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Source: https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/6881
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

<p>When hiking for a long distance, my legs and lower body get used wonderfully. They become really strong, lean, and exactly what I want with my lower body in general.</p>

<p>But one burns a lot of calories when long-distance hiking, and if the upper body is not used enough, it will lose important muscle mass and introduce many disadvantages to everyday tasks and aspects of even safety and survival etc!</p>

<p>Further to this, I wonder how people in civilisations past - who walked almost everywhere they went - dealt with this too.</p>

<p>My first instinct is that as close an exercise type to what the lower body's getting - aerobic - is best for the upper body, for optimum balance. Thus, I assume swimming (especially freestyle with relaxed kicks letting the muscles above the hips do most of the work) is one of the best you can do.</p>

<p>But one is not always near bodies of water on a regular basis when hiking. And I'm assuming strength training (push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups) are a second best due to not being aerobic - but maybe that's all I'd have access to if I'm wanting to significantly balance out muscle strength distribution throughout my body while hiking.</p>

<p>So what things can you do in general to keep an upper / lower body muscle mass balance when extensively walking?</p>