Training For Descents While Hiking

Steep descents and downhills can be one of the worst parts of hiking.

Crushed toes, uncontrollable jelly legs, and, all too often, that terrible shooting pain in the knees... descents can really take their toll!

But saying this, just like many other problems on the trail, the right training and physical preparation can make a significant difference here.

And in today's article and video, we dive into the topic of training for descents while hiking in detail:

How To Train For Downhill Hiking

Today, we are exploring how a hiker can train for steep descents and downhills.

We're going to be getting into quite a bit of detail around what a hiker can do to feel much more confident and comfortable on these sections of the trail.

When it comes down to it, descents are just not much fun for a lot of people.

Many hikers experience things like:

• Painful knees (probably the most common issue I hear)
• Jelly legs (when the legs get wobbly going downhill)
• Crushed toes
• And a bunch of other things
  
  

Now, for some hikers who live near lots of elevation and mountains, this may not be a huge issue.

For the lucky ones, if you can get out on hikes with lots of hills regularly and slowly build things up over time, descents naturally improve.

But for many people, it is not this simple.

A lot of hikers don't have easy access to elevation...

A lot of hikers struggle on descents, no matter how much hiking they do...

And for many people, simply hoping it gets better is not enough.

As much as people online love to say "just hike more and it'll fix itself," sometimes it's a little more complicated than that.

So the plan today is to dive into this subject in detail and give you some simple ideas and training strategies that can actually make a difference.​

We will cover:

• Strength training
• Balance and stability training
• Cardio and downhill exposure 

Why Descents Are So Tough For Hikers ​

Before we talk solutions, let's talk about why descents are so hard in the first place.

1) Downhill Forces

First, every single step downhill puts a hugely disproportionate amount of force through the joints.

Compared to flat ground, downhill steps place much more force through the feet, ankles, knees and hips.

On top of this, your muscles are doing A LOT of work to keep you stable, steady and not let your legs' slide out' from under you. Your calves, quads, hamstrings, glutes, and adductors are all working overtime.

2) Fatigue

It is very common for many hikers to reach a descent already tired after a big climb.

You spend all this energy getting to the top, and instead of resting and recovering, you go straight into a descent.

This alone can make things much harder (as you are huffing and puffing, the legs feel heavy, and you are just generally tired).

3) Mental Stress

Many hikers worry about slipping, falling, or being unstable.

Maybe they've had a bad experience in the past, or something they just struggle with mentally.

This mental load not only adds a lot of stress and worry, but it can also affect us physically. And can add to our fatigue levels and make every step and challenge physically 'feel' much harder.

4) Pack Weight

Whether you are carrying a day pack, a full pack or anything in between, extra weight in your pack adds a lot of extra challenge on decents.

For every extra kilo you carry in your pack, it puts a disproportionate amount of extra stress through your joints on descents.

On top of that, it is very common for pack weight to affect our balance and stability on descents (especially since packs are rarely perfectly fit or balanced).

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Put all of this together, and it is no surprise descents can be a serious challenge.  

Training For Downhill Hiking ​

Strength Training

Strength training can be incredibly beneficial for improving descents while hiking.

It helps for several reasons:
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• It builds the muscles that support the joints on downhills
• It improves stability and balance
• It reduces fatigue, so you reach descents feeling fresher

On top of this, proper structured strength training is one of the best things a hiker can do to prevent knee pain (which many hikers struggle with on downhill sections).

Beyond helping your descents, strength training has numerous benefits in many other contexts for hikers, and it is something every hiker should be including in their training.

The most important muscles to strengthen to help with downhill hiking include the:
​

• Quadriceps (front of the thighs)
• Hamstrings (back of the thighs)
• GLutes (bum)
• Calves
  
  

On top of that, strengthening the core and upper body will have benefits as well (so you might as well train the whole body!).

Now, beyond the idea of "just strengthen the muscles," there is one very specific concept that matters a lot for descents.

Eccentric muscle strength.

A quick science lesson:

Muscles can contract in different ways:

1. A concentric contraction = when a muscle contracts while shortening (e.g. when you 'lift' the weight in a bicep curl and your bicep contracts)
2. An eccentric contraction = when a muscle contracts while lengthening (e.g., when you are lowering the weight in a bicep curl)
3. An isometric contraction = when a muscle contracts while staying the same length (e.g., what your biceps do if you hold a weight in the halfway position of a curl)
   
   

Most people, when performing strength training, focus on the concentric portion of a repetition.

This is where you 'feel' like you are doing most of the work, and it absolutely is very important for strength development.

But we also get a lot of strengthening benefits from the eccentric portion of a repetition as well (even if it doesn't 'feel' quite as beneficial).

