The Fix for My Hiking Pain Wasn’t New Gear. It Was My Gait.

I often feel like my legs are screwed on wrong. Any time I hike, especially with heavy weight, I get aches and pains in my right hip and ankle—but never in my left. I’ve tried almost everything to fix my crooked body: single-leg exercises, physical therapy, foam-rolling, and massage. I even had a somewhat new-age doctor hammer my hips back into place with a mallet. My friends call her the Bone Carpenter.

Then a physical therapist suggested I do something far less medieval: Get a gait analysis. Maybe strength wasn’t my issue, they suggested. Maybe it was the way I was walking.

Why Your Gait Could Be the Problem

Gait is the particular movement pattern you use to hike or run. It’s sort of like handwriting—it’s uniquely yours and shaped by years of practice, learned shortcuts, and old habits. And, like handwriting, it can get sloppy with age.

All our gaits have idiosyncrasies. For most people, those idiosyncrasies don’t cause any particular problems, especially over short distances. But over thousands and thousands of steps, little asymmetries can add up.

If you tend to favor one side or tilt a little too far in any direction, you could end up with chronic pain in your hips, lower back, or knees over time, says Dr. Steve Brown, an athletic trainer, chiropractor, and co-owner of the Boulder Sports Clinic, a chiropractic and physical therapy practice.

“The number-one predictor of injury is previous injury,” he says. “But the number-two predictor is asymmetry.”

Think of it like your car being out of alignment. It probably feels pretty normal when you’re driving. But over a few thousand miles, you’ll start to see major wear and tear on your tires and, eventually, on your suspension.

To belabor the metaphor, getting a gait analysis is like taking your body to the mechanic. A trainer or physical therapist makes sure everything is working smoothly and helps you realign anything that’s come out of place. It’s a popular tool among runners, but I wondered—could it help me with my hiking problems?

What Is a Gait Analysis?

To find out, I visited Brown in his Colorado office. He said he was going to put a motion-capture sensor on me. I asked him if it was built into a suit like the one Andy Serkis used to create Gollum’s movements in The Lord of the Rings. Brown gave me a weird look.

“It’s not quite as cool as that,” he said. He handed me a small belt with a single sensor sewn into the back. I tried to hide my disappointment.

I strapped on the belt and started hiking on the treadmill at a ten-percent grade. The sensor—which was connected to a gait analysis software platform called Runeasi—measured how well and how evenly my legs pistoned up and down and how much my hips swiveled in space.

I trudged on the treadmill while Brown held a tablet up for me to see. Various bars and graphs lit up and jumped around on the screen. After a few minutes, he stopped me, and we looked at my data. I felt validated: my body was, indeed, crooked.

To be more specific, my right hip was locked up. That tightness was pulling my torso into a slight, right-leaning curve. Because I was bent over sideways, I was hammering more force into my right leg than into my left with every stride.

Over time, asymmetries like this can cause chronic injury. In my case, the repeated, outsized impact forces had likely caused the plantar fasciitis and hip pain that I’d already been dealing with on that side.

Where Do Gait Problems Come From?

It’s hard to say where gait issues come from, Brown says. Sometimes, gait imbalances come from an injury or some other clear incident that leaves one side weaker than the other.

“Other times, it’s a cascade of smaller things,” he says. Say you overwork one hip in the gym one day. It’s sore, so you favor it. That puts more force on the knee on that side, which causes it to twist slightly. You start favoring that, which both makes the hip worse and gives you an ankle problem. On and on it goes, often without you noticing.

“We’re hard-wired to avoid pain,” Brown says. In other words, our bodies will shut off certain muscles or press others into double-time service to protect perceived injuries. All that happens without our conscious say-so.

Small, repetitive activities can also throw your body out of whack.

“Maybe you’re always pressing down through the right foot on the gas pedal, or always holding your baby on your right leg instead of your left,” Brown says. “Symmetry is obviously ideal, but it’s not something that’s baked into society.” If you’re a professional athlete or otherwise diligent about hitting the gym, you’re constantly hammering your body back into symmetrical strength. If not, those little things build up over time.

The resulting biomechanical asymmetry can be as visible as a limp or as subtle as a slight lean. That’s why using a professional trainer or physical therapist—especially one with fancy sensors—is so helpful.

Who Should Get a Gait Analysis?

Gait analysis is for anyone who moves their body long distances, says Brown. If you have asymmetrical pain—i.e., frequent soreness in one hip, one knee, or one ankle—your gait could be the cause. Heel pain, arch pain, and lower-back pain can also be symptoms of a faulty gait.

So, if your aches and pains fall into those categories and regular strength training hasn’t fixed them, a gait analysis might be worth the expense.

How Do I Fix an Asymmetrical Gait?

The answer will depend on your particular asymmetries. You might be over-flexible in some places or too stiff in others.

“Physical therapy is all about figuring out what’s not moving enough and making it move—and figuring out what’s moving too much and reeling it in,” says Brown.

In my case, my tight right hip was the issue. Brown did some (extremely painful) massage to loosen it up and then put me back on the treadmill. Sure enough, I was running more evenly.

The changes won’t stick without a regular stretching and strengthening routine, which means I’ve got my work cut out for me. But for the first time in a long time, I had a concrete issue to work on—and hope for getting back to hiking pain-free.

How to Get a Gait Analysis

You can get a rudimentary gait analysis for free at some running stores. Most offer a visual analysis without any special sensors or software. That said, it’s a great place to start if you’re new to biomechanical detective work and don’t want to spend a ton of money out of pocket.

If you’re looking for more detailed data, you’ll need the help of a trainer or physical therapist. PTs who specialize in runners and endurance athletes tend to offer more advanced analyses for anywhere from $100 to $400, depending on the complexity of the analysis. Mine was somewhere in between—$280 for a 60-minute session.

Overall, it’s worth it.

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