Do Poles Improve Performance in Trail Running with Nicola Giovanelli PhD | KoopCast Episode 173

Trail and ultra runners, what is going on? What's happening? Welcome to another episode of the KoopCast. As always, I'm your humble host, Coach Jason Koop. And today's episode of the podcast is going to examine the value proposition of using poles in trail races. And I could think of no better guest for this than our upcoming guest, Nicola Giovinelli, PhD, who has become one of the most foremost experts in the use of poles and is pushing the research forward in this area. Nicola makes his second appearance on the podcast. And today he is here to discuss one of his more recent papers, which is titled Pole Walking is Faster, but not cheaper than uphill walking. And as the name implies, they tested athletes in both a maximal and a submaximal condition with and without poles on a trail. Nicola is also a very good athlete in his own right. And we do veer off of the paper itself and speculate on why they got the conclusions that they did and what that might mean for athletes. At the end of this podcast, we also get into his soon to be released paper where they used an instrumented pole and instrumented shoes to determine if in fact, poles do save legs. And I cannot wait for that paper to come out as well.

Needless to say, you're going to want to use poles in your next race, particularly if that race is uphill and particularly if it is intense. So with that as a backdrop, I'm going to get right out of the way. Here is my conversation with Nicola Giovinelli, all about how to use poles to improve trail performance. Thanks for coming back on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I hope we can get to a couple of papers that you've either written or are coming down the pipeline. But before we dive into it too quickly, man, like you've carved out your niche, so to speak, like in the research world and then the trail and ultra community as like the pole person, like, you know more about pulling than I think anybody else out there. So the listeners can kind of like appreciate your background a little bit. Like how, like what started this obsession?

Yeah. So maybe I'm quite good in knowing the pole, science point of view, if we can say like this. And, uh, because I have read a lot of papers about, about it. And, uh, with my group, uh, we have, uh, worked, uh, a lot on, on trace and, uh, on trail running poles, because you know, there are many papers about Nordic working. Um, but they are quite different, uh, from our, uh, technique because Nordic working as a, uh, uh, usually they, uh, they, they use, uh, uh, diagonal stride. So it is more, uh, specific gesture and, uh, uh, they do on flat terrain or, uh, slightly uphill or downhill, but it is not real like in trail running. Uh, they also have, uh, um, a specific aid for the, for the poles. And, uh, so we, we should adapt the, um, the results that these, uh, autos, um, found out and we said, with, with our trail running world. So, um, everything was, uh, born when, uh, when we started to, uh, try, try to understand, um, if, uh, poles were really useful

during trail running, in particular during uphill, because, um, looking at some races, in particular vertical kilometer races, of course, you can see that, uh, in steepest races, uh, uh, the fastest athletes use the poles. Um, and, but there were no, no, no studies about, uh, the uphill performance with poles and, uh, starting from the, um, Nordic walking study studies. We, we thought that poles were useless because, uh, in Nordic walking, uh, usually you have a greater, um, energy consumption, uh, higher, uh, heart rate frequency, heart rate, and, uh, also higher lactate.

And, uh, so all these physiological parameters that were different when they use poles were like, uh, not advantages for trail running. I mean, we, with training, we should, um, we should decrease the, the energy cost. We should, uh, decrease the heart rate at the same, uh, uh, power output or, or, uh, uh, running velocity, running speed. And, uh, but these studies say that, uh, if you use poles, you had higher art rate and, uh, higher, uh, other parameters. So, uh, we started to ask if, uh, uh, they were really useful and, uh, I tried to, to, to, to read everything about poles also in, uh, um, cross country skiing and ski mountaineering, but I couldn't find information and I couldn't find, uh, real, uh, data that, uh, confirmed that poles should be used during, uh, uphill, um, uh, let's say up your running, even if it's not real running because you know, on, when it is so steep, you can't run up hiking. Yeah. It's like, uh, you know, there are some of my friends who kidding me like saying that I'm not a trail running, but I'm a trail walker because yeah, you run down it,

but usually you walk. So yeah. So yeah, everything started from this. Yeah. So this whole thing started as an observation and that, that happens a lot in research where you're noticing a lot of the top trail runners are using poles, but we can't quite come up with a reason for why it's advantageous. And I think that this is particularly interesting because when you look at all of the kind of parallel research, then you mentioned Nordic walking and also in cross country skiing, there might be some indication that poles could cause a disadvantage. So you have this discrepancy between athletes are using it and trail mountain running events because they feel that that it's an advantage, but yet we didn't have anything concrete to say, yes, it actually is an advantage. And if anything, it might be a potential, it might be a potential disadvantage.

So thus the whole unraveling of things and starting to, and starting to identify where poles might actually be an advantage. So we're going to talk about, you know, one of the papers that, uh, that you, uh, that you were the lead author on. And the title is, is pole walking is faster, but not cheaper during steep uphill walking. And I like the fact that you had steep uphill walking, very specifically identified and not, and not quote unquote running. So before we get into that, though, like when you were setting this paper up, what was like the fundamental value proposition that you were trying to tease out with the research conditions? So, yeah, you are right about the, the, the fact, uh, on the, about the, the cross country skiing, using poles or not, or, um, uh, Nordic walking, uh, disadvantage or advantage and, and the feeling that athletes, uh, of straight running have when they, when they use poles and, uh, and also that there were no concrete data about, uh, using or not using poles. And, um, so we, we, we, when we talked about this paper, the, the, the reason why we did it was because we wanted to understand if they were useful to be, uh, faster, uh, not like, uh, not to be cheaper, uh, to save energy, let's say, uh, because I mean,

when we are, we are racing, we don't really care about the, the, the energy consumption. If the race is quite short, I don't, I mean, 20, 30 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, uh, even if the cost of transport is an important factor on, on, uh, on the performance. And, uh, but what we measure, what we can measure is the, and, and what we, we want to improve and is the, the, the, the speed, the vertical speed in this case. And so the final performance and to, to get, uh, uh, shorter time of, uh, to, to finish the, the trial. So, yeah. So the, the, the main idea here was just to measure the time performance, uh, uh, on a napkin and then, uh, to say, okay, um, we can be faster with poles or we can be faster without poles. So then, yeah, you know, I, I work in, uh, um, an exercise, uh, physiology laboratory. So we can do a lot of measurements when we are doing this, uh, uh, these tests. So we put all together to try to understand why we were faster or, or, or slower when, when we use those. So that's why we,

we, we started this, uh, this paper and, uh, uh, that's the question that we tried to, um, to answer. And here's what I can appreciate about that the most is it's kind of like you're, you're going for the jugular, right? Because we all know that in, in athletics, especially when we're, especially when, when we're concerned about, okay, who's going to, what, what are the qualities that elicit a high quality performance, right? Or what are the physiological attributes that elicit a high quality performance? You're kind of going for the jugular right out of the get-go because you're measuring performance primarily at the end of the day. And then you can unravel all the mechanisms. Is it a cost of transport thing? Is it a force thing? Are we somehow spreading out the load?

