Hiking Poles on the Trails Help in Avoiding Hiker’s Knee
Many hikers on the trails will at one time or another experience soreness in their knees, particularly in the area just around the patella (knee cap). Continuing to hike on a sore knee can lead to increasing pain that will eventually limit hiking. Fortunately there are a few simple adjustments that will usually fix or at least assist you when dealing with hiker’s knee.
• First and the most important thing to do with a sore knee is to rest it. Stay active because motion supports rapid healing, but don’t do any activity that brings on the pain.
• Second is to make some change to reduce the stress on your knee when you hike so that it can become gradually stronger rather than gradually more injured. Start easy and increase the challenge gradually enough that your knee strength can keep up.
• Third, hiking downhill trails puts a lot more stress on knees than does hiking up hill or on level ground, so adjusting the load on your knees during downhill hiking will be key to getting past hiker’s knee problems. You could avoid steeper downhill trails, but that is a drastic solution and not always necessary.
Hiking Poles
Hiking poles are one easy way to take stress off your knees. These are similar to ski poles except that they have adjustable length and don’t have the big baskets of ski poles since you won’t usually be using them on snow.
• They can have carbide tips for walking or dirt, grass or gravel, or
• Rubber tips for pavement or smooth stone.
For hiking poles to be useful on the trails, they have to be well set up, which means getting the length right and using the strap correctly.
• Set the length so that when the tip is on the ground and your hand is in the handle, your elbow is bent to about 90 degrees to start. The adjustable length allows you to make your pole a bit longer for down hills.
• You can use a hiking pole simply by gripping the handle for a while, but if you put significant weight on the poles, your hands will get tired, and if you do not put significant weight on the poles, they aren’t going to take stress off your knees. Fortunately hiking poles come with straps that can take lots of weight without your having to grip the handle. To make the strap work you have to insert your hand through the strap in a particular way.
Rather than reach horizontally through the loop to grip the handle, reach up along the pole and through the loop to grasp the handle. If you do it correctly, you can put all your weight on the strap without gripping the pole. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Fuz00lfUQI).
• Once you have your hand through the strap correctly, shorten or lengthen the strap so your hand is lined up with the grip.
Even if you use the straps correctly, you can still end up with rubbed spots on your hands. If that happens, wear gloves.
Adjusting Stride
Whilst on the trails, the maneuver that is most challenging to knees is landing on a nearly straight knee. Doing so makes knees hurt, so learning to land each foot with the same-side knee bent is a lifesaver. It’s particularly difficult to land on a bent knee when walking down a steep hill trail, so avoid the steepest hills until your legs are strong enough to handle them. Practice lowering your weight by bending the knee of your ground foot before placing your forward foot on the ground. A few degrees knee-bend is all you need but even that requires some leg strength so you may have to work at it.
Persevere!
Some people really do have anatomical knee problems that are not going to let them hike no matter how careful they are with their stride, but the vast majority of people with knee pain from hiking can get past it by using hiking poles until they build up the strength needed to maintain a good stride down hill for pain-free hiking. May you keep enjoying the outdoors and all those amazing trails waiting for your company.
Trail On Trailblazers!
Your Trailulive Collaborator and Trainer,
Scott Saifer
