Fitness
Fitness To Mental Health: 7 Health Benefits Of Hiking
Fitness To Mental Health: 7 Health Benefits Of Hiking (Image Credits: iStock)
Nature is the best healer. Whether walking in a park barefoot or going on a hiking trail, it heals us inside out. Hiking is more than just a recreational activity; it’s a powerful way to boost physical and mental well-being. Hiking offers a unique blend of cardiovascular workouts, muscle strengthening, and stress relief. Whether you’re travelling through mountain trails, meandering through forest paths, or exploring local parks, the health benefits of hiking are innumerable. We got in touch with Dr Indramani Upadhyay, MPT (Ortho), HOD – The Center for Knee and Hip Care, Vaishali, Ghaziabad who shares the myriad benefits that regular hiking can offer.
1. Cardiovascular Health
Dr Indramani Upadhyay shares that hiking is an excellent cardiovascular exercise. It increases your heart rate, which improves blood circulation and oxygen supply throughout the body. Regular hiking can reduce the risk of heart disease, lower blood pressure, and improve cholesterol levels.
2. Muscle Strengthening
“Navigating different terrains requires the use of multiple muscle groups. Uphill climbs strengthen the quadriceps, glutes, and calves, while downhill hikes engage the hips, knees, and lower back muscles. This comprehensive workout helps build muscle endurance and strength,” he said.
3. Weight Management
Dr Indramani Upadhyay explains that hiking is an effective way to burn calories and maintain a healthy weight. The number of calories burned depends on the trail’s difficulty and the hiker’s weight, but it can be comparable to other forms of aerobic exercise such as running or cycling.
4. Bone Density Improvement
Weight-bearing exercises like hiking are crucial for maintaining healthy bones. The physical impact of walking on varied surfaces stimulates bone growth and helps prevent osteoporosis, a condition that weakens bones and makes them more prone to fractures, he mentioned.
Dr Indramani Upadhyay shares that spending time in nature has been shown to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. The combination of physical activity and the calming environment of the outdoors releases endorphins, which improve mood and overall mental well-being.
6. Improved Balance and Coordination
Dr Indramani Upadhyay shares, that hiking often involves navigating uneven terrain, which challenges your balance and coordination. Regular practice can enhance these skills, reducing the risk of falls and improving overall stability, particularly important as we age.
7. Boosted Immune System
“Regular exposure to nature and physical activity can strengthen the immune system. Hiking can increase the production of white blood cells, which help the body fight off infections. Additionally, the fresh air and sunlight provide vitamin D, essential for maintaining a robust immune response,” he said.
The claims: The midlife woman’s new accessory, weighted vests are promoted as a muscle-building, bone-boosting, fat-loss life hack. Wear it around the house, while exercising or walking, they say, to get stronger and fitter and to improve your bone health.
Nov. 13, 2025 – You won’t find any support groups for dead butt syndrome, aka gluteal amnesia, sleepy glutes, flabby butt, longback, or, for King of the Hill fans, diminished gluteal syndrome.
“They all mean sort of the same thing: weak gluteal muscles,” said Dean Somerset, a clinical exercise physiologist based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and co-author of Rock Solid Resilience.
If you guessed that small, weak, and poorly functioning glutes are often the result of too much sitting and too little exercise, you wouldn’t be wrong, according to Somerset.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based physical therapist Chad Waterbury, DPT, has seen it in healthy, fit, active clients, including a few professional athletes. “When we do exercises like squats, deadlifts, lunges, it’s very easy for other muscles to do the work you want the glutes to do,” Waterbury said
In both populations, the glutes stop doing what they should, and that can lead to serious problems up and down the movement chain.
If misfiring glutes force the lower-back muscles to take on loads they’re not meant to handle, the result can be years of back pain. And if the glutes fail to perform their stabilizing role in exercise and sports, you could be looking at chronically sore knees, or perhaps even an ACL injury.
That means the Venn diagram of dead butt sufferers includes people who sit a lot, active people, those with back pain, and those with knee pain. All those people, all that overlap, all those butts.
Is your butt among them?
