Study Shows Value of Poles for Hikers

When Christopher Knight was hiking with a pole in each hand, he had the feeling that the poles made the treks easier. When the exercise physiologist got back to the lab, he began to figure out why.

Using poles lets hikers lengthen their strides, put less strain on their knees and generally feel more comfortable, his study found.

The project tested 10 backpack-wearing volunteers who walked a treadmill in hourlong stints, and “they all favored the poles,” said Knight, of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The study may underestimate the value of the lightweight adjustable staffs because lab conditions could only approximate the rough and rocky conditions of a trail, said Knight and other experts.

In the study, five men and five women, all of whom had taken more than two trips a year with a full-size pack, walked treadmills set to a 5% upward tilt. They carried packs loaded to 30% of their body weight. In one walk, they used poles; in the other, they didn’t.

Knight tried to get the test as close as possible to real-world conditions, he said. The 5% grade was “a sustained incline that might be an approach to a mountain,” he said. The heart rate of 55% to 65% of maximal was what one might find on a hike, he said. Similarly, a backpacker might expect to carry a load of as much as 30% of body mass.

Results were published in the American College of Sports Medicine journal, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise.

Using the poles did make a difference, although not a big one, the study found. People took slightly longer strides, their knees bent slightly less, and their ratings of the strain of the treadmill walks were a bit lower when they had hiking poles.

The poles did not save energy; the subjects’ average metabolic rate was about the same with the poles or without. But Knight, who found poles useful in such Northeast spots as Mt. Washington in New Hampshire, thinks his lab work missed energy savings that would have shown up in the wild.

For instance, he could not simulate the energy used in keeping balanced while scrambling over rocky terrain, Knight said. By helping hikers to stay balanced, poles should conserve the energy that hikers need to keep going, he said.

Poles seem to be especially valuable as balance preservers on long, wearying trips, said researcher Frank Powell of Furman University in Greenville, S.C., who was not involved in the study.

“My experience taught me there are some real benefits in what we’d say is rough terrain,” said Powell, who has hiked segments of the Appalachian Trail in the East and the John Muir Trail in the Sierra Nevada of the West.

In a sense, healthy hikers using poles are learning something that people with arthritis have always known, said Dr. Robert P. Nirschl, an orthopedic surgeon in Arlington, Va. “It’s the same concept as the cane,” he said.

It comes down to biomechanics. When people walk, they swing one foot back while moving the arm on the opposite side forward. The weight, however, is on the foot. A cane or hiking pole unloads weight from the foot to the opposite-side arm, redistributing part of the load, he said.

Knight’s study did not look at one benefit that some pole proponents promote--their perception that they have less knee pain when they rely on poles.

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Pole information page created by Peter Clinch, Department of Medical Physics, Ninewells Hospital and Medical School, Dundee, Scotland: https://www.personal.dundee.ac.uk/~pjclinch/poles.htmKnees

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