What exactly is power walking? – first published 6 November 2012

Although no one has actually laughed at me in the street to the best of my knowledge, I’ve been told my walking style is a little odd. Personally being thought a little odd doesn’t particularly worry me. It does worry Commando slightly to be seen with me when I’m walking fast but I figure that’s his problem not mine. Fast walking, or power walking, is not as simple as it might seem, as the following post from my archives explains.

6 November 2012

First frost this morning so it was a chilly walk to work but quite beautiful with all the plants and fallen leaves rimmed with white and covered with twinkling ice crystals. I love crisp wintery mornings like that with sun in the sky and tiny clouds of breath visible before me as I walk. I was talking to Alice about my weekend walk and she asked me, “so do you power walk then?”
“Um, I guess so.”
“So what’s the difference between power walking and just walking? Is it just walking faster or is there something different about it?”

To be honest I’ve been doing it so long I don’t really think about it any more so at first I was stumped. I mean, it’s not as if you go to classes to learn how to do it is it? When I first started all this walking malarkey it was just that, walking, one foot in front of the other, not very fast, getting from a to b. Over time I got faster and went further but it still wasn’t what you would call power walking. Then I started the Moonwalk training and it quickly became apparent that, if I was going to finish a walking marathon, I’d have to change things. For a start if I didn’t walk a lot faster I’d still be walking the next day. I was also getting aches and pains in my hips, lower back and shoulders on longer walks. That was when I started to look at my walking technique and, with the help of some reading, a bit of Googling and a lot of trial and error, I upped my speed, got rid of the aches and pains and found myself power walking, more or less.

So how do you power walk, what was it I changed? Probably one of the first things was walking from the hip. I was reading something written by an elderly lady who walked miles every day (I wish I could remember where) and she said one of the best pieces of advice she’d ever had was to walk from the hip. I tried it and straight away I felt more comfortable and my speed improved. The next thing was not to take such big strides. When you try to go faster its almost instinctive to take longer strides but this actually messes up your posture, hyperextends your joints and can lead to back and knee problems, it also slows you down. Taking shorter quicker steps got rid of most of my aches and pains and improved my speed dramatically.

By this time I was doing quite long training walks, ten miles or more and I started to look for ways to further improve my walking technique. That was when the Googling began in earnest. There’s a lot of advice about power walking, not all of it good, so I tried things and if they worked I added them, if they didn’t I discarded them. Posture was something I knew about, I did yoga for years, so I began to really think about my posture when I walked, standing tall, head up, shoulders relaxed, stomach pulled in. It’s easy to slouch or tighten up your neck and shoulders when you’re trying to go fast so it’s somthing I still concentrate on. Then there were the mechanics of each step, landing on my heel, rolling through the ball of my foot and pushing off with my toes, the power comes from the back leg and that push. Finally it was arms.*

Much to Commandos’s irritation I’ve always been an arm swinger. When we walk together he’s always telling me not to swing my arms so much but I find it almost impossible not to. On the really long walks though I was finding my hands swelled up and my fingers tingled which I thought was quite odd. Then I read about power walking arms. I’d been swinging my arms but I’d always kept them straightish, marching like a soldier. Bending my elbows to about ninety degrees and being careful to keep my shoulders relaxed stopped the swollen tingly fingers, although Commando finds this even more irritating and calls it my weirdo walk.

So there you have it, power walking, or my version, is faster, more comfortable and a great low impact form of free exercise. Ok, so I may look a little odd and most of the runners out there probably still feel all superior but who cares? I’m burning loads of lovely calories, I’m keeping fit, I’m saving loads of money on bus fares and best of all I’m enjoying myself out in the fresh air.

Despite the early morning chit chat, I had a busy day again getting everything ready for the turn around tomorrow. Worryingly, Howard, who was supposed to be coming in today to pick the boxes up and take them to the airport, didn’t arrive. His wife, Tino, who also works at Silver Helm, said he was coming in and if he didn’t she would take the boxes but she left before I did and I didn’t even see her go. I hope he comes in tomorrow morning because the new film drives are in the box. Everything else can wait for two weeks but the film drives can’t. I’m sure I’m going to wake up in the night worrying about it but there’s not a lot I can do right now. Oh well, what’s the worst than can happen?

* some time after I posted this the yoga teacher from the ship gave me another very valuable tip about walking posture. She called it dragon walking and it really helps to get both posture and movement right. Basically, you make sure you are standing tall with your head high, then you imagine you have a big dragon tail and you are swinging it from side to side with each step. It sounds funny, it probably looks funny, at least when I do it, but it does really help.