If you were to ask a group of hikers which part of a hike, the climb or the descent, is more challenging, most will say the climb. Climbing feels more strenuous, with the lungs working hard and the quads burning. However, the knees often tell a different story. Many hikers finish a long descent with legs that feel far worse than they did at the top. The issue is rarely the climb itself; it’s the return trip down that catches up with them.
What Happens on the Way Down
Going uphill, muscles shorten as they contract, pulling the body up the hill. This effort is taxing, but that is kind of the point. It’s a type of exertion that the body can handle well.
Going downhill, on the other hand, is different. Muscles lengthen while still bearing weight. Instead of pushing, they brake. Each step down is a controlled fall, and the quads have to catch it. The force of that catching travels through the knees, putting more stress on the joints than climbing does.
This is why someone can power up a flight of stairs and feel fine, but find the same flight punishing the next morning after a hard workout. The wear builds up over time. One descent is nothing, but a season of descents is something. Decades of stairs, hills, and trails can add up to real cumulative strain.
Daily Stairs Most People Don’t Count
Most people take more stairs in a day than they realize. Walk-ups, office stairs, subway stations—any of these can easily push a daily stair count into the hundreds.
One person who saw the VIGX Pi Plus in action lived near the long staircase in the Bronx featured in the 2019 film Joker. He walked those stairs regularly. When he saw me wearing the exoskeleton, he seemed curious, and so I asked him if it would help someone who needed to climb up a lot of stairs as a part of a long commute. His reaction was blunt: something like that would make a real difference. He wasn’t a hiker or a runner; he was just a guy who had to deal with a lot of stairs.
His point applies more broadly. Urban commuters, apartment dwellers, and anyone who spends significant time on stairs absorb cumulative descent load that goes mostly unnoticed until it becomes a problem.
How the VIGX Pi Plus handles descent:
Most assistive walking devices focus on the harder-feeling direction: climbing, pushing, and lifting. Descent receives less attention. The VIGX Pi Plus was designed to handle both directions.
The device’s onboard AI analyzes the wearer’s gait and detects when the terrain changes. On the way up, the torque assists in pushing the legs forward. On the way down, it helps absorb the impact that would otherwise be entirely transferred to the quads and knees. The wearer doesn’t need to press a button or switch modes; the adjustment is automatic.
The result isn’t that descent disappears. The wearer still absorbs impact, but the per-step load is reduced. Over the course of a long hike or a long day on stairs, this reduction in soreness and even fatigue means not taking it easy on day two; instead, you are finding new ways to challenge yourself.
Gears for the legs:
A useful analogy for the device is mountain bikes. Bikes have gears because no rider wants to struggle with a steep climb in the wrong gear. A lower gear allows the rider to maintain pedaling without exhausting their legs.
Human legs have never had gears…that would be absurd. A walker going up a hill receives whatever the hill provides. The same applies to the way down.
The VIGX makes it possible to have something like that—leg gears, as crazy as it sounds. It offers 15 assist levels, adjustable with two buttons on the belt. The higher power levels are most relevant on climbs and on longer hilly walks. Walking on a flat road may call for a lower setting, like seven. For descent specifically, manual adjustment is less important because the on-board AI can infer what is happening and adjust.
Who benefits most:
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Several groups tend to benefit the most from the device.
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Hikers who experience knee and lower-body strain during descents, but feel great while summiting, are the ideal users for this device. The descent phase of the hike is much less of a headache (or a knee-ache) than it might otherwise be.
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Another group of users includes individuals with a high daily stair volume. The Joker stairs in New York City are a prime example. Similarly, people who live in walk-up apartments, commute through subway stations with real staircases, or work in multi-story buildings are also potential users.
Additionally, people returning to physical activity after a period of inactivity may benefit from this device. After a few months away from regular walking or hiking, your legs may not be fully prepared for the amount of effort demanded. The VIGX provides a buffer that allows users to build consistency without the soreness that often hinders a comeback.
Hikers who want to extend their hiking experience may also find this device useful. As the body ages, activities that used to feel easy may become more challenging. By reducing the descent load on each hike, users can maintain their favorite activities for a longer period.
Quick Specs:
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Weight: Approximately 4.5 lbs (2.1 kg including batteries)
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Torque: Up to 15 Nm (about 30 percent effort reduction)
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Assistance levels: Adjustable from 1 to 15
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Battery life: Up to 24,000 steps with both batteries
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Batteries: Hot-swappable without powering down
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Gait adaptation: Continuous AI adjustment with automatic climb/descent detection
What most fitness conversations overlook:
Most fitness equipment discussions focus on the climb: going farther, going higher, getting stronger. Descent is often neglected in these conversations, which is surprising because descent is where the body pays for the exertion it performed earlier.
The VIGX Pi Plus device doesn’t eliminate descent entirely. Instead, it reduces the per-step cost of going down, whether on a trail, a subway staircase, or the landing of a fifth-floor walk-up. This makes the arithmetic of a long day easier, and over time, this difference can help individuals maintain their favorite activities.
While going up is often the part that gets remembered, going down is often the part that causes the most damage. Now, there’s support for both aspects of the hike.
For more information about the VIGX Pi series, visit vigx.ai.
