Trekking Poles for Trail Running: When They're Worth It

The pole question splits trail runners more cleanly than almost anything else. One camp thinks they are essential kit for anything mountainous. The other thinks they are an admission of defeat that you have to carry for 100 km.

Both are wrong in the usual way - the answer depends on the course, the duration, and whether you have bothered to learn how to use them.

What poles actually do

Three mechanisms, in order of importance.

They redistribute load. On a climb, poles let your arms, shoulders, chest, and back contribute propulsion, taking a meaningful fraction of the work off your legs. Over ninety minutes this barely matters. Over fourteen hours it can be the difference between quads that still function at the finish and quads that stopped cooperating at hour nine.

They add stability. Two extra contact points on loose scree, wet rock, a river crossing, or a rutted descent at night. The confidence effect is real and it makes you faster in a way that is hard to measure but easy to feel.

They provide braking on descents. Planting ahead of you on a steep drop absorbs load your quadriceps would otherwise take eccentrically - the exact damage mechanism that ruins late-race descending.

What they do not do: make climbing metabolically cheaper. Studies on pole use in uphill walking generally show similar or slightly higher oxygen cost and heart rate with poles, because you are recruiting more muscle mass. The benefit is not economy in the moment - it is fatigue distribution over time. Which is why poles are a long-race tool.

When to use them

Worth it:

• Sustained climbs over roughly 15% gradient, especially anything over ten minutes long.
• Long mountain races - anything over about six hours with substantial vertical.
• Steep, loose, or exposed descents where stability and braking matter.
• Late in any race, when your legs are compromised and your arms are not.
• Anything where you are hiking a large fraction of the total time.
• Snow, mud, scree, river crossings.

Not worth it:

• Short races under about three hours on runnable terrain.
• Rolling courses where you are running most of the climbs.
• Technical rock where you need your hands free.
• Fast flat sections - poles in your hands while running flat is dead weight and disrupted arm carriage.
• Any course where you have not practised with them.

The honest test: look at the course profile and estimate what fraction of your total time will be spent hiking or moving on gradients over 15%. Above about 30%, take poles. Below about 15%, leave them. In between, it is a judgement call about your own strengths.

The four techniques

1. Double-poling (the workhorse)

Both poles plant together, slightly ahead and outside your feet. Push down and back through both simultaneously, driving from your trunk and lats rather than your triceps. Then swing them forward and repeat.

This is the most powerful pattern and the one you will use on steep, sustained climbs. Rhythm is typically one plant every two or three steps. It is also the most tiring, so it is a tool for the steepest sections rather than a default.

The key error is planting too far ahead - it becomes a brake and loads your shoulders badly. Plant just ahead of your lead foot.

2. Alternating stride (the cruiser)

Opposite pole to opposite leg, exactly like the natural arm swing you already have. Left pole plants as right foot lands.

Lower power, far lower cost, sustainable for hours. This is what you use on moderate climbs and long runnable ascents. If you find yourself double-poling for two hours you are burning your upper body for no reason - alternate.

3. Downhill braking

Poles slightly shortened if adjustable, planted ahead and to the side of the fall line, arms slightly bent to absorb. Do not lock your elbows - a straight arm transmits shock into your shoulder and, in a fall, is how wrists break.

Use them on steep or loose descents. Stow them on fast technical descents where you want your hands free and your reactions unencumbered.

4. Stowing and deploying fast

The most underrated skill. In a race with mixed terrain you may deploy and stow poles a dozen times, and thirty fumbled seconds each time is six minutes.

Practise it. Find a system - quiver on the vest, poles through the front straps, whatever your pack allows - and drill it until it happens without thought while still moving.

Sizing

Fixed length: roughly 68-70% of your height. A 175 cm runner wants about 120 cm. Round to the nearest available size; err shorter if you are between, since most trail use is on climbs where shorter is better.

Quick check: standing on flat ground with the pole tip at your feet, your elbow should be at about 90 degrees.

Adjustable poles let you shorten by 5-10 cm for steep climbs and lengthen for descents. That is genuinely useful, but adjustable poles are heavier and have more failure points. Most experienced mountain racers use fixed-length folding carbon poles and adapt by choking down on the grip instead.

Grips: longer foam grips let you slide your hands down on steep pitches without adjusting the pole. Worth having.

Straps: learn to load the strap rather than gripping the pole. Hand comes up through the loop from below, strap runs across your palm, and you push down into the strap with a relaxed hand. Death-gripping poles for ten hours produces forearm cramps and blisters and wastes energy.

Training with them

This is the part people skip and then regret.

Your upper body and trunk are not conditioned for hours of poling. Runners who buy poles the week before a 100K discover around hour four that their shoulders and lats have quit, and then they carry two carbon sticks for 60 km.

Give it at least six weeks.

• Take poles on one climbing session a week from the start.
• Do a full long run with poles at least three times before the race.
• Practise on the specific terrain type you will race on.
• Include poles in any race-simulation effort.
• Add pulling work to your strength sessions - rows, lat pulldowns, or pull-ups. The poling motion is a pull-down, and that is not a pattern running gives you.

Also practise the annoying logistics: eating while holding poles, taking a bottle out of your vest with poles in one hand, opening a gel with your teeth. These sound trivial and they are the things that go wrong.

Race rules worth knowing

Many mountain races have pole rules and they are not uniform. The common ones:

• Poles must be carried from the start if used at all. You cannot have a crew hand you poles at an aid station mid-race. UTMB races enforce this strictly and it is a disqualification offence.
• Some races ban poles entirely, often on courses with heavy foot traffic or narrow trail.
• Some require them as mandatory kit for high-mountain sections.

Read the rules for your specific race, not the ones from last year or a different race in the same series.

Weight and choice

For racing, folding carbon poles in the 130-160 g per pole range are the standard. Aluminium is cheaper and more durable but noticeably heavier, and on a long race you will feel the difference in your shoulders.

Carbon poles do snap - usually when stepped on, wedged in rock, or fallen onto. If you are racing somewhere remote where a broken pole is a genuine problem, aluminium is the conservative choice.

Tips: carbide for rock and hard ground, rubber tips for road or slab sections. Baskets for snow and mud.

The verdict

Poles are worth it on long mountain courses and they are worth learning properly. They are not worth carrying on a rolling 25K, and they are actively counterproductive if you have not trained with them.

The failure mode is not "poles are bad". It is buying poles, never practising, and then discovering during a race that you own a technique you cannot perform.

If you are not sure whether your goal race is a pole course, the race predictor takes a course GPX and shows you the gradient distribution - the fraction of the course above 15% is the number that answers this question.