And that's a, you know, another paper that you're, uh, that you're working on right now. But when I looked at this from the get-go, I'm like, yeah, let's just get down to the heart of things. Let's put people in a time trial situation. Let's have them go uphill as hard as they can. Condition a condition B and see which one of those conditions produces the better performance. And then once we have the performance at the end of the day, then we can start to unravel what, okay, what are all the potential mechanisms that we can tease out that elicited this higher performance in this condition versus, versus this other condition. So that's what, that's one of the things that I appreciated, uh, uh, about this, uh, about this the most. So you, you, you mentioned you work in the exercise physiology lab, so you're able to kind of expand it from this initial idea of, we're just going to test in kind of these two conditions. So let's kind of go over the whole array of what you were actually studying and then we'll get into the results, uh, of the paper.

Uh, yeah. Um, this study was, uh, uh, I think maybe it, it was my first re, uh, ecological study. So the first, uh, study on, on field, uh, I mean, I have already published a couple of studies, uh, from the field, but it was like in track and field. And, uh, or, so it was like an easy setup, uh, uh, experimental setup because it was just to go to the track and field with the car, with you, you, you, you get, uh, all the stuff from the lab and you, you took measurement there and then you analyze the data and the, and got the results. But this time was like, uh, you know, uh, to go to the mountain with all the equipment and, uh, and, uh, also a funny story is that I paced all the athletes, uh, for four times, um, up to the trail. So in one month, I think I did like, I don't know, 60, 60,000 meters of elevation gain for working. Yeah. I, I, I bonked sometimes and I was so tired at the end of the week that it was like, yeah, working and, uh, and, um, and training, uh, uh, at the same time. And so, yeah, it was super funny, but it was also hard. And, uh,

so this was the first time that we, we took some measurements on a trail or a mountain, on a mountain trail because before we, we had already, um, measured the pole walking and, uh, the walking without poles appeal, uh, but in laboratory conditions, um, in particular, we built, uh, we built, uh, steep treadmill, uh, I think it was maybe five years ago. Um, and we started to measure, uh, the, the, um, two conditions, pole and without poles, uh, on steep incline up to 40 degrees, but on treadmill. So, you know, on treadmill, uh, um, the, the, the, the surface is smooth, there are no stones or, uh, the, the, or uneven terrain. So, um, we got some interesting results from that study too, because, uh, we show that, uh, with poles at steep inclines, uh, um, you can save some energy. Um, not a lot. It was like, uh, four, three, four percent on average, um, cheaper to work with poles, uh, than, uh, walking without poles, uh, when, uh, the, the athletes were at, uh, uh, 25, about 25 degrees or 30 degrees. And, um, so from that study, we, we,

we thought that, uh, yeah, with poles, it was cheaper, uh, to go uphill. And, um, and so the idea was quite, uh, uh, strong and, uh, we thought that, yeah, we can go to do some measurements outdoors, but we were pretty sure to, to, to find out the same results or similar results. Um, um, and, uh, from that study, we also hypothesized that, uh, the performance with poles should be, um, better when, when, uh, when you are uphill on trail, uh, because if you can save energy, you can be faster. So, um, so it was quite easy to understand this, this point. Um, but also we had some limitations to this first study on treadmill. And the first one was that it was a treadmill. So it was not so specific. And, um, the, the walking, the pole walking technique was completely different from, uh, the pole walking technique that you use when you go outdoors, because on treadmill, it is easy to do, uh, to adopt, um, diagonal stride, like in cross country skiing.

Um, but, uh, when you are on trails, usually you, you don't use diagonal strides so much. And, uh, Because you're reacting to the terrain, right? You can't be as, it can't be as patterned, I think is the way that most people think about it. You can't have this like very monotonous, predictable type of pattern because you're reacting to the terrain. Yeah. You have to, to adapt the, the technique to the terrain and to the, to the, um, incline. So, uh, we have seen that, uh, usually on, on, on mountain path, they use more like double, it's not a real double pulling, but it is a kind of in the middle between diagonal stride and double pulling. So it is a different technique. And also this is the reason why that, um, poor walking, um, in trail running is completely different than Nordic walking. Uh, in Nordic walking, the, the movement is quite stable, but, and the, in, in, uh, trail running is every, every step is different from the others. So, uh, we, we can't, we can't say that, okay, if you do 1000 steps, uh, we, yeah, we have to average all the data because it is impossible to analyze every single step, but, um, it is not like in Nordic walking. So this was the first limitation. The other one was that, uh, uh, when, when we measure the, for example, the cost of transport on, uh, on treadmill

in, in laboratory condition, um, we do like four, five, six minutes step, um, because we only need to have a steady state in oxygen consumption and, uh, carbon dioxide production. And, uh, after five minutes, we stop the test and, uh, we change the condition, for example, we change the incline and we do another one. Then after five minutes, we do another one. And, but this is not so specific, um, to the trail running or vertical, uh, kilometer races where, uh, the duration is longer. And, uh, so even the, the pacing can change. And, uh, uh, so we wanted also to try to make more realistic, uh, condition, um, outside from the, from the, from the lab.

