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Hello Dawn,
A number of you reached out to say the content in my last email helped your knees feel better going downstairs and hiking downhill. Awesome! Let's stay with the downhill theme, shall we?
To get comfortable, and confident and possibly increase your speed going downhill you need to be able to create a good anchor between your forefoot and the ground which acts as a fulcrum point that the rest of your body moves forward, over top of and past. Often I see people on the trail take a step down, stand up, take another step down, stand up and repeat. This technique is a recipe for aggravating the knees. The problem with this is the contact or pressure between the foot and the ground lessens when you stand up after stepping down, which doesn't create a good anchor or help to set up the actions of the rest of the body to move forward, over top of and past the foot on the ground. You end up working against the direction you are trying to travel!
It's no wonder most people say they hate going downhill more than going uphill. And what goes uphill has to at some point come downhill so we might as well work on getting good at it.
When it comes to technique you have to try out what I am saying. It requires feet-on-the-ground practice you can't simply read or watch and expect to have better technique.
Here are a few drills that help you learn to create a good anchor with the forefoot:
When we create a good anchor between our forefoot and the ground a cool thing happens we no longer look at the ground as we walk or in this case as we do these drills.
Now that we know how to create a good anchor it's time to get us moving forward, over top and past the fulcrum point (anchor) and into the space in front of us. Here's a video that walks through several drills that illustrate how we use an anchor, stay folded, and make space by moving the shins so that the hips and the rest of the body move forward, over top and past the foot on the ground.
These are the same things that need to happen to run efficiently.
Happy trails, reach out with your questions about anything I've shared here.
Dawn xo
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