I was wondering that if your walking up a steep hill on a pavement, is it better to take long strides which means each leg needs more muscle power to lift the body, or short steps means less muscle leg power but more often.
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Itās always difficult to say what others should do because weāre all different. Donāt want to say ādo thisā or ādo thatā and then hear the person has had a heart attack, strained a muscle or something.
If Iām walking for exercise, I do the stride that comes naturally on any upward gradient but fast enough to make the lungs work and the heart speed up.
If doing that, I think muscle tone follows as a subsequence.
I walk regularly, almost everyday for two miles. I keep my speed about the same, not meandering, but I do let my body decide my pace on inclines. I can feel the exercise was brisk, as it takes my body several minutes to get back to normal when I am finished.
Personally I stride out a bit more on hillsā¦
Get the bus.
I know someone who used to live at the top of a very steep hill, she used to walk backwards up the hill, she said it somehow seemed easier to get up the hill . Iām not joking either
Personally I would take shorter steps but more of them Realspeed, if you were driving up a steep hill in your car you would change down the gears and get the revs up. More torque and less speedā¦
Canāt say, I take reasonably short steps anyway (compared to how I used to walk) I also live in a very flat area so hills are not an option.
I try to walk 5 to 8km each day though the recent wet weather put the kibosh on that.
If anybody is interested there is a phone app called āSimply Walkingā which doesnāt share your walk data unlike most of these apps. It records your walk on a map as well as graphically and can use kilometres or the more archaic measurements.
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When I first started working in central London, my job often involved delivering stuff on foot. To make life interesting I would sometimes pick a person out some way in front and and a finish line , perhaps a lamp post or a phone box, then race them to it, long strides only, no running. Of course they had no idea I was racing them but I must have looked a complete tw@t speeding past them at the last second. 
These days Iām a bit slower but I would say walking up hill I would be inclined (get it?) to take smaller steps, long strides up a hill could look just as ridiculous as they did in my youth.
Wanāt it John Cleese who did the ministry of silly walks? 
It was and thatās how it could look I reckon. :-p
Yes! That is true to a point. Dunno why. Maybe the muscles you use to walk backwards are more fresh?. I think a long stride is better than short steps.
If taking shorter steps, try not to make it look like mincing. 
Edit: Iām going on a walk today. I havenāt done much walking lately and it exercises different muscles to cycling. Part of the walk will involve going up a steep hill. Iāll try a few different pace lengths if nobody is watching. 
These are a couple of hills I walked up. Very difficult to change the natural stride but I think the leading foot meets the ground earlier due to the upward gradient, so steps are probably a bit shorter. Trying to make them longer felt awkwardā¦
I think stride length would be determined by the steepness of the gradientā¦Those hills would be described as āundulationsā on some of my walks Martā¦
If I mayā¦Running up hills is more energy efficient than walking, because the amount of time each leg has to bear your full weight is drastically reduced, and momentum is added to the equationā¦
Photos often canāt show the length and gradient of hills but anyway, they were the ones I walked up and gave thought to the length of pace. I have been pedalling up them for years. Not sure if I still could but might give it a try sometime.
I canāt (or wouldnāt) risk running due to a kneecap that I broke into three bits when I was in my forties. It gave trouble for a number of years and running might cause it to start again.
Best thing about cycling and walking (for me) is that neither activity jars the bones as much as running.
Oh God no Mart, I wasnāt suggesting for one minute that you should attempt to run up hillsā¦
Funny really but the but the last bit of knee pain to disappear before it finally went away altogether was when walking downhill. I suppose having to hold the bodyweight back. At the time, I got water on the other knee because of not being able use the broken one all that well.
Iād just started running with friends before I fell and broke the knee.