Burn 20% more calories Hiking with Poles….no way?!

I think they're claiming 20% when using the poles for added propulsion instead of just balance.

+1 to what Larry said

If you're really using your arms as part of your forward propulsion, I could see it being +20% energy use- if only because it seems to bump up my speed by 10-15%, perhaps more on flat terrain.

Even so, since you are doing work with your arms you will be burning more calories. You could always skip the poles and walk really, really slow and bring very little food for extended trips of few miles. Perhaps add lots of hash, opium, and benzodiazapenes to slow your metabolism and speed even more. Slowpacking, here we come! :)

over time, yes. i'd say that may be true.
if i walk 4 mph without poles and 5mph with poles, then theoretically i could be burning 20% more calories per hour. but if i'm covering 20 miles in a day, it evens out.

As others have mentioned, only if the poles enable you to move faster. All other factors being equal – same load, same speed, same terrain – I'd find it impossible that you'd burn 20% more calories either carrying or using the poles.

**Nordic poles** is the clue. This is a speed-walking style with longer cross-country style poles– the ones with curved rubber feet on them. Popular with off-season cross-country folk.

Using trekking poles, you get more upper body exercise while climbing and pushing on the poles, so there is some caloric increase. I wonder how much the calories from upper body use offsets the relief given the lower body. Just going down a trail, I am just flicking the poles out, so there isn't a lot more energy expended than swinging my arms.

Nordic Walking Study
In our Nordic Walking Study, participants were monitored and evaluated in an effort to compare oxygen consumption and energy expenditure associated with regular walking (walking without poles) and Nordic walking (walking with poles). As further detailed in Table 1, Nordic walking significantly increased oxygen consumption, caloric expenditure, heart rate, and heart rate as a percentage of maximum heart rate for both men and women without significantly affecting the rate of perceived exertion by the participants.

More specifically, Nordic walking resulted in approximately a 20% increase in oxygen consumption and energy expenditure compared to regular walking at the same speed. Thus, the implementation of upper body muscular work while walking increases the amount of calories burned. This finding has important health implications as an individual who employs walking with poles as opposed to regular walking into their regular fitness program will significantly increase the amount of calories burned particularly over an extended period of time.

Table 1. Change in Physiological Responses to Regular Walking and Nordic Walking

% Change in Men % Change in Women
Oxygen Consumption 20.0 21.3
Caloric Expenditure 19.9 19.3
Heart Rate 8.2 4.0
% HRmax 8.2 4.0

http://www.cooperinstitute.org/research/past/nordicwalking.cfm

For me the trade-off is sparing my knees, so even if trekking poles increase calorie use without an concomitant increase in speed, they're worth it for me.

That said, I do feel like I'm faster when using poles than without, except on downhills, where I use them to transfer a lot of the load off of my legs and onto my upper body, because of the knee injuries.

For this study to be valid, obviously you need a lot of controls that don't exist or a HUGE group of people to test it on. Either way you're not getting valid results. In the first case, you're not able to control how fast people walk… period. In the second case, the data becomes more and more generalized to get the results leaving many individuals' compositions and techniques truly untested (the study may not apply to everyone).

It would take a 10 page paper for me to fully explain why this study isn't meant to help you! It isn't valid and shouldn't be used by average joe to confirm or attest to anything. Most likely it will be used to progress future studies that properly test these sorts of things providing much more valid information than basically what we already know and probably to sell some sweet cardio poles to overweight americans. Gotta start somewhere right?

As a mechanical engineer I would have to build a very complex force/balance system to actually determine if trekking poles expend more energy. Then I would have the impossible task of building a biomechanical mock up that adequately placed this information into context. Believe it or not, we do not have the $$$ to just test anything we want, especially when there is no benefit to the results. Hence the biased results of this publication, affording them future funding from bodies of the medical/athletic persuasion.

Maybe telling people poles don't expend pointless amounts of energy would sell a few more to hikers each year. Telling the opposite to every overweight desperate American would sell thousands of sticks. This kind of research is biased more often than not unfortunately. Just look at the "8×8" or many other studies of the incredible edible egg. The human body is just far to complex for us to understand with limited funding, and the funding stops when the research starts to pay, not when it is the truth or extrapolated into data that can actually help most individuals.

Sorry to be "that guy". I'll sit quietly in my corner with my foil hat on now. j/k I'm just so tired of all this hoo haaa and what not being used to "prove" things.