cairns on mountain paths

[tgtaylor]

No not really. As with all machines your stress is confined to a very small range. You do not strengthen stabilizer muscles and supportive tissue at all. It is probably dangerous to rely on biking for knee conditioning.

It is very useful for many other things though. Heavy cardio with almost no impact among others.

Well, that was my understanding after speaking with several individuals who had knee problems. Here is what I found by googling knee problems and cycling:

"In comparison with other exercises cycling is a relatively ‘knee friendly’ activity that can help to improve knee joint mobility and stability. Cycling is frequently used as a rehabilitation exercise modality after knee injury or surgery as well as part of the management of chronic degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis. The bicycle has a number of features that make it a particularly good tool for knee rehabilitation:

http://www.cartilagehealth.com/cycling.html#

[Greg Miller]

Some of us have surgically repaired knees (my case), or arthritis, or are prone to tendon problems. Strength training can certainly help in some cases, but by no means overcomes these issues for many of us. People can snicker at me if they want, but using hiking poles when carrying a heavy load is almost a necessity, and it would actually stupid for me not to use them. And anyone who has used them for a full day of carrying heavy loads, regardless of how strong they are, understands how much stress they take off of the leg joints. They are also great for balance when crossing streams and rivers, and also reduce the likelihood of swollen hands or numb arms that many people get when hiking distances with a pack.

[rdenney]

I think you are overstating the case. Walking is essential if you want to hike. The big miles are where the hiking power comes from. I like the extra strength weights allow me to have but they do not substitute for the slow twitch endurance muscle.

My whole point was that you can strengthen your knees and indeed any part of your body with exercise. You should be aware of the possible problems, overexercising without recovery time is a big one and go for it. You only need a bench, some dumbbells and a bar for chins. I have never had a gym membership.

Telling me how I blew out my knees on the basis of a one-paragraph summary of 35 years of fitness activity is an example of my point. The knowledge you have gained to find what works for you does not imply a standard for everyone else to follow, or even constitute expertise on the topic.

Rick "wondering what the difference is between walking and hiking" Denney

[PenGun]

Telling me how I blew out my knees on the basis of a one-paragraph summary of 35 years of fitness activity is an example of my point. The knowledge you have gained to find what works for you does not imply a standard for everyone else to follow, or even constitute expertise on the topic.

Rick "wondering what the difference is between walking and hiking" Denney

If you did squats every day without recovery time then it's very likely that contributed to any problem you may have with your knees.

Ask your doctor.

Walking is 'going somewhere'. Hiking is 'going nowhere then coming back'.

[rdenney]

If you did squats every day without recovery time then it's very likely that contributed to any problem you may have with your knees.

Ask your doctor.

Walking is 'going somewhere'. Hiking is 'going nowhere then coming back'.

Sheesh. That depends on how strong one is.

And sheesh again. Every time you climb a step, you are doing part of a one-legged squat. If you take two steps at a time, you are doing most of a one-legged squat. If you do it slowly, you are doing it with good squat form. I climb stairs every day. Should I not be?

Quit being my doctor--you don't know enough about me. That's my point.

Rick "who almost always ends up where he started whether 'walking' or 'hiking'" Denney

[gevalia]

Walking is 'going somewhere'. Hiking is 'going nowhere then coming back'.

I like this quote and as someone that hikes quite a bit, I will steal it and use it as my own.

[PenGun]

Sheesh. That depends on how strong one is.

And sheesh again. Every time you climb a step, you are doing part of a one-legged squat. If you take two steps at a time, you are doing most of a one-legged squat. If you do it slowly, you are doing it with good squat form. I climb stairs every day. Should I not be?

Quit being my doctor--you don't know enough about me. That's my point.

Rick "who almost always ends up where he started whether 'walking' or 'hiking'" Denney

It has nothing to do with how strong you are. It has to do with stress and recovery. If there is no recovery stuff deteriorates.