Putting a Name to the Pain
Stuart McGill, PhD, coined the term “gluteal amnesia” to describe what happens when pain causes people to change how they move.
“In people with longer-term pain, the pattern of nerve pulses distributed to the muscles can become corrupted,” he explained. “The pain kicks off an inhibition pathway, so the brain finds a different way to do the same basic thing.”
That, in turn, changes the way muscles like the hamstrings contribute to the movement.
“But even when the pain has gone away, the brain often remembers the painful pattern,” McGill said. Which means it also forgets how to use the muscles appropriately and efficiently.
McGill, a distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Waterloo and author of Back Mechanic, showed how the process works in a 2013 study. In that paper, he and his co-authors used “gluteal amnesia” and “gluteal inhibition” interchangeably.
The latter term is probably more appropriate, given that some people hear the former and think it implies gluteal dementia, as if the misplaced movement patterns can never be restored.
Fortunately for the gluteally deficient among us, they can. Just not in the way most of us would assume.
Hips, Femur, Knees, and Woes
While McGill was teasing out the connection between gluteal amnesia and back pain, Christopher Powers, PT, PhD, was looking at how abnormal glute activation patterns could lead to knee problems.
“The gluteal muscles control the femur,” he explained. “The femur’s half the knee joint. So by definition, the gluteal muscles control half the knee.”
Powers is associate chair of the Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy at the University of Southern California, where he studies the root causes of the lower-body injuries. And he addresses a lot of them with the athletes and patients he sees at the Movement Performance Institute in Los Angeles, which he founded and owns.
His research has shown that a key function of the gluteal muscles is to prevent the femur from rolling inward during sports, exercise, or everyday physical activities.
“Once you stop using the muscle, the brain kind of forgets about it,” Powers said. “You lose the neural connectivity.”
And if the brain forgets how to stabilize the femur, just about anything you do, from walking to landing after a jump, will put stress on your knee joints.
How to Know if Your Butt is Dead or Dying
Remember, given that sedentary and active people have this issue, aside from chronic knee or back pain, you may not be able to tell if your glutes are firing properly or improperly.
Waterbury recommends this self-test: the single-leg glute bridge.
Lie on your back with one leg lifted out straight and the other leg bent at a 45-degree angle with the foot flat on the floor. Your thighs should be parallel. Raise your butt so your thighs and torso form a straight line.
Hold that position for 20 seconds (or as long as you can up to 20), while paying close attention to which muscles you feel are working the hardest. Lower your hips and repeat with the other leg.
If you felt the strongest contraction in your hamstrings or lower back, instead of your glutes, you need to improve your gluteal activation. Also, muscle imbalances are common, so it’s also not unusual for you to feel weaker in one glute or the other.
Two of Powers’s studies offer encouraging news for those whose glutes have lost their way.
The first, published in 2016, found that a week of glute-activation exercises increased neural drive to the muscles.
A follow-up, published in 2022, found that the same exercise protocol made the muscles more able to stabilize the femur.
So let’s take a look at the program.
Wake Up, Dead Butt
Powers’s program includes just three exercises, all of which may look familiar: clamshell, side-lying hip abduction, and fire hydrant.
Even if you haven’t used the exercises in your own routines, you’ve probably seen other people doing variations of them.
Here’s the catch: To do the program correctly, you have to forget what you’ve done or seen.
Instead of doing sets and reps, you’ll hold each position for up to a minute at a time. And you’ll need to do the program almost every day.
“When you do reps – up and down, up and down – the focus tends to be on the movement,” Powers said. Isometric holds like these require something else: intense concentration on squeezing the muscle in one continuous position.
That extended muscle activation allows the brain to reopen its channels of communication. If you follow the isometric holds with exercises that use the glutes, like squats or step-ups, you reinforce those neural signals.
To get the most out of the exercises, you’ll want to use a miniband positioned around your thighs, just above your knees. When you can hold a position for a full minute, use a more challenging band the next time.
Here’s a closer look at each exercise.
Clamshell
Lie on your side with your legs together and your hips and knees bent 45 degrees.
