Is all weight equal? – Trekking Poles …

I am not arguing weather or not the weight matters but a pair of LT4 poles weigh 7.2 oz and the LT4S (straps) poles weigh 8.2oz so the difference is weight is more like 12oz. You also have to consider that even though one pole is always on the ground you still have to lift the extra pole weight (~6oz) every other step.

Well, lets see…

Average pace is 30"

So in 20 miles you will have walked 105,600 feet or 42,240 paces.

extra 2.8 oz lifted on each pace = 7,392 lbs.

10 oz (weight of each pole) lifted on each pace = 26,400 lbs.

Now add the weight your arms are pushing downward to this and it is rather large.

I'll reduce the extra 13 tons from the lifting each pace and let my legs absorb the extra push off, as the leg muscles are much stronger.

Choose the poles to do the job. No point in having very light poles if they break.
I've used very light poles, and found them fine if you only use them on manicured trails.
If you use them in mountainous terrain, and for supporting your shelter, you may wish for something sturdier.

You have to be careful with following a philosophy without question. In my experience it doesn't impact the same way boot/shoe weight or pack weight would. That is as long as I stay within reason. I'm sure if I carried 5lb. poles I'd feel the difference but I don't notice a 4-6oz. pole weight difference.

Nick, I like your math. :)

Leg muscles may be stronger, but don't underestimate the power of sturdy poles, especially when going down hill. When used properly, poles can lessen the impact on those leg muscles and joints.

I've never really noticed the weight of poles, and I use heavier Leki Super Makalus. If I stow them on my pack, it makes a difference, but not when I'm using them. I've simply never gotten to camp and said to myself, "man, those poles are heavy."

I also use my poles for all of my shelters, so they need to be pretty sturdy, adjustable, and long if needed.

"I am not arguing weather or not the weight matters but a pair of LT4 poles weigh 7.2 oz"

The 7.2 oz doesn't include the baskets

"and the LT4S (straps) poles weigh 8.2oz so the difference is weight is more like 12oz."

With baskets
254 grams = 8.95958634 ounces

I didn't know they made them with straps – difference 11 oz.

"You also have to consider that even though one pole is always on the ground you still have to lift the extra pole weight (~6oz) every other step."

I realize that – that is what I'm asking – although there is an 11 oz total weight difference – in practical use there is only a 5.5 oz difference.

"Well, lets see…
Average pace is 30"
So in 20 miles you will have walked 105,600 feet or 42,240 paces.
extra 2.8 oz lifted on each pace = 7,392 lbs.
10 oz (weight of each pole) lifted on each pace = 26,400 lbs.
Now add the weight your arms are pushing downward to this and it is rather large.
I'll reduce the extra 13 tons from the lifting each pace and let my legs absorb the extra push off, as the leg muscles are much stronger."

Those are large numbers but they do not give us a perspective on the effect. There are two aspects that I can think of that would be applicable and give us the needed perspective to make a decision.

1 – Energy consumed and resulting weight added – e.g. the added 11 oz (5.5 oz in practical application) over a 20 mile hike caused the incremental expenditure of x calories requiring carrying y ounces of food per day

2 – Fatigue – the added 11 oz (5.5 oz in practical application)over a 20 mile hike caused incremental fatigue – I don't know how you would measure that.

With that perspective we would then be able to make an evaluation.

I think we would all agree that if we added an additional 50 pounds of weight to our packs it would cause a noticeable increase in calorie consumption and fatigue. That is not the question here.

Would you be able to hike 20 miles the next day if your 5.5 ounce pole broke during the night? Trying to wrap yourself in a sil or cuben sandwich during a storm isn't very sleep inducing. :)

There is an interesting comment made by the folks who make Pacer Poles.
They make poles with an ergonomic grip.
What I found interesting was their discussion about pole weight.
http://pacerpole.com/faq/why-use-poles
They say that the weight at the tip of the pole is much more important than the weight near the grip.
This makes sense to me as that tip is lifted and moves more than the grip.
Similar to a bicycle wheel.
The weight of the wheel is much less important than the weight of the rim, tire and tube at the perimeter. Saving weight there is significant in how easily the bike rides.
Saving weight at the hub is much less significant.
Marty Cooperman
Cleveland, Ohio

"Those are large numbers but they do not give us a perspective on the effect."

I agree. But to me the root questions is, do trekking poles really help?

I found they slowed me down, and were extra items to deal with every day — an unneeded fiddle factor, generally a pain in the butt. Since I went back to no poles, I am much, much happier. I do kinda miss my old hiking staff, but its functionality is questionable too. And I may start using it again, only because it is an old friend.

Granted, people with lingering injuries or aging joints may find them extremely valuable, and allow them to hike where they might not be able to do so without them. Folks who use them because they are overweight would probably be much happier if they shed the excess pounds and left the poles at home.

You're swinging the poles. I'd rather add 3 lbs to my pack than 11oz of poles to move around all day.

You don't need to be overweight to use poles.

