downhill running hurts legs 4 strategies can help you

If you think running downhill is easier than running uphill, you are mistaken. Of course, if you are referring to the feeling of your heartbeat and breathing, that is indeed true. But in reality, running downhill is a harsh punishment for your legs.

Eccentric muscle contractions (where your quadriceps and calf muscles try to shorten but are forced to lengthen with each foot strike) cause significant microscopic damage to muscle fibers, leading to fatigue and eventual pain, followed by delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) in the days after. In fact, downhill running is often used in laboratories to study DOMS.

In a recent paper published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology and Sports Medicine, researchers from France and Canada, led by Guillaume Millet at the University of Calgary, conducted an in-depth study on downhill and uphill running and beyond-physiological fatigue. They also provided some interesting practical advice.

For beginners, here is an estimate of the energy cost of running on different slopes, written on 2002 pages of paper:

Interestingly, when the slope is less than 20%, running downhill uses less energy. But beyond this slope, because each step requires more braking and provides less acceleration, you start burning more energy again.

So, how can you maximize the benefits of downhill running while minimizing the damage? In the paper, Guillaume and his colleagues considered the following strategies:

1. Increase your cadence:

By increasing your step frequency by 8%, you can shorten your stride to reduce muscle damage.

2. Change your foot strike pattern:

There is some evidence that landing on your toes while running downhill puts extra stress on your muscles, causing greater muscle damage compared to landing on your heels. Therefore, a more useful strategy is to use a mixed landing pattern, switching between different foot strike patterns to distribute the load across different muscle groups. This naturally occurs on uneven trails, but on smooth downhill paths, it becomes a deliberate choice.

3. Lose weight:

This may not seem like much, but here we are considering it more from the perspective of reducing running injuries. If you can come up with a reliable weight loss method, you could sell it to the public and become a millionaire.

4. Targeted specific training:

As the authors state, 'Among all the strategies to mitigate the negative effects of downhill running, specific training is still the best choice. Some studies suggest that performing some eccentric exercises first can produce a protective adaptation, so that in subsequent similar exercises (the so-called 'repeated bout effect'), the symptoms of muscle damage and strength loss are alleviated for up to 10 weeks after the exercise.'

This is important. If you plan to participate in a race that includes a lot of downhill running, make sure to do significant downhill running in your training—significant enough to make you feel sore. If you live on the plains with no hills around, find a treadmill and set it to a downhill running mode.

It is still unknown exactly how much or how long you need to run downhill to maximize the benefits. This will partly depend on how you plan to handle the grueling race process. You don't want to be so sore that you have to miss a week of training—but doing enough to make you a little sore the next day and repeating this process is a good idea.