How to Take a Rest Step (the Mountaineer’s Secret)

It's an actual physical thing you can learn.

When I heard about the Rest Step from my Sherpa guide on my first trek in the Himalayas, I had no idea that it was an official mountaineering term. Nor did the Sherpa demonstrate the actual technique, at least not that I can remember.

I understood the Rest Step as an energetic experience: between one step and the next would come a pause that for me became a quick paying of attention to rest—a micro-second when I let myself sink into a state of rest though I barely slowed my pace. Nor did I break the essential rhythm of breathing and climbing. But it worked.

It wasn’t until writing this newsletter that I learned that mountaineers call the Rest Step the single most important technique for reaching the desired peak.

Here’s the technique. Let’s look at the way we usually do an uphill climb. You bend a knee, lift that leg forward, and plant your foot. With that leg bent, you use your quads and glutes to pull yourself up. The other leg does the same on the other side: your legs flex at the knee, partly bent, using more muscle power. And on it goes.

Multiply that by thousands of steps, and you’re going to have some very tired quads and glutes.

The Rest Step structures your movement in a way that relieves those muscles. Instead of hauling yourself up the hill, with each step you lock your downhill leg and pause for a millisecond while standing on it. That leg becomes the pillar of support that allows you to lift the other leg quite easily, with no strain, and place it on the ground ahead of you. That second leg then locks at the knee and becomes the new pillar, allowing you to take the next step without much effort.

In short, your skeleton and your pre-existing momentum, not your muscles, do the work to hold you up and propel you forward.

Act without doing, work without effort: I think of the line from the Tao te Ching.

If this is hard to visualize—and it is!—there are, of course, a few Youtube videos to help

• From Blackbird Mountain Guides, a short video that’s strong on mechanics.

• From a small company called Walking the World, a thorough explanation (but a stiff Rest Step if you ask me… I suppose just for the sake of instruction).

The Rest Step can take a bit of practice because our tendency is to just push ahead regardless of the exertion it requires. (Sound familiar? Not only in walking.) The Rest Step enables you to reach the goal expressly because you insert a tiny, well-designed pause.

It helps if you can also synchronize the steps with your breath, as with any physical activity. That’s when an uphill trek with the Rest Step becomes actually blissful. Endorphins enter the picture! You’re breathing, you’re moving, you’re alive, and you’re resting, all at the same time.

Try it next time you’re climbing, whether in the mountains or up a hilly street in San Francisco.

In the next post I’ll share another trick, one that applies not only to physical trails but other uphill climbs in daily life.