Why Do I Get Sore Muscles After Hiking?

Sore Muscles after Hiking? Most people who don't hike or are new to hiking, grossly underestimate what a good workout hiking is. When you are walking up an incline, no matter how shallow it is, you are going to be stretching and contracting your Hamstrings

Sore Muscles after Hiking – DOMS Explained

Many hikers complain that they experience sore muscles after hiking, generally the next day. So why do we get it, and are there ways to prevent it? These questions and more will be answered in the next few short paragraphs, so read on.

More often than not, Hiking, Hill Walking or Rambling is a sedentary, low impact period of exercise. So why do so many hikers experience sore muscles after hiking? The answer, is that we are experiencing Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness or DOMS. DOMS is normally experienced after overloading and overworking our muscles, by doing something like a few hours of heavy Deadlifts in the gym of heavily weighted Squats. All we have been doing is walking around the hills, stepping over a few rocks and clambering up a bit of shale. Surely that isn’t the equivalent of the Gym Torture we mentioned earlier? Actually, most people are really surprised when they find out what a tough, all round workout Hiking really is. Read more...