Lift your top knee straight up while keeping your feet in contact with each other.
Feel the squeeze in your glutes and hold for up to a minute. Switch sides and repeat.
Side-Lying Hip Abduction
Lie on your side with your top leg straight and bottom leg bent at the knee about 45 degrees.
Lift your top leg up and slightly back.
Feel the squeeze in your glutes and hold for up to a minute. Switch sides and repeat.
Fire Hydrant
To Powers, the fire hydrant is the best of the activation exercises. “If I were to pick one, I’d take it over the other two,” he said.
But it’s also the trickiest one to get right, since you’re asking your glutes to perform three functions, as you’ll see:
Kneel on all fours with your hips parallel to the floor and your hands shoulder-width apart.
Without shifting your hips, lift one leg up (hip abduction) and back (hip extension). Position your thigh so it’s neither perpendicular to your torso (straight out to the side) nor aligned with it (straight back), but instead about halfway between those two points. (It’s called “fire hydrant” because you’re mimicking a dog doing what a dog does to a fire hydrant.)
Now turn your thigh outward (external rotation) until you feel tension in the band.
The goal isn’t to achieve any particular range of motion. It’s to reach a position you can hold while keeping your hips level with the floor.
Hold for up to a minute, switch sides, and repeat.
Restoring Your Seat of Power
People in Powers’s studies did three isometric holds of each exercise, with each leg, twice a day for seven consecutive days.
But Waterbury, who studied under Powers at USC, uses a streamlined version of the program with clients, athletes, and patients.
Start with these exercises:
- Clamshell, 30 seconds per side
- Side-lying hip abduction, 30 seconds per side
- Fire hydrant, 30 seconds per side
Do the exercises six days a week for four weeks, either on their own or as part of a warmup before a workout. “That’s plenty to get the glutes activated,” Waterbury said.
After four weeks, do the exercises three times a week, preferably before a strength workout that includes squats, deadlifts, lunges, or other movements that use your glutes in coordinated action with other lower-body muscles.
You can also do more advanced versions of the exercises, as Waterbury demonstrated in this video.
What matters most, he emphasized, is that you make these isometric holds a permanent part of your fitness routine.
“Too many things we do throughout the day make your glutes want to shut down again,” he said.
Ultimately – and this is pretty good life wisdom – it’s a lot easier to keep your butt alive and well than it is to bring it back from the dead.
Coventry, UK – November 10, 2025 – PRESSADVANTAGE –
Strongway Gym Supplies has announced the availability of its new multi-home gym exercise packages, developed to provide users across the United Kingdom with complete training solutions for home fitness. The company stated that the new range brings together a selection of strength and conditioning equipment designed to accommodate both compact living spaces and larger dedicated setups. This update aligns with the growing demand for integrated systems that offer a balance between versatility, durability, and convenience.
According to Strongway, the newly available packages have been designed following feedback from customers who sought to combine the functionality of a full gym with the practicality of home use. Each setup is assembled from the company’s existing strength and cardio equipment, providing customers with a cohesive set of tools for developing endurance, flexibility, and muscle conditioning. Further information about Strongway’s home fitness range is available at: https://strongway.co.uk/collections/home-fitness.
Strongway confirmed that the packages include adjustable benches, multi-gyms, free weights, and supporting accessories that can be adapted to suit different exercise routines. The company said its approach has been to ensure that every product within a package integrates effectively with the others, helping users create efficient and space-conscious workout environments. The introduction of these bundles, the firm added, represents a shift towards more comprehensive and accessible fitness solutions for those seeking long-term training systems that do not compromise on quality.
Co-Director Mandip Walia commented that this announcement reflects Strongway’s commitment to expanding its offering for home users while maintaining the build standards of commercial equipment. “We’ve focused on bringing together our most popular products into packages that make sense for different training styles,” he said. “The goal has been to offer flexibility without sacrificing reliability or design integrity. People want their home gyms to perform like professional setups, and that’s the standard we continue to aim for.”
The company added that these multi-gym packages were developed with modularity in mind, allowing users to build and expand their systems over time. This approach, Strongway explained, ensures that customers can adjust their training setups as their routines evolve, reducing the need for complete replacements or costly upgrades.