Some of us non-desert living folk find them a great help in river crossings, snow fields, shelter support, etc, etc,….

Given my weak old knees and ankles I find poles absolutely indispensible, particularly going downhill. And I use them often to hold up one or both ends of my tarp so I need some strength. And I use them on rough trails and bushwacking.

I have relatively heavy by today's standards 3-piece poles (great for packing for an airplane trip!), maybe 16 oz per pair. I too have never got to camp and felt the poles were a burden, in fact I rarely notice their weight.

As for slowing me down, if true this is an advantage, and not only because going too fast is the usual reason I overstress my old joints. Hiking for me is not an athletic event, it is an aesthetic endeavor.

My hiking motto is to "start out slow, then taper off…".

Nothing like running down a rocky, slippery hill with poles; fast, light, graceful. More akin to a fast animal with 4 legs. Would not recommend it for bigger folks, though.

I think you are from the Alps originally, Kat?
Folk have been using them for years in Europe. In mountainous terrain, they can be superb. Only relatively recently have folk in the US discovered them for flat trail walking.

Correct Mike.
Used to be wooden poles. Now you will see young folks to 80 year olds heading straight up (and down) the steepest slopes with poles.
Poles are also great for upper body strength. Since I am little, some of the taller "steps" can be hard for me; I use poles to literally propel myself up the steps.

I used to laugh at poles but then tried them. I think they safely double my speed on steep downhills while also reducing stumbles. Flats or moderate uphill they require more energy and I just carry them horizontal in one hand. Steep uphill with high steps I use them again.

On family trips where the pace is much slower I don't bring them at all. Already carrying too much stuff.

In use, I would say that poles require energy similar to footwear. Lighter is better as long as they are sufficiently strong, stiff, and durable.

"what I'm asking – although there is an 11 oz total weight difference – in practical use there is only a 5.5 oz difference."

I'd say the impact is far more than having 11oz. I can't imagine it would be less.

When you are using trekking poles there is constant acceleration and deceleration going on, so you are doing a lot more than just suspending the mass (like you do with stuff in your backpack). When you push off of a pole, you then need to lift that pole up and accelerate it forward at a high rate of speed so that it passes you, decelerates and lands it front for your next step. So the mass of your poles is constantly being accelerated up/down and forward/backward by the muscles in your arms and wrists. This is particularly pronounced at the bottom of the poles. The handles of the poles move sort of at a constant speed, but the speed of the bottom of the pole is constantly fluctuating radically as the tips accelerate, move quickly and then stop.

Comparatively, weight on your back moves in a fairly constant vector. The speed remains pretty steady, and it does bounce up and down a little, but it's not moving around nearly as much as a trekking pole tip….so mostly you are just suspending the weight and not really accelerating/decelerating it too much.

To illustrate what I'm saying, imagine adding a 5 lbs weight each to the bottom your trekking poles vs. adding 5 lbs to your pack. It would totally suck. You could hardly walk. 5 lbs in your pack on the other hand would slow you a bit, but not nearly as much.

Now with the LT4 poles, you've got virtually no weight in the bottom half of the poles since they only weigh 4oz and half of that is probably in the handle. When you walk with these, they whip forward so effortlessly. If you switch back to other poles its noticeably more work. You may not notice the work if you've never used super light poles, but there is a real difference and it's more pronounced than 11oz would be on your back.

I have an winter training loop nearby of roughly 15 miles with 4000ft of gain, it is useful to keep in shape because of constant gain/loss, and varied rocky terrain with some light scrambling sections. I wasn't bringing my poles (it is a dayhike after all) and would always miss them by the end of the day, plus I felt quite a bit slower in the steeps.

I started bringing them to see if they would be helpful even without a pack on, and right away knocked about 30 minutes off my time. I definitely feel less beat up at the end. Hardly scientific, but I'll keep my "heavy" BD poles.

Whatever works for you, great, I'm not knocking them. I don't really use them anymore personally, but haven't written them off.

But as a runner, here's what I don't understand:
Just about any running coach, especially those who specialize in distance running and achieving efficiency, will tell runners to keep arms, shoulders, and hands as relaxed as possible to conserve energy and maintain a smoother form. Any distance runner knows that excessive tension in the arms, shoulders, and hands, especially over long distances, is tiring, if not painful.

Trekking poles seem to run totally contrary to this idea of conservation, yet somehow are claimed to boost efficiency.

I'm just not sure.

Kat P, I agree, I just started using trekking poles, and there is nothing like almost running down mountains without slips, without worries. I view it more as a crab walking, but agree on the four legged feeling, that's absolutely the case going up or down, but that feeling grows the faster you go, so I find myself going faster almost every outing.

I'm giving my knees veto power over any decision I make re these poles, and they vote firmly on using them, and won't hear about anything else now. If your knees are at all weak from use/abuse, these are a no brainer, but I think, far more important, is if your knees are still in youthful good shape, trekking poles are going to keep them that way. Every time I see someone running downhill, especially with weight, I think to myself, you'll be in surgery in your 40s or 50s, unless you are really lucky.

