How do you stay fit for tramping?

walk a mile too and from work most weekends walk up to 7 hours cross country.

The missus and myself are training for iron Maorii, so at the moment we are doing maybe 3-4km in the pool. 50km on the bikes and 15-20km jogging per week. I also climb the firebreaks 3 times a week which is a steep 300m ascent and around 4km from the front door and back. Plus I bike to work. So tramping ironically is actually a way to get fit for iron Maori. I recently bought a Garmin vivosmart watch which is fantastic for motivation, always trying to out do the week before. I highly recommend them.

Walk a lot, there are numerous walkways that provide short cuts to various streets around where I live which involve lots of steps. Walk the streets go down and back up a walkway, walk to the next and repeat. An hour a day couple of hours at weekends maintains a level of fitness that suits me for tramping. At 71 years of age I am a slow tramper anyway and having stent implants, a pacemaker, emphysema with 75% of lung function, osteoarthritis of the spine slow and steady is all I know these days. But you learn to adjust to suit and regular everyday activity such as describe that to some degree emulates conditions for tramping keeps it all together and able to continue. Spent a couple of weeks in the Marlborough sounds early in the year wandering the hills of a farm, and they are not flat hills there, did the Roxburgh Gorge, Clutha Gold Trail, and Otago Rail Trail in March and am just back from the Waikaremoana Track. Constant exercise has been the conditioner I need to accomplish all these things.

if you work in a high rise, take the stairs as much as you can... walk to the shops or park further away if you take transport to the shops, if you're on public transport change the stop you get on and off and and walk further to or from work...

The problem with all these suggestions is that there's fitness, and then there's tramping fitness. I used to spend all day all week running possum lines - which is pretty much applied tramping - and so weekend tramps were a breeze. But put me on a rugby field - all that stop-start high energy stuff - and I'd be stuffed within 10 minutes. These day's I'm chasing gorse, broom, pine trees round the high country, rather than possums. It's stop-start stuff, but I'd thought that spending all day dragging a saw or 200m lengths of spray hose round steep high country would have kept me fit. It's certainly tiring: lever-the-pint-glass-off-the-bar-rather-than-lift-it-at-the-end-of-the-day tiring. But come the weekend tramp it does not give that easy ability to keep up the pace all day regardless of terrain that spending all my working days walking with a pack did. 6-8 hours and I'm looking for my bed. 1000 vertical meters feeling like 2000 once felt. So yes - all of the above suggestions will build up your strength. But I'm not convinced there's any substitute to being out there regularly dong it to build up tramping stamina.

Agreed madpom. I'll see gym bunny fullas half my weight and age pumping it up the firebreak and I'll smoke em every time. Nothing beats repetition and experience. Hill walking is hill walking and there is no substitute. Best thing to do is to get out there and do it constantly then there will come a time where it just starts to feel right.

You'll get fitter if you don't repeat a particular regime every day i.e. mix it up a bit. I do a weekly walk of 250m where Iwalk briskly enough to get the ticker up to 156 - 164 bpm when I stop at the top and take my pulse. I also do yoga and pilates once a week each for flexibility and core strength. I bike to work but it's only 5 minutes so is not enough. I need to get on the bike for a lot further i.e. shopping and maybe spin classes or bike rides (to the walk up the hill...). I try and get out most weekends and if I've done a flattish walk I make sure I do a hill tramp the following weekend. When you're older, you have to work a lot more at keeping fit. Those flights of stairs beckon but it's hard to fit it all in when you work full-time and cook from scratch every night. At least I don't waste time commuting! The cream on the cake is High Interval Intensity Training of course. Maybe I'll get back to that this winter.

The only gym routine that I found has a direct impact on tramping is pump class - great for getting thighs of steel which really helps with carrying heavy packs uphill. Somehow it also stopped me getting a sore knee which would always kick in on day 1 if I had a heavy pack.

What @madpom said. I used to walk all over hills, to and from work during the week for up to an hour each way whatever the weather, and tramping between that was relatively a breeze. These days I have two toddlers whilst working at home. Although I make an effort to get out as much as possible, it's changed the lifestyle a lot. I have to make the time to keep moving, and then be more cautious about what I commit to compared with what state I'm in. Something which maybe also needs mentioning is the mental side of it. You can be really physically fit but if you're not convinced you can actually do something, it can result in simply not doing it. (Not to be confused with thinking you can do something but having completely inadequate physical fitness to actually do it.) I can't say I've ever been motivated to get involved in a gym. There was a time when I had no idea that there was such a profession as a personal trainer, and it just seemed really weird when I learned about it. Even if it doesn't for everyone, for me it feels like it turns fitness into a chore when I hope it never needs to be. It wasn't until I lived in Melbourne for a bit (wide.... sprawling.... flat....), and encountered situations where it was really hard to create practical opportunities to arrange my life in a way that kept me feeling fit and healthy, that I came to appreciate the value for some people of just going for the fitness-in-a-box approach.