Preventing Hip Discomfort While Hiking

​In this video we explore some exercises and training strategies a hiker can use to prevent and reduce hip discomfort while hiking.

Building Strong Hips For Hiking

Inside we cover:
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• A very common underlying reason why SO many hikers struggle with hip discomfort
• A range of facts that can aggravate the hips on the trail
• Five great exercises to help build strength in the hips and legs for hiking 
• How to build 'hiking-specific' endurance in the hips
• The single most important thing a hiker needs to remember about their hiking to reduce the risk of hip pain 

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Exercises Mentioned In The Video: 

• Hip flexor march
• Mini-band walks
• Single leg glute bridge
• Step down
• Single leg deadlift
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How To Prevent Hip Pain While Hiking

Video Transcript:

[0:00] All right, hello, hello, ladies and gentlemen. And in today's video, we are talking all about reducing hip discomfort during hiking,

[0:09] which is an incredibly common issue that hikers face all around the world. And we're going to be talking through a few ideas that you can use with your training to help prevent this, reduce this, and help the hips feel a bit more comfortable on the trail. Now, this particular video was inspired by a question I got sent through in our community group. It basically asked, I just finished a 42km hike over 3 days with a 16km 900m ascent. My hips have been an issue in some way for over a decade since having my last child. When I walk with weight, my hips feel sore with a deep ache in what feels like the ball and socket joint area. Also, the front of the thighs ache and feel strained in attachments between the leg and the hip. On the most recent hike, it took quite a few hours of walking before fatigue and discomfort set in. It definitely happens on steeper terrain.

[0:56] Now, this is a really, really, really common issue for so many hikers. There's conversations I have with loads of people around the world. And realistically, any time that I hear that someone's hips, or someone's muscles or joints in general, are getting sore after multiple hours of hiking. So it's not all the time. It's not immediately. But it typically ends up being multiple hours of hiking. It usually says to us that the muscles are underprepared in some way. Either the muscles themselves or the muscles supporting the joints are underprepared. Because typically, the general way things work is if a muscle is doing a bunch of work on the trail and it gets to a point where it's just done a little bit more than it is comfortable, it kind of goes through a series of stages. Number one, fatigue. The muscle will get tired. You will notice that muscle's heavy, that's getting a little bit tired or whatever it may be. If you keep on going, that can lead to a bit of discomfort. So it's not just tired anymore, but you're like, oh, this is getting a little bit niggly or whatever it may be. If we keep on going, that can sometimes lead to pain, and the pain can go from this really, really, tiny thing and get a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And if we go all the way to the end of the scale, this can, if we keep on pushing

[2:05] through this, this can lead into injury or overuse injury. And this will often happen to people when they're doing multi-day hikes or through hikes where they've just got this pain and this discomfort and they just keep on pushing through, pushing through, pushing through, ends up being a bit of a longer term thing.

[2:19] And when it comes to any type of pain or injury, we do first point a call, always want to chat with a physio or physical therapist, get it diagnosed, get them to poke around, get them to have a look. But beyond that, there's definitely a lot of other things. If we're just talking about a little bit of discomfort or whatever may be, there's definitely a lot of other things we can look into, which is very, very basic. Because hiking itself, talking about the hips in this context, it does have a lot of challenges on the hips. From the outside, a lot of people might be like, hey, hiking, it's just walking. It's nothing quite as difficult as running or jumping or whatever it may be, but hiking does have a lot of challenges on the hips. First and foremost, long distances. You know, we are doing multiple hours of movement on the trail. This can get the hips quite sore and quite tired. You might be right for one hour or two hour or three hour, but after a certain amount of time, the hips get tired. Number two, speed. Sometimes if we are pushing to a pace, which is a little bit quicker than our normal speed, the hips can take a lot of that brunt and they can get tired. They can get uncomfortable. Very, very common thing.

[3:23] Pack weight. If we are even carrying one or two kilos on the back, it does add a significant amount of extra challenge to our hips. And if we're looking at a full day pack or a full overnight pack or whatever it may be, that is a significant amount of challenge on the hips. And on top of that elevation, just going up step after step after step, when we've got steeper the hips are doing a lot.

[3:47] And all of these factors do end up being a big challenge for the hips over over a course of a hike. So if we're in this situation where the hips are getting uncomfortable, then we really do need to think about, okay, in the future, what can I do to help better prepare the body for these types of things? So when I step out onto my hike, the hips can stay fresher, the hips can stay more comfortable. It doesn't get to that point of fatigue or discomfort or whatever it may be, but we can be ready for these distances. We can be ready for the speeds.

