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It doesn’t matter if you’re a lifting skeptic, a strength-training newbie, or a lifelong gym rat: When it comes to fitness, most of us carry around at least a few myths. While exercise and sports science has gotten much better over the last decade, many of us learned to lift from our parents, PE teachers, or high school track coaches—folks who didn’t always have the most up-to-date information. Since few of us spend our evenings reading up on the latest literature, these myths tend to get spread around like a bad case of athlete’s foot.

So, at long last, we’ve decided to put a few of the more common misconceptions to rest. We spoke with Rowan Smith, coach and founder of Summit Strength, an Australia-based training service that caters to hikers and mountaineers around the world. Here are his responses to eight of the most common strength training myths for hikers.

Myth: As a hiker, I don’t need to train arms or core because I won’t use them. 

Fact: “It is a mistake to skip out on arms or upper body,” Smith says. That’s because your upper body—particularly your shoulders and upper back—play a huge role in helping you carry a pack. If you’re a trekking pole user, working your arms in the gym will make poling both more comfortable and more efficient. Ditto for core. “The core is so important in supporting the lower back, helping you carry a pack, and helping you perform better on the trail,” Smith says. “The core is what links the whole body together.”

Myth: As a hiker, I don’t need to train my legs because I use them enough already.

Fact: Hikers get a lot of lower-body conditioning on the trail, Smith says, but walking only provides one, relatively specific type of stimulus to the muscles. To get stronger, you have to vary the stimulus. “Challenging the muscles through strength training is going to give you an advantage on the trail,” Smith says. “It’s going to make hikes easier, improve your speed, and reduce aches and pains as well as the likelihood of injury.” So, yes: You can get by with just hiking alone. But if you want to see improvement, it might be time to hit the gym.

Myth: Lifting heavy will make me huge. 

Fact: “This myth has been around for years and just does not seem to go away,” says Smith. Endurance athletes—including hikers—tend to worry about their strength-to-weight ratio, which makes them reluctant to do anything that could bulk them up.

“But when it comes to increasing muscle mass and weight, a large part of that has to do with what you’re putting in your mouth,” Smith says. “And you’re not going to put on a gram of extra bulk unless you’re also eating tons and tons of food.”

And if you did happen to put on a pound or two of muscle? “It’s still going to be a huge benefit,” Smith says. “Your body is going to be so much stronger and able to move that mass so much more efficiently.”

Myth: I’m an endurance athlete, so I should do high repetitions with low weight. 

Fact: “High-weight, low-repetition training is a source of untapped potential for 99 percent of hikers out there,” Smith says. Most hikers shy away from it, but the best way to get stronger and more powerful is to start lifting heavier. “It will improve your strength, power, and movement economy on the trail,” Smith says. Better movement economy means you use less energy with each step, allowing you to hike further, faster, and more effortlessly.

That said, high-rep exercises still have endurance benefits. To get the best of both worlds, Smith has his clients split their gym sessions 50/50. For the first half, they’ll do heavy weight, low-rep exercises, and then switch to low-weight, high-rep exercises for the second half. There are other ways to periodize your training, but this split is effective, easy to remember, and is more likely to keep you fit year-round rather than pushing you toward one or two training peaks each year.

Myth: HIIT workouts are an effective way to get stronger if you’re short on time. 

Fact: High-intensity interval training (HIIT) has gotten popular recently, especially with gyms like F45 and Orange Theory popping up across the country. But Smith says these kinds of workouts are only good for one thing: making you really tired, really fast. “They’re based on this idea of combining cardio with strength training,” he says. But when you do that, you dramatically reduce the benefits of both kinds of training. Because you’re so exhausted for much of the workout, you lack the focus and rested state you need to truly put your all into any aspect of it—which means you don’t actually get that much stronger over time. “HIIT workouts are better than nothing,” Smith says. “But it’s best not to combine strength and cardio if you can help it.”

Myth: The only way to train for hiking is by hiking. 

Fact: If you want to become a good hiker, you’ll need to do some cardio—ideally outdoors, and ideally combined with one to two strength-training sessions per week. That said, there are workarounds. Every now and again, Smith takes on a client with zero access to trails or hills on which to train. With a tailored strength training and gym cardio plan, he’s often able to get them in shape ahead of big hiking trips. “It’s not ideal,” he says. “But it’s possible.”

Myth: Too much heavy lifting will make my bad knees worse. 

Fact: If you’ve got dodgy knees, you may worry that doing deep squats or lunges in the gym is going to wear them down faster. But while big training loads can make your knees sore, Smith says that in most cases, the joints aren’t actually degrading. Instead, those aches just signal that you surpassed your knees’ current training threshold. The good news? You can increase that threshold over time via careful strengthening. Start with low weight and low reps and slowly work up to heavier lifts. If you’re consistent in strengthening the muscles supporting your knees, you’re much less likely to experience aches and pains the next time you tackle a steep hike.

Myth: Strength training is more about physical gains than mental gains. 

Fact: In reality, the two are deeply intertwined. Smith says most of his clients come to him not because they’re trying to set records, but because they’ve stopped enjoying hiking. “A lot of people struggle with their breathing on hills or get self-conscious,” he says. “Or they see hikes they want to do but they feel intimidated by them.” For these people, strength training is a way to break through plateaus and get strong enough that hiking feels easy. The point isn’t necessarily to get faster. It’s to boost on-trail confidence and joy.