Let me, can we, can we pause really quick? Cause I think that that's really important because what you were describing, one of the limitations that you're describing is reflective of a very prototypical running economy test where we put an athlete on a treadmill at a, at a, at a predetermined speed, 17 kilometers an hour, 12 kilometers an hour, whatever it is, you get them to a steady state oxygen consumption, and then you determine, okay, that's their running economy for that particular speed. When we try and the reason that that's, that's, that's particularly important is, is it's something that's derived from the marathon and the half marathon world as a strong indicator of potential performance. If you know somebody who's running economy and you know, they're via two max, you have a pretty good indication of what they're capable of in the, in, in the, in the marathon world. Go ahead. Um, you mean in uphill performance? No, no, no, no, not an uphill performance, but in a, in a flat level condition. The, in the, in the, the reason that that's, that, that, that, that is important is because the marathon is contested at a relatively monotonous intensity. The intensity does not vary all, all that much. And so when we take those types of protocols in this, in this case, it's a running economy protocol and we try to adapt it into a different sport, vertical kilometer or mountain trail running, the results of it might not be as transferable. And in this case, one of the reasons that it potentially is, and we're starting to tease

this out a little bit more is because the event is contested at not a monotonous intensity, certainly compared to the marathon. And so when you're, when you're mentioning the, the, sorry, it's my dog shaking your head. Wendy, I'm about to kick her out of my room, by the way, when you're mentioning, um, when you're, when you're mentioning one of the limitations of the study, it's that transfer of the testing protocol to what it actually means in, in, in the real world. And we got to start somewhere and we're starting from, you know, the marathon world. And I think that you're starting to recognize that some of those transfers might not be as tightly correlated in trail and trail performances. Yeah, indeed. There is a, uh, a discussion about, um, about these, uh, uh, measurements about the, the, the running economy, you know, because, uh, someone sustained that, uh, it, it is, uh, not so useful to measure for only four or five minutes and then assets go, go running for two hours or more. And, uh, sometimes a lot, even because yeah, two hours is quite good actually. And, uh, and also we know that with fatigue, the running economy, uh, tend to, to be worse. So you use more energy and you need more

energy, uh, than the beginning. So when we calculate, or we, we try to calculate the energy consumption in a marathon or even during a, a tree running race, um, we should consider that after one, two, three, four, 10 hours, um, the, the cost of transport is, can be totally different from the beginning. Uh, also 20%, uh, even if we, we have to, to, to say that, uh, uh, and this is quite strange that some authors reported that after a 60 K, uh, tree running race, um, athletes had a better, uh, cost of transport, you know, and there are more than one studies that, uh, say this. So, um, it is not clear.

I mean, we know that cost of transport is one of the determinants, uh, for the tree running performance and also for marathon performance, but it is not clear if, uh, or why sometimes we measure an increase after, uh, uh, a tree running race. And, uh, sometimes we, we find a decrease in cost of transport. Yeah. So, um, I think, and also the fact is that, uh, the differences that we measure in particular when, when we work with, uh, high level athletes, uh, the difference between different condition, for example, using or not poles or, uh, uh, I don't know before and after a training protocol, the differences are so small. It's like, I don't know, two, 3%. Yeah. And, uh, even sometimes they are not statistically different. So when you try to publish, uh, the, the reviewers say, okay, you, the, the, the, the cost of transport is improved by 4%, but, uh, it is not statistically different.

So you can't say that it is better. Yeah. And I think from, for, for, uh, uh, from a practical point of view, this is a limitation. Uh, it's like a gap between science and, uh, and, uh, field performance, because if I, for example, with the poles on the, on the apple treadmill, we measured the difference that was like 3% or 4%. And, uh, at some steps, uh, it was not even different between using or not poles, but with poles, the energy required was always lower, uh, maybe 2%. And, uh, even if it was not statistically different, um, when we go outdoors and we try to do the, the, the performance with and without poles at 2% of, uh, uh, improvement in the performance, maybe it is a big difference.

Um, you have maybe 10, 15 seconds better. And yeah, it's nothing for normal people, but for a high level athletes is the, the, the, the difference between to be in top five or to be in top 10 or to, to, to, to win the race. So, and it's different depending upon not only the athlete, but also the, the, the race itself. I mean, we, you know, we've got very good data from the university of Colorado and, uh, Roger Crum's old, old lab that indicates that even small improvements, very small improvements, 1%, 1 and a half percent improvements in running economy or cost of transport can relate, can translate to usually the ratio that they're, that they've been using is about 0.7 to one.

So if you get a 1% improvement in running economy, that's going to translate to a 0.7, 0.7% improvement in the actual race performance at the half marathon marathon, uh, type of distance. We don't know what that means in a trail running situation. And I think that's something that we're kind of like continuing to unravel is if we improve these physiological variables, whatever it is, cost of transport, you know, with, with, uh, running economy and more of a traditional, uh, and more of a traditional sense. If we improve those variables, do those, does that actually translate into an improvement in performance? But let's kind of get back to this study because I want the, I want the listeners to kind of appreciate how you initially set it up. First thing you did is you brought the athletes into your lab and they did essentially graded exercise test, but uphill, which I thought was pretty, pretty novel and unique. You're trying to kind of like set a baseline.

And then they went through four different conditions. Why don't you describe that, that process? So, so we can put the listeners in the place of somebody who's actually participating in one of these tests and they can start to understand it. Uh, yeah. Well, uh, you know, where I live, um, actually where I live, uh, it's, uh, like a small community. Um, and, uh, we know, uh, everybody, each others. And, uh, so I know, I think all the athletes who compete in the, in the region, this is you cajoling people into your lab. That's what you're trying to say. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, that's great because when I, when I have an idea about some study, I have like, I don't know, 40, 50 people that want to join the study because they want to try to measure themselves on the lab.

