maratoolTrail Running/Walking
How to do the trail running/walking
- Running or hiking on trails will get the blood pumping and heart beating almost immediately. Make sure you have good shoes. While you use the muscles in your calves and buttocks to pull yourself up a hill, the knees, joints and ankles absorb the bulk of the pounding coming back down. Take smaller steps as you walk downhill, keep your knees bent to reduce the impact and slow down to avoid falling.
- A 150 lb person can burn over 200 calories for 30 minutes walking uphill, compared to 175 on a flat surface. If running the trail, a 150 lb person can burn well over 500 calories in 30 minutes.
Muscles worked
The repetitive work falls on the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.
Holding a sustainable output for minutes at a time is a different demand from a heavy set, which is why fatigue here shows up as a gradual fade rather than a rep you suddenly cannot finish.
Other muscle groups are involved too: the calves control the ankle and hold the heel position; the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.
Every exercise for:QuadricepsCalvesGlutesHamstrings
How this movement works
It is filed under cardio. The work is continuous and paced rather than counted in sets, so progress shows up as duration, distance or a lower heart rate at the same effort.
What you need
These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:
- Walking, Treadmillmachine
- Weighted Jump Squatbarbell
- All Fours Quad Stretchbody only
- Cable Deadliftscable
- Dumbbell Lungesdumbbell
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 70 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.