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Newbie with sore legs and feet

Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby AyrshireAlps » Thu Oct 21, 2021 12:35 pm

Aye, that's my thoughts too. Particularly if you're only loading up, say, twice a month through winter, never really doing it often enough to get used to it.
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby Colin1951 » Fri Nov 12, 2021 3:28 pm

Some really good advice on here. As someone else pointed out it’s the effect of a sudden huge increase in workload over your days hillwalking and the fact that you’re probably working for a long period beyond your aerobic threshold. Best defence is attack - build in two or three long walks per week into your non hill time - if you can get to a hill a couple of times a week, even better.
It gets easier the more you do, but not if there are long intervals between hill days.
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby naefearjustbeer » Mon Mar 21, 2022 8:28 pm

al78 wrote:
AyrshireAlps wrote:No amount of stretching or compression socks will sort your issue, basically every time you climb a munro, you're shocking your major muscles. You will get better with time, but you can also accelerate this by doing some specific exercises.

Squats and Lunges are your friends, and once you're comfortable doing lots, add some weights in. I find Kettlebells extremely effective, and you'll also protect your knees and ankles by building the foundations around them.

Feet are a different issue, maybe worth engaging a good podiatrist.

Bonzo has a point too, it's amazing how you can push through these things.

Best of luck.


I have wondered if strength training will help with backpacking alongside double figure mileage walking. My theory is if you get stronger all over (in particular your core muscles), a loaded backpack will not feel as heavy, and you will be using a lower percentage of your muscle's peak strength to carry it, which will help with endurance.


I used to follow a gym routine that had squats 3 times a week and deadlifts twice a week, for the first month the DOMS had me almost permanently in a lot of pain, after that was over i could pretty much do anything with regards walking/cycling/stairs/snowboarding/lifting weights and feel no pain afterwards. I stopped it when covid hit and the gyms all closed. I am now scared to start it again as i can still remember the month of struggling to sit down on and get back up from the toilet.
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby al78 » Mon Mar 21, 2022 8:59 pm

naefearjustbeer wrote:
al78 wrote:
AyrshireAlps wrote:No amount of stretching or compression socks will sort your issue, basically every time you climb a munro, you're shocking your major muscles. You will get better with time, but you can also accelerate this by doing some specific exercises.

Squats and Lunges are your friends, and once you're comfortable doing lots, add some weights in. I find Kettlebells extremely effective, and you'll also protect your knees and ankles by building the foundations around them.

Feet are a different issue, maybe worth engaging a good podiatrist.

Bonzo has a point too, it's amazing how you can push through these things.

Best of luck.


I have wondered if strength training will help with backpacking alongside double figure mileage walking. My theory is if you get stronger all over (in particular your core muscles), a loaded backpack will not feel as heavy, and you will be using a lower percentage of your muscle's peak strength to carry it, which will help with endurance.


I used to follow a gym routine that had squats 3 times a week and deadlifts twice a week, for the first month the DOMS had me almost permanently in a lot of pain, after that was over i could pretty much do anything with regards walking/cycling/stairs/snowboarding/lifting weights and feel no pain afterwards. I stopped it when covid hit and the gyms all closed. I am now scared to start it again as i can still remember the month of struggling to sit down on and get back up from the toilet.


I recently started a full body resistance training workout 3x/week and I could only manage 1-2x/week at first because of major DOMS after squatting. I'm much better now and don't get significant soreness even though I try to do more each workout. I only squat twice a week and deadlift once, squatting 3x/week and deadlifting twice would likely cause problems with recovery before long.
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby AyrshireAlps » Mon Mar 21, 2022 9:12 pm

Naefear- just don't hit it as hard this time, DOMS is generally from loading too much too quickly.

Squats are great, but get some lunges in too, ascending a hill is basically the same movement.
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby Jon and Jen » Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:32 am

I used to get awful heel blisters but advice from someone here was to get a thin pair of socks to wear under my thick merino ones. Never had a blister since. They are Peter max coolmax, they were cheap from blacks. I wear them under my highlander hiking socks and my feet thank me for it.
I think the leg pain is really just a process of shock on the legs. Last year I had bad pains from doing 1 Munro and a Corbett early in spring. By the end of summer I was doing multiday walks carrying my heavy camping pack over 6 munros with 50 miles of walking in and out without any issues.
Did a sub 2000 the other day as my first of the season to get my legs ready. Had leg pain the next day. Planning to get a bunch more to train before the snows melt and I can get back to the big lads.

Walking poles and taking boots off for a foot dip in a burn or river definitely help too.
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby Bastonjock » Fri Mar 25, 2022 9:44 pm

I've been doing long walks on the flat lands where I live , it looks like it's paid off , I managed 800 m up a Corbett on wed ,then I put in a 14 k walk on the flat yesterday and today I made it to a trig point at 771 meters
I was feeling some discomfort after each day ,but it's gone by the morning , I'm not hammering it hard up the ascent or descent and tomorrow I plan a 24k walk with a max hight of 500 meters ,my leg muscles do feel a little bit tight and my feet were sore ,it's now 6 hours later and I've recovered
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Re: Newbie with sore legs and feet

Postby TheRealLurlock » Sat Mar 26, 2022 2:43 pm

DOMS is caused by eccentric stress (i.e. the lengthening of a muscle under load, as opposed to a contraction, or shortening) to which you are not adapted. The biology behind it is not well understood, but it is believed to be the result of cross-sectional damage to sarcomeres (basically the building blocks of muscle fibres). In any case, this is why descending, say down a flight of stairs, is always the most painful thing after you've developed DOMS - because it's the same thing that causes it: the eccentric loading of your quadriceps and other muscles as you control your descent down from one step to the next. This is also why if you take a strong track cyclist and make him squat a load of weight under a barbell, you will hospitalise him with soreness the next day. His legs are very well adapted to the concentric motion of cycling which means he can squat a heavy weight, but since cycling involves no eccentric loading whatsoever, he is completely unadapted to the controlled descent down into the bottom of the squat.

DOMS is not a marker of productive exercise and neither does its absence mean you haven't worked hard enough. If you are training or exercising regularly then you should never experience significant soreness beyond the first week or so (unless, of course, you are following some silly CrossFit-related principle of 'muscle confusion,' the aim of which is to make you constantly sore by cycling between movements to which you are unadapted all the time).
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