Knee pain when hiking? Try these four helpful hacks from a strength coach

There is nothing worse than feeling that throbbing achy pain in your knees a few minutes into your hike. This is extremely common as Harvard Health says that walking at an incline puts a force two to three times your body weight through your knees. Walking at a decline is even higher. Understandably, you don’t want to turn back but, equally, persisting could equate to more pain. So, what do you do?

Well, the good news is you don’t have to hang up your hiking boots just yet, as Strength Coach, Chase Tucker, Founder of popular outdoor YouTube ‘Chasing Mountains’, has shared four helpful hacks to help manage your knee pain whilst out on the trails. These four simple tips will help reduce the load going through your knee joint when tackling ascents and descents, so you can continue being a happy hiker. Let's jump into them...

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1. Pack less

A super heavy hiking backpack will only mean more force going through your knees and body, so only pack what you really need. “If you’ve got a friendly hiking buddy who’s capable of carrying a little bit extra, maybe you can pass a few things off to him/or her so you’re lessening the load you have to carry,” Tucker also suggests in his video.

2. Use trekking poles

If you regularly experience knee pain but still aren’t using trekking poles, then its time too, as Tucker says they can make a massive difference. “The way they help is by using your upper body to distribute some of that load from your body and your backpack away from the knees and into your hands,” he explains. The technique Tucker uses is the ‘overhand technique’. This is where you place your palm over the top of the poles and then place them into the ground at quite wide angle in front of you. “It’s kind of like putting the breaks on,” he adds.

3. Choose less steep trails

Tucker says that we experience four times the force of our body weight when walking on the downhill compared to when we’re walking on the flat, so the easiest solution is to try and plan a route that isn’t too steep. However, it may be hard to completely avoid this, so Tucker has a tip! “What you can do is zig zag on the way down, that’s going to reduce the amount of steep terrain you’re walking on and it’s going to lessen the amount of load going through the joint, rather than taking those big steps down,” he says.

4. Try Tucker's 'downhill technique'

It may be worth jumping to 4:21sec on the video above so you can watch Tucker demonstrating this, but essentially what he’s doing is walking downhill with bent knees and his hips hinged back slightly. Think of it like a mini squat. Tucker says this helps to reduce the force going through the knee and instead distributes it more evenly across the quads, glute medius and calves. “It’s much kinder on the joints doing this technique than coming down with straighter knees, slamming your feet into the ground and sending all that shock up through these joints,” he says.

Don't forget it's also important to prioritise some strength exercises in your weekly routine to help you become a stronger hiker and reduce the likelihood of injury. Check out these five exercises that can help.