your upper body muscles, as well as an active core that stabilizes you on the move, especially on heavier sections.

4. Helps prevent and control diabetes

Hiking regularly helps control, but even prevent, diabetes by lowering blood sugar levels. Mountaineering activates the muscles, and they, in a simplified way, use glucose from the bloodstream for energy, thus lowering its blood levels.

5. It lowers blood pressure and cholesterol

Mountaineering regularly reduces blood pressure and cholesterol, thereby reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and heart attack in the most vulnerable groups. Even getting down from the mountain is doubly effective: lowering blood sugar levels and improving glucose tolerance.

6. Hiking as a cure

Some studies show that the health benefits of mountaineering significantly outweigh cardiovascular health alone, and even go so far as to aid the recovery of cancer patients.

A study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine found that hiking in the long run can improve the antioxidant capacity that helps fight disease in cancer patients. Another study found that people with breast cancer who hiked regularly had a significantly better recovery rate than those less active.

7. Hiking has a strong social component

Mountaineering almost always involves society, whether it's hiking as a couple or joining a mountaineering society and hiking in organized groups. Having a larger network of hikers is motivating and encouraging, but also increases safety in the event of an accident on the mountain.


Hikers typically develop their hiking lifestyle, from buying equipment, sharing route tips to helping beginners.

8. Increases creativity

Studies have shown that spending time in nature improves concentration and focus and raises the ability to solve problems creatively by as much as 50%. In addition, studies show that spending time in nature, without constant contact with technology, has a significant impact on mood enhancement, confidence and creativity.

9. Increases happiness level and treats depression

Studies show that mountaineering is an excellent complementary therapy to help people with severe depression. Mountaineering is a way of movement that gives people who are prone to depression a signpost on how to lead a more active, happy and contented life.

10. It is closer to nature

Staying in nature, far from the chaos of everyday life, technology and urban environments, enables people to come closer to themselves and to nature, which provides them with a kind of inner peace and satisfaction with themselves.


Therefore, if you haven't been hiking by now, it's high time you started. Incorporate hiking into your lifestyle, and take the time for the woods and the mountains on weekends. Guaranteed, you will come back happy and satisfied. And you'll plan where next.