It's selfish. Yeah. So, so I, I have never had problems to find, uh, subjects for my studies. And, uh, also in the last two years, um, I worked with a group from the university of Verona. And, uh, when we decided to do, uh, this tune new studies, uh, they said, okay, yeah, we can try to do the measurements in our lab, but yeah, we can have maybe four to five people ready for the, for the study. And I said, ah, no, maybe I can do it in, in our lab. And I have like 30, 40 people ready for the study. So it's just to, to, to send an email or a message or, uh, uh, also an Instagram, a story. And I get a lot of, um, um, a lot of, um, to say, uh, availability from the athletes. And, uh, and that, that is great because we can also, um, make a decision, uh, and we have inclusion, inclusion criteria for the studies. So, uh, maybe we need 17 or 18 athletes and we can get 20 to, to have, uh, uh, more, um, uh, higher number and also to have, uh, the, um, the choice if we have some problems, some issues with the equipment, for example, because you know, when you do a lot of

measurements, uh, the, um, maybe the lactact, uh, once it doesn't work or the VO two, it is not correct. Or, uh, so you have to, to, to, to, to delete some, some data. Um, and if you have more, you know, you still have a high, um, statistical power of the, of the, of that data. So, so you had 15 for this, for this test, right? Pretty, pretty well, pretty well powered here, especially for an exercise physiology study. I mean, that's one of our common plights is, is to try to find enough subjects. First thing you did was a graded exercise test uphill. Let's discuss that, that condition, and then we can get into the four experimental conditions. So what, what does that actually look like? Like what somebody comes into your lab, they're going to do this test. What are they going to experience?

Yeah. They, uh, well, uh, at the beginning we, we get, um, uh, some information like, you know, how much you train, how many times and, uh, um, what's your level now with you use the each a points, uh, performance index also to, um, understand if they are, uh, like elite or, uh, super elite or, uh, uh, novel to, to try running and, um, and, uh, and after this, uh, usually we do the first test, uh, uh, is the, the, an incremental test to get the VO2 max and the maximum vertical velocity. If it is an uphill test or the aerobic velocity, maximum aerobic velocity, if it is a, uh, test on, on level. And, um, after that, uh, uh, they, they also familiarize, familiarize with the, um, steep treadmill because, uh, one point is that, uh, probably the, the, the, the most difficult part is to walking with poles on the treadmill. Yeah. And, uh, so, uh, usually they, they walk for several minutes on the treadmill and if they leave near to the lab, uh, also they come more than one time, um, to the lab for trying and for maybe just for five minutes, they go up and they walk with the

poles at different inclines. And, uh, so this is very important because, uh, we have seen, uh, with the first study that there was, I think it was like one subject that, uh, um, it didn't come to the lab before. And when it started the test, uh, uh, by walking with poles, it was like super difficult to stay, uh, to balance on the, on the training. So, um, that time we excluded that, uh, that subject from the study. Um, and now we, we give them the opportunity to come to try the old equipment more than once. And, uh, and, uh, usually we, for doing this, uh, protocols, we need three to four days testing days, but, um, for the athletes, this is not a problem. I mean, uh, for them, it is like a training and they are happy because they are doing training, um, with all the data, uh, uh, recorded.

We, we, then we, we gave, we give them the data about the VO2, the cost of transport. And if we measure the force, we give them some data about the force. And so we, we try to give them something. So you bring the people into the lab for the first time, right? And they're gonna, they're doing a maximal, they're, they're doing a maximal graded exercise test. You start them out at a slope of 10 degrees or 10% slope, right? Yeah. At 5k an hour. And they, every minute it increases 2% until you get to a slope of 24%. And then the speed increases until volitional exhaustion, until volitional exhaustion. It's a hard test, right? So you're establishing their maximum.

What are you, what are you drawing out from the athletes for that particular maximum part of this graded exercise test? Yeah, we use this test for, uh, uh, two main reasons. Uh, the first one is to get information about the physiological parameters, uh, the VO2 max in particular, and the vertical velocity. And the other one is to get the, uh, second ventilatory threshold. Um, because we use that, that, uh, intensity that is called also an aerobic threshold. So we have, we have many, um, uh, how to say we can call it in, in different way. You're determining a threshold of sorts, right? I think that, I think we can simplify it for that.

Yeah. Yeah. And from this intensity, we set up the next test on the, uh, for example, on the treadmill or, uh, uh, in this case, not for, uh, we didn't use it for the outdoor test because in the outdoor test, we, we did another maximum test to get the 80% of the vertical velocity, uh, to use for the sub-maximal test. So the incremental test, uh, uh, was necessary to get the, all the data about the, the, the subject. So we know the athletes, we know everything from the athlete, the maximal lactate, uh, concentration, uh, the VO2, the vertical velocity and, uh, what is the heart rate and, uh, for, for, for the maximum and also, uh, at the threshold intensity. Yeah.

And so you're now taking that, that kind of like lab data and using it to calibrate the four field trials that, that you then had the athletes undertake. Can you describe like the four conditions that the athletes had to kind of go through when you actually took them outside? So you did the first thing that's inside the labs in a controlled environment. Now let's move this to the outside. And what are you specifically measuring under what conditions? Yeah. First things is that, uh, when we do, um, outside tests, we have to, to check the, uh, we, we can't calibrate the temperature or the humidity, but we try to, to have similar conditions. I mean, if one day it is not raining because we can't get the measurements when it's raining, but if it was super humid, we didn't do the test. Or if it was, I don't know, uh, super hot, we didn't do the test or we do, we did a test in the morning, uh, one day and also the morning the other day. So we tried to maintain the same, uh, the same time, uh, during the four conditions. And, um, when we moved from the lab to, to outdoors, the first things it was to do, uh, two maximum tests on a trail of, uh, um, 400 meters of elevation gain, um, in, uh, 1.2 or 1.1.3

kilometer. So, um, it was, uh, the, the, the, the average incline, it was about 20 degrees and the maximum was like 30 degrees. And, um, so they, they did two maximum tests one day with pose and one day without pose. Uh, and this was a randomized between athletes, of course. And, uh, we measured, uh, the same parameters that we got in the lab. So they did the test with the, um, metabolic unit with the mask, uh, they use, uh, we, we, we get the blood lactate concentration at the end of the test. And, um, so we get the heart rate, the VO2, the VCO2, and, uh, and also the rate of, uh, perceived, uh, exertion at the end of the, of the, of each day. And, um, and of course we measure the time. So this started, for example, one, the first day, the athlete started without pose, uh, to try to do his best, uh, on this, uh, on this, uh, train. And, um, afterwards we, we get all the data and, uh, we calculate the metabolic power and we measure the lactate and everything. And, uh, second day, we did the same trail in the same condition, uh, or similar condition, uh, without, uh, one day with

pulse and one day without pulse. So after, after this, we, we, we, we compared that first thing was comparing the time and, uh, and, uh, because it was, uh, uh, the performance. So we were interested in improving the performance. So first things was to compare the time with pulse and without pulse. And we calculated the vertical, the average vertical velocity, uh, of each day. And from this, we calculate the 80% of the vertical velocity. For example, um, if one athlete, uh, uh, around the trial or better work the trial, uh, uh, uh, 2000 meters, uh, per hour of, uh, elevation gain, um, we calculate the 80%. So it was 1,600 meters per hour. And we use this, uh, vertical speed, vertical velocity for the next test for the next two sub-maximal test.

