Resources · Hiking
Hiking conditioning: it's the downhills that get you
Everyone trains for the climb. Then the summit photo gets taken, the descent starts, and two hours later a pair of knees files a formal complaint. Colorado hiking is a braking sport — and braking is trainable.
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I covered hiking stretches and preparation on 9NEWS during my years as their fitness expert — a quick, practical primer to pair with the deeper dive below.
Play video: Wellness Wednesday: Stretches and exercises for hiking — 9NEWS What the trail actually tests
The descent is an eccentric-strength exam. Going up, muscles shorten as they work — hard, but familiar. Coming down, your quads and glutes must produce force while lengthening, step after step, often for longer than the climb took. Almost nobody trains this, which is why the soreness after a big hike lives in the fronts of the thighs and why knee pain so often starts on the way down.
Three things to build in the weeks before big objectives. Slow step-downs: stand on a step, lower one foot to the floor over three slow seconds, and come back up — the single most trail-relevant exercise there is. Step-ups with intent: drive through the top leg rather than bouncing off the bottom one, adding a pack as it gets easy. Single-leg balance on uneven input: trails are not flat, and ankles that can react — the same reactive work in the balance training article — are what turn a rolled rock into a non-event.
And the hips deserve their usual mention: hours of desk sitting shorten the hip flexors, then the trail asks for full stride extension a few thousand times. That tug-of-war frequently presents as lower-back ache at mile six. It is one of the most fixable patterns I see.
If a joint already complains on the trail
A knee that flares on descents or a hip that tightens by the second hour does not usually mean hiking is over — it usually means the load is arriving somewhere untrained. Pain is information, not automatically damage. Finding the version of the movement you can do without a lasting flare, then building from it, is how hikers get their mileage back. That is the work this studio does every week.
Common questions
Why do my knees hurt hiking downhill but not uphill?
Descending is braking. Every downhill step asks your quads and glutes to absorb your bodyweight — more with a pack, more still on steep grades — while lengthening under load. When those muscles fatigue, the braking job shifts to the knee joint itself, and it lets you know. The fix is usually not new knees; it is training the braking muscles the way the trail actually uses them: eccentrically, one leg at a time.
What exercises prepare you for fourteeners?
Three categories cover most of it: step-work for the climb (step-ups onto a box, building toward weighted), eccentric single-leg work for the descent (slow step-downs are gold), and carrying capacity (time under a loaded pack, even on neighborhood walks). Add the calf and hip mobility work and you have covered what the mountain checks. Altitude fitness is its own subject — but legs that are not wrecked help there too.
Should I stretch before or after hiking?
Before: briefly and dynamically — leg swings, deep squats, ankle circles, two or three minutes at the trailhead. After: this is where longer holds earn their keep, especially calves, hip flexors and quads, which have spent hours working in a short range. The stiffness you feel two days after a big hike is mostly eccentric-load soreness; stretching after helps, but training before helps more.
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