Hiking: Cross-Exercise for Sportsmen for Optimal Sense of Accomplishment - Essay Sample

Introduction

Hiking, also called trekking, involves taking long walks in natural destinations at a chosen pace, elevation, and period. Hiking may include climbing up and down a mountain or walking along a riverbank. It is usually advisable to take more challenging hikes to earn more benefits and optimize the sense of accomplishment. Despite being a fun activity, hiking is also an essential cross-exercise for sportsmen, such as cyclists, to strengthen their muscles before their preparation. This paper discusses the physical, personal, and social benefits of hiking.

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As a hobby, hiking brings several health, social, and fulfillment benefits to a person. It helps an individual to make up for the stress and burnout of daily life through activities such as sub-basking, fresh air breeze, and experiencing natural features like rivers and mountainsides. Because it soothes the mind, is cost-effective, serves as exercise, and helps to boost social connections, hiking is one of the ultimate feelings of relaxation. As one enjoys new attractive views, unplugs, and slows down, they can think through solutions to daily life problems.

Hiking may be done alongside other fun activities such as skiing, canoeing, or mountain climbing to make it fancier. The combined factors enable one to engage in more physical activity, which keeps them active and improves their cardiorespiratory health, which makes them less vulnerable to heart disease and stroke and maintains their blood pressure (Steffen & Stiehl, 2010). The walking during hiking also form a significant part of the exercising benefits and activates creative juices in a person's CNS to make them think more creatively (Williams, 2007). The interaction with nature can boost hikers' brainpower and better their problem-solving abilities. Another significant contribution is that hiking helps the body to deal with oxidative stress better, thus enabling cancer patients to cope with the disease better.

The activities have a positive impact on your mental well-being. It is because it happens in very natural setups and involves physical activity. These activities work together to combat stress, depression, and anxiety, thus making the mind free of pressure and diseases. Research has shown that persistent hiking increases an older person's memory span and also minimizing their chances of catching Alzheimer's disease (Klein, 2008).

By lifting someone's mood, hiking reduces one's feeling of worthlessness, raises their self-esteem, and makes them recover faster from conditions like depression, hopelessness, and suicidal thinking. Thus, hiking connects a person to nature and makes them reconnect effectively with themselves. Research by CDC shows that if a person walks for one hour for five days a week, their chances of stroke and heart disease halves (Klein, 2008). Walking produces aerobic action that makes the heart stronger and improves the proper cholesterol levels while lowering harmful cholesterol levels.

Hiking makes a person see beauty form many angles, and this expands their thinking and understanding. From waterfalls, scary caves to wildlife and vegetation, hiking allows a person to experience charm uniquely. Knowing that nature has a lot to offer, hikers make better decisions when it comes to life choices (Steffen & Stiehl, 2010). They also grow meticulousness and attention to detail through their hiking explorations. Every new hiking destination will offer a different set of experiences, and this widens the hiker's scope of thinking. Rumination, the habit of overconcentrating on personal negative esteems, is affecting many people in the harsh modern world (Williams, 2007). Hiking engages the brain in important functions and limits the frequency at which a person will overthink their low moments. Compared to running on a treadmill, hiking gives a special interaction with nature that makes most worries to fade away. In fresh air, away from electronic devices, and while enjoying the plentiful vitamin D from the sun, it is easier for a person to settle all internal issues smoothly.

Exercise during hiking also helps the body to regulate blood sugar levels and to balance blood pressure by effectively mobilizing all body resources. It also boosts bone density because the activity is weight-bearing, thus making a person generally stronger and more muscular in the arm-strings, quadriceps, and glutes (Klein, 2008). Hiking ultimately helps a person to manage their body balance and to control weight, thus generally possess good health. Obesity, being a problem in the modern society, hiking proves to be one of the ways to tame it. The prime gain for this is that a person hikes at will, and at a time they choose by themselves, unlike regular gyms, which have a schedule, trainers, and instructions to follow.

Hiking, as explained before, reduces the occurrence of most diseases in a person. What is more, is that it can help the body to recover quickly from thorough treatment regimes for diseases like cancer. It motivates the hormones that fight oxidative stress and releases a redeeming cascade of defense mechanisms in the body. It thus helps the patient to ultimately fight off the disease and prevent recurrence (Steffen & Stiehl, 2010). Since hiking also boosts a person's mood, the healing process fastens since the improved hope keeps the patient fighting.

Since human beings are social creatures, hiking helps in strengthening social ties. Everyone, including introverts, need a close group of friends with whom they can share, feel loved, happy, and valued (Klein, 2008). Trekking helps to refresh the relationships and rejuvenate the connection between friends, family, and colleagues. The experiences are exceptional because they are fed while away from the usual activities and distractions of ordinary life. The best way to revitalize the feeling is by taking the most strenuous climbs where each other's support and motivation will keep the team moving.

Hiking applies to people of all ages, faiths, and backgrounds. In a world that is decorated with stress, diseases, pressure, and distractions, taking some time away from the action is fulfilling for everyone.

References

Klein, A. G. (2008). Hiking. Edina, Minn: ABDO Pub. Co.

Steffen, J., & Stiehl, J. (2010). Teaching lifetime outdoor pursuits. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.

Williams, J. A. (2007). Turning to nature in Germany: Hiking, nudism, and conservation, 1900-1940. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.