This is what I found interesting, but hold on before we get, before we get into that. So just to recap, you had the athletes do two maximum effort time trials up a trail. And just to like, help the listeners encapsulate that this is about a 20 minute effort, maybe a little bit less than a 20 minute effort, as hard as you can go with poles and without poles in a randomized order, right? So you get them there. They don't know if they're going to do with the poles or without poles that you tell them you're going to do with poles and the next day without poles. And you're comparing the time and you're also collecting, you're doing, you're also, uh, collecting the, uh, uh, their oxygen uptake or their oxygen consumption, as well as you're taking lactate, uh, at the very end, you then take those performances. Well, first off, what did you find in the maximum tests? We'll just stop there and then we'll kind of go to the sub max test, which you were alluding to. What did you find within the maximum tests in this, in this hard, go as hard as you can type of time trial?

Yeah, I think this is the, the, the most important, um, uh, results of the study. And it was that, uh, 12 out of 15 athletes were faster with posts and, uh, they were like 30 seconds, uh, faster with posts, um, on an 18 or 19 minute effort, which is, which is not trivial. Yeah. Yeah. And it was like, uh, uh, only, uh, 2.5 or 2.6 faster percent faster. So this is what we were talking about, uh, before. And, um, so I think this is important because we can, now we can really say that, uh, posts are useful to increase, improve the performance.

In that condition and that maximum goes as hard as you can for 20 minute type of type, not exact, but type of condition. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, um, and, uh, the three artists that didn't improve the performance, we try to, uh, to understand why. And, uh, uh, I'm pretty sure that two of them, uh, didn't, um, were, uh, they, they weren't faster with posts because they were, uh, too strong, uh, uh, as athletes. I mean, they, uh, they had a VO2 close to 80 millimeter per kilo per minute. And, uh, they were so fast on this, on this, uh, trial, maximum trial that, uh, the average velocity, uh, was faster than the walk around transition.

So they, they, they run almost all the trailer and they run with the posts. So when we, when they didn't have posts, they could, uh, uh, be faster than when they didn't, then when, when they had posts. So, uh, probably for them, uh, this was the reason. It's interesting because you present all the individual data in the paper. I'm looking at it right now. It's, this is figure two. If people are just kind of like following along and you can see those two athletes that have a, you know, a vertical, uh, velocity of somewhere around 1750 meters per hour, which that's really fast. Um, that's a, that, that, that's very, very fast. And that's a good observation from your part that they're not, that those athletes are not actually walking. They're running the entire, the entirety of the trail. So interesting observation there, but almost everybody was faster using poles than not using poles. What say you about the metabolic data, the oxygen consumption, was that different between using poles and not using poles? And what do you read into that? Yeah. The interesting thing is that, uh, we, we didn't find, um, differences between, uh, using or not using poles in any of the, uh, physiological parameters, not in VO2 or, uh, cost of transport or art rate or lactate, uh, concentration or,

uh, um, um, RPE or, uh, whatever, uh, also in the, in the, um, step length and step frequency, everything was the same. So you use the same energy, but you are faster. That's the message. Yeah. Which is really, so here's kind of what I take, take away from that. And I think that this is a little bit maybe surprising, right? Given some of the previous research, but kind of, kind of when I look at it and I want to get your opinion on this, when you're going as hard as you can, it's as hard as you can. And there's, there's like, if you're doing a VO2 max type of effort, which 20 minutes is going to be pretty, pretty freaking close to that. It's kind of hard to change that despite the conditions, poles, no poles, you can try to contrive it in any kind of other way, but because you're going so hard and you're already eliciting a maximum, or like a maximum type of cardiovascular or cardiopulmonary type of effort, when you change the, when you, when you kind of change some piece of it and here you're changing the equipment, it's not surprising to me that the VO2 data is exactly the same because of that, that condition that you're just going all out. Yeah. And this is the reason why that we can say that they perform, uh, as their best in both conditions. Yeah. So this is important for us because if, uh, the VO2 or the art rate or the cost of transport was different between conditions,

uh, we couldn't really say that they were pushing, uh, their best in both conditions. So, uh, at their maximum, it is maximum stop. So it is not like I can give, I can go faster or I can, uh, have a higher VO2 because I have poles. Yeah. Uh, maybe we could expect some difference between, between using or not post because, uh, you know, with posts you use, you involve more muscle mass and, uh, and the art rate might be a bit higher, but probably all these subjects were so we're trained with and without posts. So they could push, uh, at their best in the, in both condition. And, uh, yeah, so this is quite important to us, uh, uh, to, to say this and the, a different, um, a different, uh, uh, discussion is about the sub-maximal, um, uh, trial. So let's do that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. So you get your maximum trials and the, the take home message there is they can go faster at the same oxygen cost.

And then you bring them down into a sub-maximal condition. So describe, like try to describe how hard relatively speaking that sub-maximal condition was for the athletes, how you're instructing them on how to do it and then what the results were. Yeah. So from the vertical velocity of the maximum test, we calculate this, uh, uh, 80% and, uh, we use this, uh, uh, intensity to set the, the next two tests one day with pause and one day without pause at 80% of the vertical velocity maintaining during the, the, the maximum test. Um, we decide to use this, uh, um, percentage because it is quite similar to the intensity that it is maintaining during, uh, six hour trail running race. Okay. That's important, right? You, you're like, that's a reasonable length, kind of like ultra marathon, six hours. Let's see what it looks like at this type of intensity.

