Total Body Stretching
Clearly, it's important to stretch lower body muscles after walking. It's also a good idea to stretch upper body, especially the shoulders. Your arm swing actually drives your leg stride when you are walking briskly. Keeping your upper body flexible and moving easily, both sides, keeps your body in balance.
Places to Walk
Here's another reason Americans are fatter than Europeans. American cities, in general, are less walking-friendly than European cities. Distances, lack of sidewalks, and traffic make it harder to find good walking areas.
Don't be discouraged from your fitness walking regimen. Look for high school tracks, paths in parks, industrial parks which often have lots of flat streets with sidewalks, shopping malls, golf courses, or playing fields where you can walk around the periphery, or any nearby open area. In the mall, walking for exercise is more fun when you're window shopping!
Nordic Walking
You may want to try Nordic walking--fitness walking with poles--for a change of pace and to increase the intensity of your walking exercise workout. Nordic walking can also help you keep your balance. Cross country skiers use this technique during the summer. Special rubber tipped walking poles are available.
Walking Faster
Get a move on and pump, pump, pump it up! If you want to walk faster, pump your arms faster. Your arms and legs move in sync when walking for exercise. Keep your arms bent at the elbow to shorten the lever and make it easier to speed up your fitness walking.
All the Walking Equipment You Really Need
All you really need for walking exercise is a good pair of walking shoes. Choose a pair with a firm heel cup for stability and plenty of room for toes so they can spread out as they push off when you're walking for exercise. Wear loose, comfortable clothes. In cool weather, dress in layers as you will warm up some if you walk a good distance.
Racewalking
If injuries have cut short your running career, you still may be able to racewalk. Or, if you don?t like running but want more challenge than power walking, you can try racewalking too. Racewalking, an Olympic sport, will give you a great running/fitness walking workout and allow you to compete without the jarring of running. You need to walk with a straight knee on your forward leg and a foot always on the ground, so find a coach to teach you the technique.
Walking Vacations
All that strolling through the lines at Disneyland can actually help your health. Do research before making reservations to be sure there are walking opportunities near your hotel. Being active and keeping up your fitness walking improves your vacation. Plus, long walks are romantic!
Speeding Up Your Walks
Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer, er, Walker, er, Racewalker.
Walking speed is a function of stride length and turnover (how fast you move your legs.) There is a limit to how much you can lengthen your stride, so when fitness walking and racewalking, concentrate on increasing turnover. Artificially increasing your stride, overstriding, can actually slow you down as your heel comes down too far in front, causing a braking action.
And there's good news for shorter people Long legs take longer to bring around, and some of the best racewalkers are of less than average height (think Speedy Gonzales.)
Hiking Poles
Don't forget to hike with poles when you're walking to the North Pole (or you could take the Polar Express.) Although the use of hiking poles in uphill backpacking does not change the amount of energy expended during walking exercise, many people say they make the hike seem easier.
Ankle Weights
Never use ankle weights when walking for exercise. Your ankles have enough work to do in fitness walking. Wrist or hand weights are not as likely to cause injury as ankle weights, but can still stress your joints. If you want to burn more calories during walking exercise, walk farther or faster. If you want to get stronger, lift weights.
Walking for Greater Fitness
Fitness walking can be as good for building fitness as running, if you work as hard. It?s not the kind of exercise, but how it?s performed that matters. Yes, it really is all about how you play the game.
Unfit people may be able to get their heart rate into a training zone by walking faster than usual, but as you get more fit you may have trouble walking fast enough so you will have to go uphill when walking for exercise, or learn racewalking technique.
Just Go
Remember the old children's story about the caterpillar who got confused over which leg to use first? The proper walking technique is not as important as getting out there and walking for exercise. Keep in mind that healthy people are well overall. Their activities boost energy and help fend off heart disease and circulatory problems. The key is to stay active, and fitness walking is the best way.
Why We Do It
Racewalking technique will let you go faster without running, if you can?t walk fast enough for a good walking aerobic workout at your fitness level.
Racewalking has been an Olympic sport for 100 years. It is very technique-dependent and you can keep improving for a long time, as your walking exercise technique improves. Runners who have injured knees or feet may turn to racewalking for a similar workout without the impact, but there?s no reason you can?t go straight to racewalking, as some people just find it more enjoyable and a greater challenge than fitness walking. Racewalkers are not immune from overuse injuries, but the injury rate is lower than with running.