By offering equipment combinations that support strength, mobility, and conditioning exercises, Strongway intends to make high-quality fitness tools more accessible to a broader audience.
The announcement also coincides with the company’s ongoing production review, which focuses on maintaining precision engineering across its equipment range. Strongway has also confirmed that it is in a continuous process of expanding its product range to support growing nationwide demand for its home gym products. More details about its bundled package deals can be found at: https://strongway.co.uk/collections/ultimate-package-deals.
Co-Director Randeep Walia added that customer input has played a significant role in shaping Strongway’s recent developments. “We’ve seen a real shift in how people approach fitness at home,” he said. “Many customers now want something that can last for years, with the option to add new equipment as they progress. These packages are designed with that in mind — adaptable, practical, and consistent in quality.”
The broader home fitness market in the UK continues to expand, driven by increased interest in personal wellness and convenience-based exercise options. Strongway’s latest product release reflects this trend, providing an adaptable framework for users who wish to establish their own home training environments. The company noted that it remains focused on balancing durability with usability, ensuring that equipment remains suitable for a variety of fitness levels.
Strongway’s latest announcement follows a series of updates to its home and commercial product lines, as the company continues to strengthen its reputation for manufacturing reliable gym systems with consistent build quality.
Strongway Gym Supplies confirmed that the new home gym packages are now available for order through its official website, with delivery options available across the United Kingdom. The company emphasised that customers can expect the same quality assurance applied across all product categories, from individual weights and bars to complete multi-station setups. Those seeking additional details about the company and its current range of fitness solutions can find more information at: https://strongway.co.uk/.
The company concluded that the release marks another step in its broader mission to make dependable, high-quality exercise systems more accessible to users at every stage of their fitness journey. By combining professional engineering standards with thoughtful design, Strongway aims to support the continued growth of home-based training environments across the country.
Readers interested in ordering home fitness products or package deals online can do so by visiting the collection links provided above.
###
For more information about Strongway Gym Supplies, contact the company here:
Strongway Gym Supplies
Mandip Walia
+44-800-001-6093
sales@strongway.co.uk
Strongway Gym Supplies, 26 The Pavilion, Coventry CV3 1QP, United Kingdom
Information contained on this page is provided by an independent third-party content provider. XPRMedia and this Site make no warranties or representations in connection therewith. If you are affiliated with this page and would like it removed please contact pressreleases@xpr.media
Tim Cook could step down as Apple CEO next year
Former Zelenskyy associate accused in $100 million embezzlement scheme
Trump issues fresh pardons for Jan 6 defendants, including woman accused of threatening FBI on social media
Not all fiber is created equal — doctors share which kinds truly support longevity
Victor Wembanyama taunts Draymond Green after getting physical, dunking over him
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Trump issues fresh pardons for Jan 6 defendants, including woman accused of threatening FBI on social media
2% of Russian global oil supply affected following Ukrainian attack
Judge indefinitely bars Trump from fining UC over alleged discrimination
Zohran Mamdani tells 1M social media followers to boycott Starbucks amid ongoing worker strike
Displaced Palestinian families suffer as heavy rains flood Gaza tent camps
-
Nebraska1 week agoWhere to watch Nebraska vs UCLA today: Time, TV channel for Week 11 game
-
Austin, TX1 week agoHalf-naked woman was allegedly tortured and chained in Texas backyard for months by five ‘friends’ who didn’t ‘like her anymore’
-
Hawaii6 days agoMissing Kapolei man found in Waipio, attorney says
-
Vermont4 days agoNorthern Lights to dazzle skies across these US states tonight – from Washington to Vermont to Maine | Today News
-
Southwest1 week agoTexas launches effort to install TPUSA in every high school and college
-
New Jersey6 days agoPolice investigate car collision, shooting in Orange, New Jersey
-
World1 week agoIsrael’s focus on political drama rather than Palestinian rape victim
-
West Virginia4 days ago
Search for coal miner trapped in flooded West Virginia mine continues for third day