[4:14] We can be ready for the pack weight. We can be ready for the elevation. And there's a bunch of different ways you can go about this. But what I'm going to do is talk you through four simple areas, direct strengthening, general strengthening, specific endurance, and hiking planning. And if you put these four things together in your preparations, in your training, they will go a long, long, long way to help them support the hips. And on top of that, they will have many, many, many extra benefits just for your hiking in general.

[4:39] So first of all, direct strengthening. What is that? Essentially, direct strengthening is looking at these specific areas in the hips, the muscles there and saying, look, we are going to do some exercises which are going directly strengthen that, directly target that and help build up your strength and build up your capabilities so we can resist fatigue on the trail. Now, in this particular situation, we were talking about the ball and socket joint area. Nine times out of 10, when I hear the ball and socket area, in the hips, we may be thinking about the glute medius, which is a small muscle in the glute, which is kind of around that area.

[5:15] On top of that, the front of the thighs, if we're thinking about the attachment between the leg and the hip, that tends to be the hip flexors. They're kind of two different muscles, which we can look at direct strengthening. So how do we strengthen these areas? Well, very, very simple. On the hip flexors, we could do something like a hip flexor march, where we basically get like a band and wrap it around our feet. And we're literally doing something like this, where we're just holding onto something and just bringing the knee up and down. As you can see, this movement coming up and down, up and down, we're trying to get that front of the hip working. we're trying to load that up and get that relatively strong. And we can filter this exercise in, into our workouts. If we're doing strength workouts, we can do this as part of a warmup or in our rest periods. If we're not doing strength workouts, which I strongly recommend people do, you can do this in other parts of your week. But this is a really simple way where you can directly target that area and it can build up a bit of strength. Now on the glute medius that we're talking about before, you know, you may do something like a mini band walk where you've got band and you're just doing little, little side steps. This one, it kind of is deceptively, it looks deceptively easy, but you will notice as you're going side to side to side that that side of the hip can work pretty well. Now, neither of these exercises would you consider they are traditional strength exercise. They're not putting a massive amount of load. We're not loading this up like we've got a super heavy weights or super heavy barbell, but even a small amount of this can often go a long way. So when we're looking at those two areas, direct strengthening, Really, really useful.

[6:41] Now, on top of that, we're never going to want to do just little bits and pieces.

[6:44] We're never going to want to do these tiny little exercises and just call it that. The body works as a whole when we're hiking. The legs work as a whole when we're hiking. And as much as these little things can directly target those little areas, when we're looking at any type of strengthening, we want to be looking at general strength as well. Essentially, strengthening up the legs as a whole to help build up the legs, build up those other areas in certain ways. Now, a few simple general strength exercises, which can be really useful here. Number one, doing some single-legged glute bridges. This particular exercise, I'm sure a lot of people have seen before, lying on the back, one foot in the air, just pushing the hips up and down. This is a really, really good one for working the glute maximus, so the larger part of the glutes, a little bit of the hamstrings as well. If you build these areas up, it can take a lot of pressure and make your hikes much, much easier as well. If this is a little bit too difficult for you, you can do this with two legs at a time as opposed to one leg.

[7:35] Another option is doing a step-down. If you've followed my stuff for a while, you know I love step-downs. Step-downs, simple exercise to help work the quadriceps, so the front of the thighs. Also, we'll work the glutes, both the glute maximus, also the glute medius as well, a little bit as well. So, this is a really simple option where you're basically standing on a step, you're slowly lowering down, coming up, very, very simple. For this, you can either do a body weight, you can load it up in a pack or dumbbells or whatever it may be, can really, really go a long way. And then another great exercise is like a single-legged deadlift. So, this one's working the hamstrings, the glutes as well, both the glute maximus and the glute medius. So again, it's another bang for your buck exercise where we're kind of covering quite a few bases and working pretty well. Now, if we're looking at that sort of thing, we've got hip flexors, glute medius, two isolation exercises. We've got a glute and hamstring exercise, a quad and glute exercise, a glute and hamstring exercise. Put that all together, five exercises. It's not so much as a full-blown strength program, but if you add that in, it probably will make a bit of a difference. Now for all of those exercises i'll leave links to those in the description below so if you want to check that out that um you can go right ahead.

[8:38] So that's the strengthening side of things. That can go a long way in itself.

[8:43] However, we don't want to leave it there because even if we get really, really strong in these situations, even if we spend months and months and months building up these areas and building up these exercises and loading it up, you will see some good results.

