We Built a Hiking Bench.

August 22, 2026

Once the wind gets past 15 knots or so, the limiting factor in a boat like a Laser or ILCA usually isn't sail trim. It's how long a kid's legs and core can hold the hiked-out position before they give out. That's not something you can practice on a calm day, and you can't exactly schedule 15 knots. A hiking bench sidesteps that: it builds the exact muscle position the boat demands, on land, whenever there's twenty spare minutes.

We didn't design ours from scratch. Two posts from Improper Course got us most of the way there: Everything I Know About Hiking Benches and Make Your Own Hiking Bench, which has the build diagram credited to Doug Peckover (design) and Brad Moulton (diagram), used with permission from the Laser Training Center in Cabarete. Ours ended up similar but not identical, so consider this the variant, not a replacement for the original.

The most useful thing in that first post wasn't the lumber list. It was a story about getting the design wrong. The author's first bench let him hang in a relaxed, comfortable position for 30 to 40 minutes at a stretch, which felt like real progress until a coach pointed out that it didn't match how a sailor is locked into a modern boat. He rebuilt it flatter and more demanding to mimic that locked-in position properly, and his hold time collapsed to 30 seconds. He built it back up over months of short daily sessions toward a 10-minute goal. Worth knowing going in: doing this correctly is supposed to feel like starting over, not like doing more of what already felt fine.

What we built

Total cost: $70.78, against roughly $20 in the original 2013 post. Some of that's just years of lumber inflation, but we also used different hardware, more on that below.

We used two 2x6x8' boards. Lowe's cut each one into a 53" piece plus two roughly 21.5" pieces from what was left, so two boards gave us two 53" rails and four 21.5" cross pieces. The two rails plus one 21.5" piece form the seat frame, joined into a box. The source diagram calls for a 17" piece between the rails to close that box; we used a spare 21.5" piece on the outside instead, since we already had it from the cut list above and it saved us a cut. Functionally the same box.

Three more 21.5" boards go across the top of that frame, positioned about 15" out from the box, that's the platform your legs rest against in the hiked position. We mounted a leather belt, standing in for a real hiking strap, 9.5" from the seat.

Two swaps from the source design, both just what we had on hand rather than a considered upgrade: angle brackets instead of hinges, and that leather belt instead of a real Laser/ILCA strap. Both work. Neither is what we'd call optimized.

Here's the SketchUp model with the real dimensions marked, more precise than anything we could describe in words:

What we'd change

Ours came out heavier than it needs to be. We haven't nailed down exactly why, thinner stock, fewer pieces, and a hollow rather than solid box are all candidates, but if you're building your own, it's worth optimizing for weight from the start rather than discovering it afterward like we did. A bench that's a pain to drag out to the driveway gets used less often than one that isn't.

Training on it

We're following roughly the same routine the original post describes: hip flexor stretching before getting on, shoulder-touch reps to simulate punching through waves, and skipping sit-ups entirely since they load the lower back in a way this position doesn't need help with. Music helps more than you'd expect once you're past the first minute.

One caution worth repeating rather than skipping: the original author mentions a training partner who developed blood clots from the intensity of this position and had to stop sailing altogether. Check with a doctor before turning this into a serious daily habit, especially for a growing kid. A hiking bench is a good tool. It's still worth treating like real training, not a toy.