In the hiking context, when we are on a steep descent, our legs are doing massive amounts of eccentric work every step downwards.

Your quadriceps are eccentrically contracting every time you lower yourself off a rock, step or steep section.

Your hamstrings are eccentrically contracting every time your foot lands, and it does a mini 'slide' on the ground (very common when descending on rocks, scree, mud or anything not entirely stable).

This aspect of strength is incredibly important for descents, but many people undertrain this.

How does that happen?

When performing strength training, many people fall into the trap of 'fast' repetitions.

Going up, down, up, down quite quickly.

This can get a good burn, and it will improve strength, but it often neglects the eccentric side of things.

So what's the solution?

Well, a very simple fix to this is to slow down the 'lowering' portion of your exercises.

Aim for 3-5 seconds on the 'lowering phase' of each repetition (and about 1 second on the 'lifting' phase).

For example, if you were doing squats:

• Start standing upright
• Take four seconds as you lower to the bottom position
• Push up to the top in one second
• Repeat this tempo for every repetition
  
  

This one small change can make a dramatic difference for descents. ​

To dive into some more 'hiking-specific' examples of this, here are a couple of my favourite strength training exercises for downhill hiking:

1) Eccentric Box Pistol Squat

This is a great exercise to develop eccentric strength and control in the quadriceps and can be very specific to downhill hiking.

​This is how you do it:

• Stand on one leg in front of a box, bench or chair
• Pushing the bum backwards, slowly lower yourself for 5-6 seconds
• At the bottom position, put both legs on the floor and stand back up
• Go back to one leg and repeat

If this is too easy, you can use a lower box, go up and down with one leg or add some weight with a dumbbell or backpack.

If this is too hard, use a higher box or hold two trekking poles for assistance.

2) Hamstring Curls​

This is a great exercise to develop strength and control in the hamstrings.

You can do these with:

• Exercise sliders
• A towel on a hardwood floor
• Magazines on carpet
• A Swiss ball
• A hamstring curl machine (if in a gym)
  
  

​This is how you do it:

• Place heels on a slider/towel/magazine/swissball
• Push hips up to a glute bridge position
• Squeeze abs and glutes on tight -
• Slowly extend legs as far as you comfortably can (you don't have to go as far as the video demonstration)
• Slight pause at endpoint
• Pull heels into the start position

The key is slowing the extension phase for three to five seconds (and really challenging that eccentric control).

This helps control the sliding and stabilising that happens constantly on descents, especially on uneven or slippery terrain.

If this is too easy, you can increase the time on the eccentric component or do one leg at a time.

If this is too difficult, you can just do the eccentric component (so you extend the legs and when you hit your end point, just put the hips on the floor, shuffle your feet back to the starting position and go again).

If this is still too much, you can do a single leg deadlift instead (and really concentrate on a 4-5 second lower for each rep. 

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Going into the ins and outs of strength training is a bit beyond this article, but if you want some direction on this, I strongly recommend you look at our free 'strength training for hiking' mini-course.

Inside this course, you will learn:
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• The benefits of strength training for hiking (beyond just descents)
• Key principles of effective strength training
• How to create your own hiking-specific workouts
  
  

At the end of the course, you will have the information you need to create your own specific and effective strength workouts for hiking.

It is completely free - if you wanted to sign up you can check it out here: 

Free Strength Training For Hiking Mini-Course 

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Balance Training For Downhill Hiking

Balance and stability are extremely important on descents.

One specific type of balance training that works very well for downhills is closed-eye balance.

When hiking downhill, we're not always staring at our feet.

We look up at our surroundings. We talk with our friends. We get distracted.

And this is often when missteps happen.

Closed eye balance teaches the body to stabilise without relying on vision.

(This isn't exactly the same thing as what is happening on the trail, but it can be very beneficial to train and develop regardless.)

The simplest place to start with this is just doing a single-leg balance:

• Stand on one leg
• Close your eyes
• Hold as long as you can
  
  

Most people struggle at first, and only scoring 5-20 seconds is pretty normal. But practice it and slowly build it up.

Once you can hold 30 seconds comfortably, make it a bit harder.

Simple progressions you can work through include:

• Standing on a pillow, cushion, or folded-up exercise mat
• Circling an object around your waist (like a 'round the world')
• Doing some 'toe touches'
  
  

*Do each option until you can do 30 seconds comfortably (with your eyes closed), then move on to the next one.

Tips for balance training:

Balance improves slowly (closed eye balance even more so), so consistency is key. I like to aim for lots of small 'doses' of this in the week, to get as much exposure as possible.