[8:56] But there is a little bit of a difference between this type of strengthening and what we're actually exposed to on the trail. Because when we're on the trail, as we sort of said before, we're not just doing a minute or two of walking. We're not just climbing a hill just very, very briefly, but we maybe aren't walking for hours and hours and hours. We may be carrying lots and lots of pack weight. We may be taking step after step after step up a hill and end up doing hundreds and hundreds of step ups. So we want to make sure we are respecting that in our training and doing something where we can actually teach the body to build up resilience in these areas as well, to build up endurance so we can better withstand these things. So this comes down to what I call hiking specific conditioning, essentially doing simple cardio sessions in your week which you can do around the local neighborhood or in the gym or at home or whatever may be where we can kind of almost replicate what we're doing on the trail in a way that's controllable a way that's simple so an example of this very very simple it may be doing some load of pack walking literally putting a pack on your back walking around the local area for 30 minutes 40 minutes 60 minutes whatever may be and week by week add a little bit extra weight add a little bit extra weight add a little bit extra weight very very simple, but this can go a long way just for exposing the hips and the rest of the body to this type of load, getting it used to doing 40 minutes, 50 minutes, 60 minutes of step after step after step. Sounds simple, but very, very effective.

[10:14] Similar thing for elevation. So we sort of said before, like in this particular situation, steeper terrain is a bit of a trigger. So we can want to think about how can we practice that in our training. Stair and hill sessions, very, very simple. Find a local set of stairs or a local hill, go up and down, up and down, up and down for an extended period of time. You get used to that stepping, stepping, stepping, get those hips resilient in that situation, build that endurance. And phase by phase or week by week, we can add a bit of extra time. We could do a bit of extra steepness or even add a little bit extra load and put on a pack that can go a long way or if you don't have access to that doing something like a step session where basically you've just got a box and you're literally just stepping up and down up and down up and down for 10 minutes 20 minutes 30 minutes or whatever it may be do this in your boots it will add a little bit extra weight to your feet and literally just that stepping motion can be really really really effective the building endurance in those hip flexors it can really really go a long way so we want to pair that general strengthening and that direct strengthening where we're doing kind of smaller doses of heavier resistance with this specific endurance stuff where we can actually specifically go into what the body's exposed to.

[11:23] And then finally, the last thing, and definitely not the least thing, is we want to think about hiking planning in the sense that one of, well, probably the biggest risk factor for any type of pain when it comes down to hiking is essentially if we do do a big jump up in challenge. In the sense, if we're doing a certain amount of hiking, a certain amount of hiking, a certain amount of hiking, then all of a sudden we do a huge amount of extra distance. That's a risk factor for pain creeping up. Or if we do a big jump up in pack weight, or if we do a big jump up in elevation, or whatever it may be. And purely going from a big jump up from what we're used to, this is a really simple thing where the body just gets uncomfortable.

[11:59] So one of the best things you can do if you experience some type of pain on the trail is just put together a bit of a rough plan for your hiking. If you're building up for a particular end date, if you have a specific hike, have you put together a plan which bit by bit by bit will build up how long you're hiking, build up how much pack weight you're doing. If you don't, that is the single best thing you can do to reduce the risk of this. If you don't have a specific end date and you're literally just trying to build up and just regularly go out hiking, just make sure you're not just all over the shop with your different hikes. Make sure that you're kind of relatively consistent. And if you're planning on doing a big, super long hike, that at least you have a couple of lead up hikes to ease yourself up to it. Now, I could talk for hours and hours and hours on this. If anyone was interested in learning how to put together a hiking training plan and figuring this out for yourself, I'll leave a link in the notes below, the description below with a tutorial I've done on this, which talks through this process in detail. But ultimately, if you are struggling with some type of hit discomfort on the trail, we need to respect that hiking can be pretty challenging on this area, and we need to think about our training.

[13:05] In my personal experience, if we put these things together, some direct strengthening, some general strengthening, some specific endurance and your planning, nine times out of 10, you can make a dramatic difference to this type of thing. If it is a little bit more serious, if it is a bit more on the pain side of things than just discomfort, go and chat with a physio and go and chat with a physical therapist, get their point of view. But regardless, even with all of this stuff, it's going to have so many extra

[13:27] benefits for your hiking outside of that anyway. So if anyone does have any questions around this, please let me know. But hopefully that makes sense. hopefully it gives a bit of insight and hopefully that gives a bit of direction for hikers who may be struggling with a bit of hip discomfort to make some steps with their training and help things feel a bit more comfortable. So with that being said, I just want to say to anyone, thank you, anyone who is watching. Thank you for watching. Hope you've enjoyed it. Have any questions, please let me know and we'll talk to you for the next video further down the line.

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