Yeah. And we were interested in, in, in, in try to measure this, uh, intensity because, uh, okay. We, we have seen that when you are doing a maximum test, the, uh, most of us are important and you can be faster, but, uh, we also are interested in understanding if in longer, um, performance, they can be useful. Um, why in UTMB or in any other long, three running races, you see, maybe, I don't know, 99% of, uh, of participants, participants that, uh, are using pose and, uh, but there are no data that about this. So, uh, we, we didn't know why.

Yeah. I mean, I'm an athlete too, and I use pose in longer, in long performance. And, uh, I feel that I can do better with pose or, and, uh, the fatigue is lower and, uh, uh, perceived exertion is lower, but we didn't know, we didn't, uh, we couldn't have, uh, um, a number that say, okay, it is much better. And, uh, you can save 5% or 10% of energy when you, when you use pose during UTMB. And so, uh, we try to, to, to measure the, um, the cost of transport. So, and the oxygen uptake, um, at the same intensity that usually athletes use, uh, during us six to seven hours, um, a race.

Uh, for this reason, we, we use this intensity and, uh, and the athletes try to do the same, uh, 400 meters of elevation gain, uh, in both condition, with and without pose at the same, uh, with the same time. I mean, if one athlete, uh, to, to, to, to complete the trial in 22 minutes and 30 seconds, uh, with pose the day, the day, um, the second day, it is the same 400 meters at the same vertical velocity. So, uh, 22 minutes and 30 seconds, but here's, hold on, hold on. It's kind of clever how you did it though. And I want people to appreciate, I want people to appreciate this.

So you're, you're telling them to do this time trial at 80% of the vertical ascent rate that they did. The maximum trial is, and that's like, like if, if, if everybody at home, just think about this proposition. You go out and you run up your favorite trail as hard as you can. And then the next day, you're going to run up that trail at 80% of whatever that maximum, whatever that maximum is or whatever the ascent rate was for that. That's not an easy thing to do. So you actually employed a pacer to kind of like set the right tempo on this. Correct. I mean, that's what I'm reading in the paper. You had somebody say, okay, I'm going to like, I'm going to make sure that all these athletes hit this 80% mark correctly. And then the pacer, it was the pacer's job to make sure that they were on pace. Yeah. And I did it. I was about to say, this is you, this is where you get the 60,000 meters of vertical, right? You were the pacer. You're sacrificing yourself for science at this point. Yeah, of course. You know, some, some days I did it for, uh, I think maybe one day I did five times. So it was like, uh, 2000 meters of elevation gain, uh, up and down, up and down for all day. Okay. I figured it was you when I read that in the paper, I'm like, I know, but I wanted to get confirmation on it. So you are the pacer.

You're ensuring everybody runs at 80% of their, of their ascent rate for this, for the second set of trials with polls and without polls. Yeah. You did a pretty good job at it. Just looking at the statistics, to be honest with you, I mean, they're very, very consistent. So, so go, go ahead. Sorry. Yeah, because we, we mark the trail every 25 meters of elevation gain. So I, I, I calculated the time to get the first 25 meters, then the 50, then 75, then 100, 125 and so on. And, uh, so I knew that if I, I had to go up, uh, uh, uh, the, the first 25 minutes, 25 meters in one minute, then the 50 was two, two minutes. So I just go in front of the, of the participant and, uh, I said, okay, just follow me and walk with polls or without polls and just follow me. And every, uh, every 100 meters or so, I asked them, uh, the, the Borg scale for the perceived exertion. So, um, yeah. And it was quite easy with the slower, uh, athletes, but with the two fastest, it was like, yeah, I was full gas and, uh, but yeah, it was great training for me, by the way.

So now, now you've got this set up to where you have these 15 participants, they're walking uphill with polls and without polls at an effort. That's equivalent to about a six hour, you know, about a six hour, about a six hour race. What did you find from those two trials? Um, we, we found that what we didn't think to find, I mean, that, uh, uh, based on our previous, uh, papers, we thought to find, uh, a lower, uh, cost of transport, lower, uh, art rate when they used polls. Um, but, uh, at the end it was, uh, everything, every, every physiological parameters was the same in both conditions. So there were no differences between using or not using polls, uh, at this intensity. So, yeah, so the message was not clear. I mean, uh, we cannot say that, uh, polls are useful during, uh, uh, a long race and, uh, but yeah, we cannot say that, uh, they are useless as well. I mean, uh, we, we didn't find the differences between the two conditions. And one reason probably was, uh, because, you know, they, they started and they did this trial, uh, not in

fatigue conditions. So for them to go up at, uh, 80% of the vertical velocity of the maximum test, it was like a medium intensity because, um, it was like, uh, 70% of the, of the, uh, maximum march rate. So it was quite easy to maintain. And, uh, and, uh, we do, we did only these measurements when they were not fatigued. Yeah. Yeah. If, if we tried to do the same measurements, maybe after six hours of, uh, three running and after maybe 2000 meters of elevation gain and loss, maybe we, we, we had, some different, uh, um, results because, uh, with, uh, your, when your legs are fatigued, probably you use more your upper limbs, uh, for pushing on the, on the pulse. And, uh, so yeah, this is a limitation of this part of the study. Um, you can only compare what you measured, right? So I'll add, I'll add, I'll add a caveat or a postscript to your earlier comment that you can't create a compelling reason to use polls in this condition based off of what you were measuring.

And the specific thing that you're measuring oxygen consumption and lactate, you know, heart rate and things like that, which are remarkably identical. If anybody wants to go look at the P values on the paper, like those, those, those values are remarkably identical across those conditions. You hardly ever see that, uh, or at least that level of consistency or that level of reproducibility in, uh, uh, in exercise physiology research because everybody's so different. So, so it is remarkable that you actually found that. However, as you mentioned, there might be another benefit to using polls in a similar intensity condition, six hour race, eight hour race, you know, however you want to, however you want to call it because you're not measuring for everything, right? You're only, you're only, only quote unquote measuring the kind of the cardiopulmonary, aspects of things. So let's get into that. And I appreciate you sending me over kind of the pre production of, uh, what's going to be a really cool paper when it actually does come out.

