Downhill Running and Knee Pain
Why running downhill makes you sorer than flat or uphill running.
Almost every experienced runner will agree: downhill running leaves you way sorer.
Have you ever wondered why?
There are two typed of soreness that people experience after running. These are muscular soreness and joint soreness.
Muscle Soreness
Muscular soreness is thought to be from damage to the muscle. This damage is microscopic and natural. Your body repairs this type of damage every day. When you are running downhill, your quads, hamstrings, and glutes primarily use a type of contraction called an eccentric contraction. Eccentric contractions are when the muscle is lengthening under resistance. This type of muscle contraction causes more damage than isometric (when the joint doesn’t move) or concentric contraction (when the muscle shortens).
Our muscles are MUCH stronger at eccentric contractions than concentric ones. This is why your legs can handle the force of downhill running, which can reach 7x our body weight in a single step.
This increased force also contributes to more muscle damage, and, you guessed it, more soreness.
Joint Soreness
Joint soreness has a variety of causes but often happens because of cartilage compression due to impact or swelling after activity.
The cartilage in our knees relies on water to absorb the impact of each step. When our cartilage is damaged, the knee’s ability to store water and manage that impact is lessened, and we get more inflammation and swelling.
This can happen because of prolonged and repetitive impact (like ultra running) or shorter, high-impact running (like downhill running).
When it comes to downhill running, we are dealing with much higher forces on the joint, and that can lead to soreness.
What does this mean for you, as a runner?
Neither type of soreness automatically means lasting damage to your muscle or joints, but it is important to respect the healing process. If you are coming off of a long run with a lot of hills, it is a good idea to stick to a flat run or a shorter run.
If you have had knee issues in the past and are looking to get back into running, you need to keep this in mind. It does not mean that you cannot run hills, but it does mean that you should respect the stress that downhill running places on your knees and make sure you are taking the time to recover from them. BOTH of these types of soreness are often delayed a few hours, or even a day or so, after activity, so you won’t even know the impact a run has had on you right away.
This also has important implications for me when I am working with runners who have a history of knee pain. Often we use flat or even mild-grade uphill running during the rehab process. I often have my patients stick to walking the downhill, or avoiding the downhill all together until we have built up the strength and tolerance of the legs and knees to the demands of downhill running.
Author: Dr Mark Murdoch, Chiropractor and Co-Founder at Base Camp Chiropractic and Sports Rehab in Vernon, BC.
Mark Murdoch is a Doctor of Chiropractic with a Master’s Degree in Sports Medicine.
Contact: drmurdoch@basecampclinic.com
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