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The 2,140-acre Monte Sano State Park in Huntsville has long enchanted hikers, campers, and cyclists with its vibrant fall foliage, scenic trails, and resplendent views. Yet a relaxing day at the park can quickly turn sour. A 24-year-old hiker experienced this firsthand in February 2017, when she went missing after hitting the trails at Monte Sano for an afternoon trek. As the sun set and temperatures neared freezing and she still hadn’t returned, her worried boyfriend called the police. Fortunately, local agencies found the missing hiker the following morning; she had a few scrapes and cuts but was otherwise unharmed, according to local media reports. The frightening story had a happy ending, but it underscored how quickly things can go wrong, even in popular parks and on well-trafficked trails. For that reason, it’s important that hikers carry what are known as the Ten Essentials whenever they head outdoors. The Ten Essentials are 10 items that every hiker should bring on every outing, in the event of emergency. The Ten Essentials first appeared in the 1974 book Mountaineering: The Freedom of the Hills and were updated in 2003 to account for technological advances and specific needs. Here, an overview on what…

Improve your performance and prevent injury by focusing on these flexibility highways. In fitness, muscles tend to get all the glory. Not surprising, considering we’re visual creatures, and besides, a well-defined hamstring tie-in looks darn good. But if you want to understand how to move more efficiently, prevent injuries and get stronger, you need to look beyond your glutes — and triceps and biceps and quads — and consider the admittedly less sexy, but equally important counterpart, the fascia. Fascia 411 Fascia is often characterized as the connective tissue that encapsulates your muscles, but its actual function is far more complex.  “Fascia helps mitigate forces on certain parts of the body so there isn’t overuse of muscle tissue in one region and the degradation of tissue in another,” explains Chuck Wolf, MS, FAFS, director of Human Motion Associates in Orlando, Florida. In other words, fascia serves to distribute force throughout the body by reducing it in one area and absorbing it in another, thereby enhancing mobility and preventing injury. After studying the way fascial tissues worked together as the body moved in different planes of motion, Wolf devised the concept of the “flexibility highways.”  Each of these six highways is made…

Even if you’ve never run before, follow this straightforward plan for beginners to run 5K without stopping in eight weeks. Running five kilometres without stopping is a great goal to have. It’s a target that only requires a pair of trainers, can be done anywhere and is something that almost anyone can achieve in a couple of months. Along the way you’ll also enjoy clear signs of how much you are improving your fitness, as you find that you’re able to run further every week. It’s true that the first couple of times you run are probably not going to be that enjoyable because your body’s not used to it. But the good news is that your body will adapt in next to no time. This plan builds up the amount of running you do very slowly so your body can acclimatise gradually and you don’t have to worry that your legs will be too stiff to walk the next day. If you keep at it for a couple of months it is absolutely certain – and this is a 100%, take-it-to-the-bank guarantee – that you will start to enjoy running. You might even become addicted. There are lots of…