So I will ask my hikers to fit this in:
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• During warm-ups before training
• During rest periods in strength training
• While waiting for the kettle to boil
• While brushing their teeth​
  ​
  

And really any other 'dead time' they have in their day.

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Cardio Training For Downhill Hiking

The more aerobically fit you are, the less fatigue you'll accumulate on hikes.

Less fatigue means easier descents.

This is pretty basic, but it underscores the importance of following a basic structure and progressive training program.

Beyond just improving aerobic fitness, there is some specific cardio advice that can make a major difference for descents.

Many hikers train cardio, but focus entirely on uphill work.

They might love using the stair master or incline treadmill, or do lots of box step-ups.

These types of training can be great - they will improve your fitness and be very useful for aiding ascents - but they do miss out on training the muscles for downhill.

If descents are a struggle, we want to expose the body to them in training.

So the muscles, joints, and connective tissues can get used to these specific stresses. So you can practice balancing and stabilising in this specific situation. And you can mentally expose yourself to this situation.

The best option for this is to do some stair or hill training on REAL stairs or hills.

If you can find a nice hill or set of stairs locally to use, great!

If where you live is flat as a pancake, you might have to get a bit creative (some good options include finding stairs in a sports stadium, a shopping mall, an apartment block or in an office building).

Just use whatever you have access to.

The key to this workout is we do not want to just jump in the deep end, run ourselves into the ground and get incredibly uncomfortable (which many hikers naturally do when starting this type of training).

If you personally struggle with descents, you want to find a starting point that feels very 'doable'. So you can gently expose the body and mind to this challenge, and build up in time.

For some people, you might be able to start with a 30-minute session, where you just go up and down continuously for that period.

For others, you might have to start with 15 minutes.

For others (especially those who get knee pain on descents), you might only be able to do 5 minutes before the body starts getting uncomfortable.

That is fine. Just find a starting point that is right for you.

And then week by week, add some extra minutes of climbing.

Once you reach the longest amount of time you want to do this session for, then you can keep the time the same and slowly add some pack weight or find something a bit steeper.

A few extra tips for stair or hill sessions:

When starting with this workout, a good guide for speed is to go at a pace where you can constantly breathe in and out through the nose. This may require you to go very slowly initially (which is totally fine), but over time, it will get easier, and you will be able to speed up.

Once you feel comfortable with this, a nice progression can start to alternate between this slow nose-breathing pace and a slightly quicker 'huffing and puffing' pace (e.g. do one climb slow and controlled, and do the next climb much quicker).

If using pack weight for this workout, it's a good idea to load up the pack with water bottles (as opposed to weights, bags, rice/dog food, etc.). And if at any stage of the workouts things start to feel uncomfortable or too difficult, pour some water out and continue.

The first time you do this workout, it is very common for the legs to get quite sore in the days afterwards. This is normal if you have not done much downhill training before (as those muscle actions are often undertrained, and that is exactly what we are trying to improve!). If this happens, just give the body a few days of rest and let things settle.​

If you truly cannot find any hills or stairs to train on, you can do this session as a 'box step' workout (where you use a small step or box and do extended step-ups on it). It won't quite be as beneficial for the descendants, but it can do the job if needed. 

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Extra Tips For Downhill Hiking
Beyond building up your strength, balance and aerobic fitness, here are a few extra quick tips which can make a difference for descnts:

1) Use Trekking Poles

Trekking poles take a huge amount of force out of the knees on descents and can be a great aid for stability and balance.

2) Refuel And Recover After A Steep Climb

If you have just done a steep climb, and you are tired and fatigued, give yourself five minutes to recover before tackling the descents.

Catch your breath, have a bite or two of a snack and have some water. And once you are feeling ready, then tackle the descent.

3) Use Simple Breathing Strategies If Anxiety Kicks In

If you start getting stressed or anxious during a descent, this is a simple breathing technique that can help:

• Stop in place
• Take a big breath in
• Hold your breath at the top for a few seconds
• Take a big breath out
• Hold your breath for a few seconds
• Do this three times
• Start hiking again
  ​
  

A very simple strategy that can often help us reset mentally and feel a bit more comfortable.

Summary

If you struggle with descents while hiking, if you do the right training and preparation, you can make a dramatic difference.

Make sure you focus on:

• Building strength (especially eccentric strength)
• Developing balance and stability
• Improving aerobic fitness
• Getting specific downhill exposure (if possible)

Put those together and not only will your descents improve, but your hiking overall will feel dramatically better.

Simple ideas. But they can lead to big results.

And if you were a hiker who struggled with descents and needed help putting this advice together, you can check out the Online Summit Program here:

Online Personal Training For Hikers

Yours in trekking

Rowan