How Hikers Can Train For Descents

In this article and podcast episode, I discuss how a hiker or backpacker can prepare their bodies to handle an often unmentioned part of the trail, descents. 

​Descents are tough. Shooting pain in the knees... crushed toes... slips, stumbles and falls... some serious amount of mental drain... and uncontrollable jelly legs...
 
And while any experienced hiker will know they are nothing to be laughed at, there doesn't seem to be much information about how to prepare your body to handle them. Until now.

Inside you will learn:

• Why descents and downhills are SO outrageously tough on the body and mind
• A simple trick in the gym which can help you say goodbye to jelly legs on descents forever
• My absolute favourite exercise to prepare the body to tackle downhills
• A critical point which many people overlook when training for elevation
• A few simple suggestions to help you survive this type of training
  
  

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How To Train For Downhill Hiking

Today, we are talking about how to prepare your body for descents.

In hiking, everyone loves talking about preparing for elevation gain. How can we get our legs and lungs ready to walk uphill all day? 

While that is important, for many (if not most!) hikers, the descents can be MUCH more of a challenge. But unfortunately, preparing for this challenge is often overlooked in their training.

So today, we are digging into this subject and going through a few specific things you can do to prepare your body for steep descents.

Why Descents Can Be So Tough For Hikers

Going downhill puts a huge amount of extra pressure on the body.

Your knees can take up to six times more force when walking downhill (compared to walking on flat ground).

Your feet, ankles and shins take a serious amount of extra pressure as well.

On top of this, instability (e.g., loose rocks), unevenness, or slipperiness (e.g., mud, wet rocks, or scree) can add an extra level of challenge.

And finally, there is the classic issue that catches so many hikers:

You get to the top of a climb, and you are pumped! You have gotten through the tough stuff, you feel accomplished, and you can finally relax. And you switch off mentally. But then you start going downhill, and everything feels ten times harder than you expected.

This can be a serious mental battle (and if we start getting negative mentally, this can affect our physical performance).

Put all of these together, and no wonder so many hikers struggle with descents!​

So with that being said, now I want to share a few areas a hiker can look at if they want to improve their downhill hiking:

Strength Training Tips For Downhill Hiking 

You probably know that I love strength training for hiking preparation. Every single hiker should be doing it in their week - it has so many benefits for hikers.

It does not have to be bodybuilding-style lifting (e.g., spending hours in the gym each week lifting heavy weights). But it does need to be something that challenges your muscles and prepares your body.

Three big pieces of advice about strength training to help with downhill hiking:

Strength Tip #1: Eccentric Training

When doing your strength exercises, you want to ensure you are putting some focus into the 'eccentric' portion of each repetition.

A quick overview of this:

• Muscles can contract in three different ways: concentric, eccentric and isometric.
  
  
• Concentric = the muscle contracts while it is shortening (e.g. this is what the biceps do in the upwards motion of a bicep curl)
  
  
• Eccentric = the muscle contracts while it is lengthening (e.g this is what the biceps do in the lowering portion of a bicep curl)
  
  
• Isometric = the muscle contracts while staying the same length (this is what happens to the quadriceps during a wall sit)

Most hikers, when doing strength training, will only really focus on the 'concentric' portion. This is the part of the movement which 'feels' like it is doing the work (e.g. when pushing upwards in a squat, step up or lunge).

And while training, this is valuable, we want to make sure we are not neglecting the eccentric portion as well.

Why?

Well, this is exactly what you need for your descents!

When we are going down hills or steps, our quads are taking a lot of eccentric stress to help slow us down, step after step.

So we want to train this.

How do you do that?

For every strength exercise you do, try to slow the lowering portion. Aim for about 4 seconds of 'lowering' each repetition.

So, if you were doing a squat, it might look like this:

• 4-second lowering
• brief pause at the bottom
• 1 second on the way up
  
  

And you do that every single rep.

This ensures that the eccentric portion of the movement gets enough challenge and, over time, it can make a dramatic difference to your comfort and performance on descents.

Strength Tip #2: Do Some Forward Lunges

Forward lunges are a great exercise option for preparing the legs for descents.

When you step forward into a lunge, your quadriceps have to work in a very specific way to decelerate your body and stabilise. This is exactly what happens on decents (making forward lunges very valuable).

You can start these with bodyweight, and progress over time by adding weight.

