I finally caved and bought trekking poles after a PT friend was hiking with me and suggested poles would help me with knee pain going down hill.
Here’s an informative article about poles. I’m not advocating this particular brand of poles; I am simply advocating for using poles when hiking. Supposedly poles make hiking easier on your knees and increase your whole body workout by quite a bit – win win!
I’ve used my new poles twice now and will report that a) I did not have pain in my arms (as I feared), b) I did not have pain in my knees (although I haven’t tried them on a very steep hike yet), and c) the workout did seem slightly less hard. I went for a hike last weekend and was shocked that we’d been gone 2 hours. Felt like much less! I’m also told poles help decrease swelling in your fingers while hiking – makes sense.
One lesson learned: when using poles I have to carry water on my back and not in a hand-held water bottle. I can deal with that.