Transcription
Everybody knows that walking uphill makes you tired. It's your body's way of telling you to slow down or take a break.
Think about it like this: your body has energy reserves that get used up when you exercise. When that reserve drops below a certain level, you start to feel tired. So, taking a break, or eating something, or drinking some water, this can all top up your energy and then you're good to go again until it drops again.
But when you're out in the hills, the real trick is to use as little energy as possible. And the best way to do that is only to use the muscles that you actually need for walking. And here's the key part: the bigger the muscle, the more work it can do before it starts to get tired. Your biggest muscles are your thighs and your glutes, your bum. Yes, other muscles are also involved too, but if you use your legs properly, your thighs and your bum should be doing most of the heavy lifting.
So how do we do that? It's a good question. I'm glad you asked. It's simple. It's simple to explain, though it may take a little practice before it starts to feel natural. But once it clicks, you'll wonder why you ever, ever walked in any other way.
So there are two parts to it. So I'll go through them individually. So the first thing I'm doing is I found my hill. It's not much of a hill, but it'll do for the video. A lot of people when they're walking up hills, they, they do this. They walk as if they're walking around the shops. They walk like that. But that's not the way to do it.
The way to do it is, every step you take, land your heel underneath your shoulders. So you may need to lean forward slightly, but if you've got a rucksack on, that's not normally a problem. So as you're walking up, it's this. Your, your heel lands underneath your shoulders, every single step. Okay, have you got that? Try it again. It's not this. Yeah, but it's this. There. So not this, because if you do this, you've got to pull yourself forward and you're using, I don't know, I'm not a medical person, but you're using lots of other muscles to pull yourself forward. So the trick is not this, but it's this. Your heels land underneath your shoulders and you can actually feel the only muscles that you're using are your thigh and your bum. You're not hardly using any other muscles, just this.
Okay, now once it does take a little bit of practice to get this, but as I said, once, once you do get it and once it clicks, you, you'll ask yourself, why did I ever walk up hills in a different way? If you watch, I mean, I've been up some big hills in the Himalayas and all the rest of it, and if you watch the porters and the Sherpas, they're the ones who it comes natural to. That's exactly how they walk and they're carrying enormous, very heavy weights. Okay, so that's the basics. If you were walking, plant your heels underneath your shoulders.
The next thing is, take more steps. As an example, this section in front of me here, I can't walk up this planting my heels under my shoulders because my ankle doesn't bend at that angle. I'll, I'll go into the shot so you can actually see. So here's a, here's a step. I can't actually plant my heel flat-footed underneath there. It just doesn't work. So instead of doing this up and using all that muscle, all that energy to get up there, all I'm going to do to get up this step is I'm going to walk around it. I'm going to zigzag. So I've got up this big step without using any energy whatsoever. I've just literally done that. So I'll do it again. So it's not this. Yep. It's not up the hills like that. The trick is, take intermediate steps. You know, just go, if there's a big obstacle, just literally plant your heels underneath your shoulders and then go round it. You may need to continue zigzagging. It doesn't matter. Yeah, you can always, you know, you can always take big steps if you want to.
Next thing, coming downhill. I wasn't going to do this, but I'll just add this on as a little bit of a free extra bit on my YouTube. How many people do you see coming downhill like this? They walk down and they're walking down like that and they do this. They walk down like this. So what am I doing there? Every time I took a step there, I know I said not to do that, but pretend you didn't see. So instead of doing this, in other words, my leg is now straight, so all my body weight, including the momentum downhill, is going, is being absorbed by the cartilage underneath my kneecaps, which is not a good idea. So it's not this coming downhill. Just simply, and I do realize that you will look a bit silly doing it, but it's, it's a good idea. Walk with your knees slightly bent, always. So it's this, and you end up, you look as if you're bouncing down the hill.
So uphill, heels under your shoulders. Downhill, your knees are slightly bent all the time. So in other words, it's not the cartilage under your kneecap that's taking all the strain. It's actually your thigh is acting as a shock absorber, and the muscle of your thigh is a lot stronger at absorbing pressure than the cartilage underneath your kneecap. How many times have you come, you know, I go up some big hills with some tourists and, um, the next day they come down to breakfast and they can hardly walk. It's because their knees are shot. Yeah. Walk downhill, you do look a bit silly bouncing down the hill because you're doing this all the way down. But believe me, don't believe anybody what anybody says on YouTube. Go and give it a try yourself. Give it a try. Just walking with your knees straight walking uphill and then pull yourself forward and then take small steps planting your heels underneath your shoulders. And on the way down, bounce slightly so your knees are never straight. And just compare the two. And if it works for you, great. If it doesn't work for you, then as I said, never believe anybody, whatever they say on YouTube. Thanks for watching.