Knee pain often occurs after mountain climbing, and damage to the knee joint is irreversible. Once injured, it’s very difficult to recover. To protect your knees, you need to focus on regular exercise. Let’s first talk about the relationship between regular exercise, mountain climbing, and knee injuries:   
    Many so-called "tough" people have average physical fitness but strong willpower. This so-called strong willpower often leads them to constantly push their bodies beyond safe limits. Some women avoid leg workouts because they fear their legs will get bulky — either claiming they don’t have time or insisting that stamina and mountain climbing are unrelated, saying things like, “I can’t run well, but I climb mountains just as fast.” The result is obvious: a host of joint injuries. Therefore, it's important to focus on daily training, especially building endurance and strength in the frontal thigh muscles. What's the benefit? It’s not about enabling you to climb higher mountains, but ensuring that even when descending, you maintain good stamina. Many injuries happen when you’re fatigued. I’ve seen many people full of energy going uphill, but dragging themselves down. When your thighs are tired, you might unknowingly lock your knees — meaning you straighten your legs completely to reduce the load on your thigh muscles and give them temporary relief. But this can easily lead to knee strain, knee impact injuries, ankle strain, ankle sprains, and lower back muscle fatigue.   
    Now let’s discuss several principles of loaded training:   
    1. Tailor to the individual: Achieving training goals doesn’t necessarily mean carrying more weight or enduring tougher conditions. In theory, there’s a guideline that loaded weight shouldn't exceed one-third of your body weight, but this should be adjusted based on your personal condition. It's best to find a suitable weight for you.   
    2. Progress gradually: Avoid suddenly increasing the load. The human body adapts progressively — never go full throttle in the first few sessions.   
    3. Differentiate treatment: Load weights should be adjusted according to different route arrangements and weather conditions. Typically, in extremely hot seasons or on particularly tough routes, you should reduce the weight.   
    4. Train scientifically: To achieve effective training, you can measure certain physiological data before and after training, analyze the changes, and scientifically improve your capabilities.   
    5. Equipment tips: When carrying heavy loads, choose a backpack with a good support system to prevent unnecessary injuries to your shoulders, waist, and back. Learn packing techniques — for example, keep your center of gravity slightly higher when going uphill and slightly lower when going downhill. On sections requiring special postures, pay attention to maintaining steady balance of your center of gravity, and so on.   
    The most important thing is prevention
    1. Always do sufficient warm-up exercises before training. Don’t jump straight into high-intensity workouts. Injuries most commonly occur when you’re fatigued or low on energy.   
    2. Pay attention to your running posture and avoid landing only on one side of your foot.   
    3. Focus on using your thigh muscle groups to avoid direct impact on your knees from the feet.   
    4. When you experience knee discomfort, reduce the intensity and frequency of your workouts. Avoid intense running, jumping, and weighted exercises.   
    5. Keep your knees warm, especially in summer — don’t expose them to excessive cold.   
    6. Apply heat to your leg muscles after workouts.   
    7. When doing loaded training, especially when going downhill, avoid knee impacts.   
    8. Stronger muscles can help relieve some of the pressure on your knees and minimize injury. Strengthen your leg muscles regularly to reduce the burden on your knees. Focus on strengthening your quadriceps (front of the thigh) and cruciate ligaments, enhancing the inner thigh and overall thigh muscle strength (such as through weighted squats), and use methods like muscle stretching, walking, horse stance, or wall exercises to help the patella move smoothly within its groove. I found climbing Yuzhu much easier this time.   
    9. Before climbing, rub the lower edge of your knees with your fingers to promote lubrication and protection.   
    10. Stretching and lengthening the hamstring and patellofemoral joint helps reduce the chance of knee injuries.   
    For those who take mountain climbing seriously, focus more on foot care and engage in more exercise on non-climbing days. Aside from loaded training as a form of workout, many seasoned climbers have experienced a unique kind of joy during extreme exhaustion — and it can be quite addictive.   
    Simple joys, with a bit of self-care, are like a good jeep — it won’t break down after just a few miles if properly maintained and can keep going to the ends of the earth. When you head out to play again, don’t blindly chase weight and speed. Take good care of your knees — they’re your ticket to keeping on playing. Don’t forget these two essentials: knee pads and trekking poles.   
    The wilderness still has so much to offer. Broaden your horizons and find your own joy. There are so many beautiful sights ahead in life.   
    Loaded calf raises (tiptoe stands) mainly train the soleus muscle of the calves, not the knees — the knees can’t really be trained directly. However, when lowering your heels after a raise, your thigh muscles contract, which also gives them a workout by stretching and elongating the muscles. This exercise is included in every mountain training plan.