One where you used instrumentation to start to solve this problem, which is really cool. You used instrumentation at the level of a foot and you use instrumentation at the level of the pole to determine, is there some sort of savings or advantage advantages? Can you kind of describe that a little bit to how you're starting to uncover? Okay. Now that we can't create like an economy case essentially, or cost of transport case for using poles, or it's difficult to, what are the other advantages that you're actually looking at now? Yeah. You know, so after this, uh, this study, we, we wanted to understand why, uh, athletes were faster. We know that, uh, with poles, you can, uh, redistribute your, the, the work from the lower limbs to upper limbs, but we didn't know how much work you can do with your upper limbs, um, during uphill walking. So we use the, um, we use the, uh, an instrumented pose and also the insoles, uh, to measure the, the force, uh, the pushing force on the pole and, uh, and the ground reaction force on the, on the feet.

Uh, what is that before you get into it? Like, like what is an instrumented insole and an instrumented pole? You said you're measuring the force, but is it like, like, I, I understand the souls because I know the technology, the listeners are not going to be familiar with this, so we can describe that, but I don't know how you did with the poles. So I'm more curious. So describe both of those, like the, the insole that you're using and the instrumented poles a little bit more. Yeah. So we, we, we, we put a self force, a small one, uh, in the, in the pole. And, um, so when, when you push on the pole, you can, you can see, um, from the device that, uh, that we build, you can see how much weight you put on the pole. I mean, if you, uh, if you push one kilos or, uh, 10 kilos or, uh, 20 kilos, we could see, uh, how much weight in Newton we got from the, from every, uh, every movement, uh, from the poles, but it's a, it's a string gauge similar to like a cycling power meter. Am I understanding that correctly? Or is it slightly different? Yeah. It's not stringy. It's, uh, um, a button self force. Uh, it is a small one. It is like, uh, I dunno, like a button, you know, this is the, the button and, uh, um, it is a small, uh, a small, uh, um, um, part that when it is pressed may change the, the voltage of the, of the cell, of the,

of the force side. And then from that, uh, with the calibration, we can get the, the real, uh, data about the force, the, the, the force, the Newton or the kilo, kilograms. And, uh, uh, similar is the, the insoles, uh, we use the, the, um, an insole with, uh, uh, they were three sensors, two in the forefoot and one, uh, in the rear foot. Uh, but then we average all the sensor because we didn't want to, to, to look for if you, you push more with the forefoot or rear foot. And, um, so then we, we get all the data together and we compare the data from the pose with the data from the, uh, feet. And, uh, we try to understand, uh, to get the, the, the, the results for, of the using pose and to, to look for, uh, if when you use pose, uh, you can use less your, uh, lower limbs.

So I don't know if you, but in Italy, we say, uh, that when you use pose, you save your legs. Yeah. Uh, that's a very colloquial way to put it. Yeah. Yeah. And we mean that, uh, uh, if you use pose, you need less force, uh, from your lower limbs. So we, we wanted to, to see if it was real. And, uh, so we did a similar protocol of the first study. Um, the athletes did a maximum test, two maximum tests, but it was quite, it was a bit shorter. It was only 150, um, meters of elevation gain. So it was like, uh, five to seven. Yeah. It was a short test. And, um, uh, one day with, and one day without, without pose. And we also did the same in treadmill. So we did two incremental tests, um, to maximum, um, by increasing the, the, the slope of the treadmill every, every minute. And, um, one day it was with pose and one day it was without pose. So, um, the, the results of the study, we are now discussing also with the reviewers because, um, we are trying to publish this, uh, on a good journal. And, uh, uh, I think it is quite interesting because it is the first time that,

uh, uh, it is, we compare the falls from the upper limbs to the lower limbs, uh, during a trail running, uh, uh, event. And, um, at the end we can say that when we use pose, we need, uh, less force from the lower limbs. And, uh, this is important because, uh, uh, for long, uh, event you can save, uh, even if it is like only two, 3%, uh, of energy saving, it's a lot after 10 hours of trail running. So, um, I, I think this is a good, uh, a good, uh, um, um, device to measure this, uh, different, and, uh, we can, we, we are also working more on this, with these devices. And I tell you more, uh, that we are, we have just finished another measurement, another study, uh, in which we measure the, uh, pulling force, uh, before, and also the cost of transport before and after, uh, 30, 30 K, uh, trail running, uh, training.

And it's almost like a durability study, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, yeah. So we have a lot of data to publish today. And, uh, so we have to, to, to make more clear this, some points of this discussion and, uh, yeah. But what, so let me try to encapsulate this for the listeners, uh, who might have gotten lost in the weeds of, you know, force and the physics lesson and things like that. Literally you're measuring how hard the athletes are pushing off just with their feet and then how hard they are pushing off with the poles and then comparing those two conditions and saying, well, are they pushing off as hard with their poles as the difference between how hard they're pushing off with their feet when they actually use the poles? Like, is it, if is it, is using poles, uh, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to use a kind of a colloquial terminology here, but is the use of poles an efficient system or do you have to put more force into the ground than you're actually alleviating from your feet, more force in the ground with your arms, then you're actually alleviating from your, your, your, your lower limbs. And that's an unanswered question. And one that we try to use the metabolic data or the cost of transport data to try to like use a little bit of a window into that, but you're actually getting the force data literally at the level of the, at the level of the pole level of foot, almost at the ground level, right. To use that term to, to try to answer that, which I think is really interesting. And, and to be honest with you,

once a lot of this comes out, I think that it's going to either add clarity and, or change how we use poles in a real time setting. Do we use them in steeper terrain? Do we use them on more flat terrain? Do we use them at this intensity versus that intensity? Because you start to get to the, well, I like to use them because I feel better. I feel like I'm faster, but we, but, but since there are all these varying conditions, uphill, steep uphill, you know, going slow, walking, running, as you mentioned in the earlier trials, we don't have a good set of like operating rules to say under these conditions, these are the specific types of performance or the specific ways that it can improve performance. And under these conditions, it actually might be a detriment. I can see that starting to get teased out with the, with this and the future iterations of research that, that, that you're producing. Yeah. Um, we, uh, from the, from the results that we have, uh, today, we can, we can say that, uh, um, steeper is the, is the, the, the slope and greater is the, um, advantage that you get from the pose. And the faster you, you, or better higher is the intensity and, uh, greater is the advantage you get from the pose. So, uh, now the point that is missing is,