If you are just walking then the stress is quite minimal and the human body is designed to cover big miles. You have the result of a lifetime of physical stess in your everyday body.

If you are purposely stressing your body in order to strengthen it you need to let the part you carefully overstressed have time to repair and grow new muscle, bone and connective tissue. If you do not allow repair time from overstress there will be damage.

Your doctor will confirm what I have said. I figure you can argue with him.

[Jim Ewins]

As a hiker, I appreciated cairns as denoting the path. I guess I'd react poorly seeing some jerk who has no ownership in the area kick over something that isn't theirs. Of course there seem to be no shortage of folks who regard the property of others as theirs - as they know better how it should be used.

[rdenney]

Your doctor will confirm what I have said. I figure you can argue with him.

Let me try again: I didn't provide you with enough description for you to determine whether I was or was not causing an overuse injury by doing squats every day. You think that is enough information, but only because of your mental image of squats in relation to your own fitness and knowledge.

I did, however, outline a long history of endurance sports and training activities.

I did not outline for you all the discussions I have had with professional trainers and doctors about a wide range of issues. You are assuming blindly that I have not had all those discussions many times. I have not engaged the topic of recovery with you at all, because that is not the point.

My thesis is that people who are describing their own fitness program or experience as the implied standard for who is qualified to hike in remote areas (with our without cairns) are really just bragging about their program or experience (or toughness). If people actually took those implied standards to heart, they would not achieve anything--you have to push through the periods when you don't meet standards in order to attain them, which means taking risks.

You keep reinforcing my point by extrapolating what works for you, or what you read in a book and applied to your own program, or that even you heard from your doctor, and making it TRVTH for everyone else. Recovery is for intense exercise taken to the limit. World-class runners, including those who run successfully into old age, run every day. They don't run fast every day, but their slow days may be fast to you or me. Yet they never stop running. What makes it work for them? Good genes, for one thing, and good biometrics for another. Guys who train in the gym at a high level, even into old age, don't take every other day off. When I worked out in gyms, the same guys were in there every day I was in there. They may work light on legs today and heavy tomorrow, but I think you'll find they take at most one day a week off. Do you think Lance Armstrong only rides every other day to allow his legs to recover? Do you think he avoids sprints on a given ride because it's an easy day? He may not focus on sprints or do hill repeats every day, but 13 days out of every fortnight he's on the bike. When he's fit, his poke-along recovery days would kill many of us. There are ways to do squats that are intense and require recovery, and there are ways to do them that are not and don't. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially when it becomes the prescription for everyone else.

To bring the point back to topic explicitly, just because many don't need cairns doesn't mean they aren't useful to some. And those who dismiss the arguments made by those who appreciate the cairns as reflecting inadequate experience should remember that the experience they have was never as good as it is now, and may not even now be as good as they think it is.

Rick "Edward Abbey was lucky to survive some his his mistakes" Denney

[Vaughn]

Well, that was my understanding after speaking with several individuals who had knee problems. Here is what I found by googling knee problems and cycling:

"In comparison with other exercises cycling is a relatively ‘knee friendly’ activity that can help to improve knee joint mobility and stability. Cycling is frequently used as a rehabilitation exercise modality after knee injury or surgery as well as part of the management of chronic degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis. The bicycle has a number of features that make it a particularly good tool for knee rehabilitation:

http://www.cartilagehealth.com/cycling.html#

After three knee surgeries (30 yrs of basketball, 10 yrs of wilderness trailwork, tree planting, etc), when my knees start to hurt, it means I have not been spending enough time on the bicycle.

Cairns -- I use to tear down a lot of them when I was a wilderness ranger. And those I left I tended to get reduced in size. After all, it the trail follows a ridgetop, one does not need cairns to know where the ridge top is. And if a set of cairns lead off the trail to some natural feature, I removed those.

I wasn't too crazy about trail signs, either. We put them up at the beginning of the trail and at trail junctions only -- with no mileage on them. If you want to know the name of the creek you are at, figure it out by using the topo map!