Walking stairs: why leaning forward helps

If your knees or hips don’t like walking upstairs, this is for you.

This could also apply if you were stepping onto a bus, or even getting up from a low chair.

Both knee and hip pain are more common among women than men — mostly because we’re made differently — but first let’s focus on knees because better use of the right muscles can make an immediate difference to how they feel on stairs.

Some of us have a tendency for our hips and knees to roll inwards when we step up (or down), which stresses the knee joint.

Even a five-degree roll-in can increase pressure on the knees by around 30 percent.

Leaning our trunk forward from the hips will make us switch on our glutes (buttock muscles). This counters that inward roll and takes the load off the knees.

Glutes are big, strong muscles, while knee joints are hinges. So it makes sense to give the workload to the glutes.

When we first try this, it’s a good idea to hold the rail as we get a sense of how it feels different to the way we usually walk upstairs. Keep the knee on the stepping leg pointing straight ahead.

Experiment with the forward lean until you can tell the effort is coming from your glutes, not the knees. You should also feel that you’re using your heel on the step.

A lack of action in the glutes can also result in hip soreness because we start using a smaller muscle at the side of the hip instead. This also puts pressure on the hip joint. Encouraging the glutes to work can gradually restore proper function.

To sum up, sometimes we develop pain or soreness because we’re not using the right muscles for the job. And when it comes to stairs, that’s the glutes.

(PS. Another thing to bear in mind is ensuring that when we walk we don’t bring our legs and feet too close in towards our midline, because this also increases the load on our hip joints. Catwalk models do that – they walk as though they’re on a tightrope. So let your catwalk days be behind you and keep a comfortable width between your feet.)

Photo Source: Tanya, thanks for being a great model.