If you are considering getting some trekking poles, get them. If you never thought about it — and you hike at least occasionally — get them. If you are a hiker and think you don't need them, you should seriously consider changing your mind — and get them :).

Before I continue, for the people in the camp of "I've tried them, and they seem to do nothing": I only saw their benefits after I forced myself to use the proper technique. Oscar Hikes has a very good video about how to use trekking poles. It's not as easy as it looks; it requires some concentration at the beginning, but then it becomes muscle memory, like riding a bike.

Since I started using them, I get less tired on hikes, and especially my knees have stopped hurting. They really help to spread the strain from just your legs to your arms as well. On a few steep uphill sections, I have actually felt my arms get more tired than my legs. That is a good indicator that they were contributing to the push!

The following is a bit of an extreme example. A few months ago, I traveled to Japan to hike the Kumano Kodo for almost a week. As luck would have it, around six weeks before the trip, I sprained my foot and the podiatrist told me to wear an orthopedic boot for eight weeks. If you do the math, you will see that I was not going to be able to make a full recovery before I started hiking. And I did not. I wore the boot until the day we were due to start hiking — BTW, taking a long flight with an orthopedic boot is a PITA — and then I went for it.

I was able to hike almost everything we had originally planned. There was one segment that we decided to skip before going to Japan because it involved reservations, and we couldn't modify the plan once we were already in Japan. We had no idea how well my foot would be healed once we got there. But we were able to do like 90% of our original plan, and 100% of our "let's do this a little bit easier" plan. I am very confident I wouldn't have been able to do it without the poles.

There were a few times when, depending on how I put my foot down, I felt some sharp pain that made me wince — but that was it.

Honestly, there is not much more to this post. I just feel like a lot of people don't know how beneficial trekking poles can be. Even if you are young, using them now may help you keep your knees healthier ad you get not-so-young. Hopefully, this changes somebody's mind and encourages them to give poles a try. I bet you can probably rent a pair from somewhere like REI before committing.

If you are curious about which ones we use, they are from Kelty. I am no expert on how good they are, but I remember that back in 2020 we did our research — it was a time when Reddit still had excellent reviews from real people — and these were usually recommended.

Happy trekking!