um, if, uh, during ultra long races, ultra long, ultra trail, you really can get, uh, uh, a lower, um, cost of transport. And you, if you can have, uh, um, if you can save energy from the using, from using pose. Here's the thing with that though, man, here's the thing that, that would not to cut you off too quick, but here's the thing that, that, that would be really interesting to me. We know in really long races, oxygen is not as much of a premium or the rate of oxygen consumption is not really at a premium. You're running it. You're, you're locomoting at such a low intensity that even if the cost of transport were two or 3% higher or something like that, using poles over a hundred kilometers, let's say, let's say your energy cost went up by 2%. I'd kind of look at that and go, you know what?

That's not that big of a deal for most athletes that aren't like pinning themselves on every single climb. If they can get a saving to your research that we just pointed out with the instrumented poles, if they can get a saving of the legs, right? Yeah. In some other format. So that's what I'm saying. It's starting to tease out the specific, like kind of the nuance of it is, is it a cost of transport or an oxygen saving? Or is it actually like a, a force or a muscular right type type of saving and, and, and the strategy to which we kind of like deploy poles, I think is going to change because once we start to figure out better answers to that. Yeah. I think that, uh, without looking at the physiological parameters like PO2 or cost of transport, we just can say that, uh, when, when you use poles and, uh, when athletes that participated in our studies, uh, use poles, they always add lower rate of perceived exertion. So it is probably more muscular. Uh, I mean, uh, when in the last study in the force studies, one, we, we, we have seen that when, uh, you use pose, you have, uh, lower weight on your feet.

You have to push less, uh, to go at the same, uh, the same, uh, vertical velocity. And, uh, so this redistribution of the work between lower and upper limbs can help, uh, maybe not to be faster. Uh, but, uh, the feeling that you have is much better. And, uh, probably you can also, uh, you don't save energy. You, you use the same energy, but the, the, the same energy is distributed from the upper to and lower limbs. And so maybe nothing changed from a physiological point of view, but, uh, the, the big change is that you feel better and maybe, uh, then you can run faster down here because, because your muscles of the lower limbs are not fatigued. And then the difference, maybe you don't do the difference during uphill, but you can be faster down here or in the runnable sections of the race. And also this is a point to discuss. Actually, we don't have that about, about this because we should, uh, uh, set up an experimental design that would be very, very complicated. Uh, but, uh, I think that it, it can be, this can be like an, uh, hypothesis to, to, to, to say that, uh, you should use pose because you save your legs and then you can run faster in the,

in the other section of the race. Yeah. I think that that is re it's speculation, as you mentioned, but I think that that's reasonable speculation based on some of the, a lot of the work that you've done and also just how athletes, why athletes use poles and longer races, even though they might not be particularly steep, as you mentioned earlier, right? We know when it's very steep, you do get, you know, performance advantage and the intensity is higher. You do get a performance advantage, but despite just knowing that we still see athletes use poles in the tour de jant, right? You know, 330 K super steep terrain, very low intensity because of the, uh, the duration of the event. And, and, and, and if you talk to those athletes, a lot of, a lot of the, uh, a lot of the dialogue is going to be just centered around. I'm trying to quote unquote, save my legs. We're going to use that colloquial term. Yeah. We're going to leave it at that, man. Thanks for, uh, coming back on the podcast. Maybe we'll bring you back on once this next paper is coming out because I do, I do think it's super interesting now that we have, uh, a lot of the instrumentation to start to, um, uh, to start to look at other reasons. So I'll probably cajole you into, into coming back on, on the podcast at that point, but thank you, man. And where can listeners, uh, find more about you and the research that you do and the work that you're performing? Um, yeah, first of all, thanks for the invitation.

And, uh, uh, it's nice to, to present our works and to discuss with you about this, this data. Um, you can, you can find, uh, um, papers and other information on my website, uh, nicolagiovanelli.com and, uh, on my, uh, social page on Facebook and Instagram, uh, or if even anyone wants to contact me, uh, can do it, um, uh, from this, uh, uh, channel or by email from the website. So yeah, it's my pleasure. Well, keep doing the work that you're doing, man. We're solving really cool problems. I appreciate it. I'll have links to the show notes into all of that. And, uh, I'm sure we're going to run into each other on the trail soon. Yeah. Thank you. All right, folks, there you have it. There you go. Much thanks to Nicola for coming on the podcast today and discussing where we might actually get an advantage with the use of poles and trail running and in particular steep trail running. I do think that we have a lot to explore in this area, as we alluded to in the kind of towards the end of the podcast because the research to date has only illuminated so much of the use case with poles.

So we're going to continue to push the boundaries. We're going to continue to listen to athletes out in the field, and we're going to continue to examine under what conditions poles can be used and where some conditions, maybe they aren't quite so useful. And we have Nicola to thank for pushing the envelope in that particular area. We discuss both of the papers that Nicola and I discussed during the podcast in one of the future editions of my new research newsletter, research essentials for ultra running. We break it down amongst our research team. We dive into the detail, we dive into the nuance and we come together with some conclusions that we didn't quite explore in this podcast. And we go into depth a little bit more than we can with this particular podcast. And I'm quite excited about what the results of that actually are. You guys can look forward to that in a future, at a future edition, a future issue. It's probably going to come out maybe within the next two months. So you might have to hold on for a second. If you are interested in signing up for that newsletter, it is only $9.99 a month. You can cancel anytime. And we examine three to five research papers that are specific to ultra marathon with our PhD level team. We break it down into plain English and what the practical takeaways are for you, the athletes. You can sign up directly on my website, which is jasoncoop.com.

I will leave a link to that in the show notes. Appreciate the heck out of each and every one of the listeners out there. And as always, we will see you out on the trails.