Once you have done that for a while, then you can progress by using a 'deficit'.​

This involves starting the lunge standing on a step or plate (just 1-2 inches high) and lunging off that. This increases the range of motion of the exercise and changes the angle of movement slightly (which mimics stepping down).

​Note: if you get pain in the knees when doing forward lunges (which many people struggle with), you want to be careful here. In this situation, I would recommend swapping the lunge with a step down (which can also be a fantastic exercise for descents).

​Strength Tip #3: Train Both Strength And Endurance

Strength is developed by doing exercises with a high amount of challenge/resistance and a low number of reps at a time.

Endurance is developed by doing endurance with a low/moderate amount of challenge and a high number of reps at a time.

Most hikers tend to only really do endurance work. Aiming for lots of repetitions and lots of muscle burn. Developing muscular endurance is definitely beneficial for hikers and should be included in any strength training program.

But if this is all you are doing, you are missing out.

More challenging strength work is just as beneficial for hikers (in slightly different ways). And this can often be the missing 'key' to improving your descents, 

This doesn't mean you have to be training like a power lifter, and doing crazy heavy weights and pushing yourself to the absolute limit...

But, you should aim to build up to some exercises that are a strenuous challenge (and where you are doing anywhere from 5-8 reps at a time before needing a break).​

If you want to reduce jelly legs and feel stable and in control on descents, getting a mix of both strength and endurance is a must. 
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Need some help getting started with strength training for hiking? Check out our free Strength Training For Hikers Mini- Course 

Conditioning Training For Downhill Hiking

Conditioning training involves building up your aerobic fitness (which is the type of fitness that is most important for hikers).

When it comes to descents, a few pieces of advice for your conditioning:

1) Try To Get Some Hiking In

If it is possible, try your best to get some actual hiking into your week. Getting out on the trails with natural elevation gain and loss.

While you can absolutely see some great fitness improvements by walking on flat terrain, or on an inclined treadmill or stairmaster, all of these are very limited to giving the body exposure to actual downhill.

So if you have the opportunity and access, please make sure you get out on the trail!

*If you want some direction on how to plan these training hikes out, check out this article: How To Plan Your Training Hikes 

2) Do Some Real Hills Or Stairs

Hill and stair climbing are amazing methods of training for hikers. If you are doing these, I strongly recommend trying to do them outside on a real hill or a real set of stairs (as opposed to the treadmill or stairmaster).

Why?

Because doing real hills or stairs will train both the upwards portion AND the down. Which is exactly what you need.

If where you live is quite flat (and you don't have access to any hills), here are a few options which hikers commonly use for stair training:

• Sports stadium stairs
• Apartment block stairs
• Stairs in a shopping mall
• Office block stairs

Or, if none of this is accessible, a box step workout is the next best thing.

3) Warm Up Before Hikes And Elevation Training

Before doing any hiking or stair/hill/step sessions, spending 5 minutes warming up your ankles and hips can go a long way.

This can allow your legs to move smoothly on the ascents and descents and often reduce the likelihood of aches and pains in the joints (especially the knees). These are common when doing descents.

Two simple exercises for this include:

• Knee to wall stretch (ankles)
• Modified world's greatest stretch (hips) 

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Managing Muscle Soreness When Training For Descents

​One important note: if you apply these ideas to your training, you may initially experience a bit of muscle soreness.

Eccentric training creates muscle damage (in a good way) but will cause more muscle soreness.

Forward or deficit lunges and real elevation change can put a lot of pressure through the quads, calves and feet (which is the point!). But when we first experience it, these muscles can pull up sore.

So if you experience this, listen to your body and look after yourself.

A few tips if you feel sore:

• Take a week of lighter training (if really sore) or change the sessions that week to something with less impact
  
  
• Do some foam rolling and/or stretching
  
  
• Wear some sports compression tights
  
  
• Use a magnesium spray (or bath)
  
  
• Do some pool walking (or any type of light movement)
  
  

And one of these things can be helpful for muscle soreness. So use them as needed.

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If your upcoming hiking has lots of elevation gain or loss, you want to prepare your body for this unique challenge.

Put these tips into action. And you might be amazed at what a difference they make to your descents!

And, if you were a hiker who struggled with downhill hiking and wanted some help improving it, you can check out the online Summit Program here:

https://www.summitstrength.com.au/online.html

Yours in trekking​

Rowan