London, June 4 (IANS) Trekking poles help mountain hikers maintain muscle function while significantly reducing soreness in the days following a hike, says a new study.
‘The results present strong evidence that trekking poles reduce, almost to the point of complete disappearance, the extent of muscle damage during a day’s mountain trek,’ says Glyn Howatson, of Northumbria University, who led the study.
In the study, 37 physically active men and women were split into two groups of equal fitness and asked to hike up and down Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales.
One group was issued with and trained in the use of trekking poles while the other group made the climb unaided.
Each group ate the same meal the night before, the same breakfast, carried similar weight in day packs and took the same scheduled rests during both the ascent and descent.
The participants’ heart rates and their personal perceived exertion ratings were recorded during the hike.
Then, at the end of the hike, and at 24, 48 and 72-hour intervals afterwards, muscle damage and function were assessed through a variety of tests.
The results showed that there was significantly less muscle soreness in the group using trekking poles.
Self-rated soreness peaked at 24-hours in both groups but was significantly lower in the trekking pole group, both at this point and at the 48-hour point.
In addition, levels of the enzyme creatine kinase, which indicates muscle damage, were much higher at the 24-hour point in the non-pole group, while the levels were close to the pre-trekking levels in the group that used poles.
This shows that the muscle damage they were experiencing was negligible.
Pole manufacturers have suggested that trekking poles can reduce forces on lower-limb joints by as much as 25 percent, said a Northumbria release.
However, existing research has been restricted to the lab or to non-mountainous outdoor settings, such as running tracks, and has only focussed on biomechanical investigations into stress on the ankle, knee and hip.
This is the first documented study into the effectiveness of trekking poles in the environments for which they were designed.