I believe the physics of these poles, ie, their cumulative weights, are totally unrelated to what Nick said above, it's far more complex than suggested, and I'd have to discuss that with someone who really took the time to examine all the physics of the motion before making any statement about that, but my initial feeling is that ignoring the forward momentum and other forces (think starting a weight suspended from a string in motion, which is what you are basically doing if you are using these right, re the straps). It took me precisely one hike to give up on my decades long attachment to my home made hiking staffs, it was that obvious re the difference in performance.

I bought a friend with bad knees a pair after seeing how good they are, and after our first hike I mentioned the weight question, and he noted that in his opinion, they have a negative weight, because you are pushing yourself with them, using your upper body muscles as well as your leg groups to move forward. Estimating I would say I am going at a very minimum 1/2 a mile per hour faster with them. Maybe more, it's hard to tell. Far more going up and down hill, I'd say there it's almost 2x faster.

The key knee action I believe that ruins knees is the braking motion where the knee hits full extension going downhill, and particularly, that special moment when you have to decide if you go beyond that motion and avoid death by falling down a ravine etc, or you fall. Trekking poles remove that brake and put it onto solid aluminum, to me it's instantly obvious the difference each and every hike I do. Not only that, I'd strongly suspect that if your knees are weak or damaged, using these will allow the tissues to regenerate, since you are not continuously reinjuring the tissues on every downhill.

I have to wonder if growing up cross country skiing as I did has something to do with it, almost the first day I tried them, I found myself falling into a very familiar cadence, without thinking about it at all, then I realized, oh, this is the same exact motion I did as a cross country skier. However, I find that on more flat areas, I have to be going really fast to really get into this cadence, and, oddly, the more I use these trekking poles, the faster and further I go. There's something about taking 20 or so percent of each stride and adding upper body muscle strength to that. Might also matter that bicycles are my primary mode of transport, and the upper body muscle groups are quite similar in terms of what is used. My friend noted as well after his first two hour hike that his upper body ached for days after, which gives an idea of how much you use those muscles.

The one place I'm not sold on them is flats, but even there, if I go fast enough to really hit a true cross country stride, they work almost exactly the same way that cross country ski poles do in terms of using upper body to move you.

I'm sold, no doubts, if I had started using these 20 years ago I have no doubt whatsoever that my knees would be in substantially better shape, at least the hiking parts, can't do anything about the mountain biking issues.

Seeing real physics studies on the actual weights re work carried out (work in the physics sense) would be interesting though. I've also grown to suspect, for the same reasons, that classic formula that a pound on your foot is worth 5 on your back, for similar reasons, though I think there's less pendulum like action with feet than swinging trekking poles. My initial intuition is that using your upper body strength to boost your stride so radically outweighs any small loss re the work related to lifting them a few inches via a swinging motion that that work is not really worth thinking about much. Not to mention I have zero interest in using a pole that is going to be prone to snapping the moment I need it most, putting weight before critical functionality is foolhardy as far as I'm concerned. I've seen how carbon fiber cracks under the wrong pressure.

Excellent post, Harald. I couldn't agree more.

I used to ride bikes and hike a LOT. My legs were like tree trunks and my arms like toothpicks. After a bunch of years raising kids my cardio capacity is way down but my legs are still pretty strong. My weakest link for hiking is the heart/lung/energy delivery system, not my legs. Poles require energy so using them impacts my weakest link. (But my knees are a weak link so I use the poles on steep terrain). I can walk faster on the flats with poles, but then I bonk.

Someone else with great cardio capacity but maybe lacking leg strength/endurance may find different.

What is your weakest link?

I forgot to mention night hiking. You can hike in near dark using these, and you can go way further into dusk before pulling out the headlamp, and once the headlamp is out, you can go faster. That's because all the above advantages grow even more pronounced when light grows low and the visual inputs need some help from your new set of extra legs. Same reason animals with four legs do better in low light I assume, at least one of them, you just have more inputs happening, more feedback systems, and more stability, and less weight/stress on anyone point of contact.

Craig, I don't run, being fond of my knees and wanting to keep walking/riding into my golden years, but I have to assume that there is some fundamental difference between walking and running. Using your upper body strength is so self evident that I'd just toss out any sources that can't see such a simple fact. Try cross country skiing or biking without your arm strength. Or swimming. The cross country ski stride you fall into with trekking poles is the same exact motion, push off a touch with each pole plant, pushes you forward, upper body strength.

As with ultralight gear, trekking poles are going to push back the day I can't backpack / hike far back. And I won't be nursing sore knees, and I won't be planning a knee surgery as my forward plan. I have by the way had a few real knee injuries, and have healed them by taking very good care of my knees, and I have no doubt that using trekking poles would have without any question avoided my worst one. In fact, it would not have happened at all had I been using trekking poles (columbia gorge off trail, instant decision, die or rip knee.