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For more information
about walking in the region, visit Hiking
& Walking around Pittsburgh.
Why
walk?
Better running times?
Take a walking break
How to make walking a workout
No-frills drills
Karyn Simmonds isn't
your ordinary athlete. The mother of one has completed three 100-mile
runs, twelve 50-milers, 65 marathons, and countless 10Ks and 5Ks. She
trained for the endurance races, which are usually run on trails in mountainous
terrain, by running 50 to 70 miles per week and riding a stationary bike
for 30 minutes four times per week--that is, until she fractured a tibia.
"The
times I had walking in my training, I won the races and was significantly
stronger..."
— Karyn Simmonds, marathoner and ultramarathoner
"After my stress
fracture, my doctor advised me to walk, so I started walking hills,"
says Simmonds, who took a six-week hiatus from running in order to heal.
"When I got back to training, I realized that I could walk hills
faster than I could before. Actually, there was a time when I was power
walking in a race past people who were running. I decided then to train
for walking, too."
Why walk?
While many athletes view walking merely as a means of transportation,
a way to get from here to there, what they don't realize is that it can
actually be a complement to their vigorous training programs. In fact,
research has shown time and again that walking is comparable to other
forms of exercise in terms of cardiovascular benefit. For example, research
compared the cardiovascular benefits of people who ran, walked, or did
aerobics. They all exercised at 75 to 85 percent of their maximum heart
rate, and each group saw almost identical improvements in aerobic fitness.
Another study on
cross training showed similar results, supporting what is called the "independence
of the exercise mode effect." Basically, this means you can select
any aerobic activity or mode, and if you perform these two different activities
at the same intensity level and for the same duration, you will get the
same improvements in cardiovascular fitness. But both studies showed something
else: the runners experienced significantly more, and more serious, musculoskeletal
injuries than the non-runners. In fact, one running group missed 11 days
due to injury while the walking group missed only 1.5 days.
Why the difference
in injury rates? Mainly because of the force with which you hit the ground
when running versus when walking, says Mark Fenton, five-time national
race walking team member and editor at large of Walking magazine. While
the impact force of running is roughly three times that of your body weight,
the impact force of walking is just one and a half times your body weight—not
a difference to sneeze at.
Better running
times?
It's true that walking can improve your level of fitness and help reduce
the amount of time you spend pounding the pavement (or grass or trail),
taking the pressure off your joints. But can it help you with your running
times? According to some experts, the answer is yes.
There's an old saying
in exercise physiology that if you mix training, you get mixed results.
In other words, if you want to excel at running, you'd want to stick to
activities that closely mimic running, such as interval training and sprinting,
so that you continue to develop that skill. Walking would fit in with
that.
Simmonds can testify
to that. She says that walking has not only increased her overall fitness,
but it has also helped her race times. "There's a race I've done
three times—the Quadruple Dipsy. It's 28.4 miles and goes up and
over two mountains. The times I had walking in my training, I won the
races and was significantly stronger than the time when I was only running
(for training)."
Take a walking
break
So if you're suffering from overuse injuries but don't want to forego
exercising every day, try incorporating walking into your program. At
the very most, you'll improve your health, well-being, and race times.
At the very least, you'll give your knees (and hips and ankles) a much-needed
break.
How to make
walking a workout
"National caliber race walkers routinely train at 7 mph or faster
and get their heart rates up over 85 percent of max," says Mark Fenton,
a five-time national race walking team member. "With a normal walking
gait, without any technique modification, you can't get above about 60
to 65 percent of max, because most people top out at about 4.5 miles per
hour."
In other words, if
you want to walk at speeds high enough to get a great workout, you need
to work on your form. Follow these four tips, and you'll be on your way:
- Maintain an upright posture. Don't lean forward at the waist; look
forward, not down at the ground.
- Take quicker strides, not longer ones. To make it a real workout,
you have to stride between 140 to 150 steps per minute. Tip: Try counting
steps for 20 seconds. You should be doing about 50 steps in that period.
- Bend your arms. Use a compact and quick arm swing; hands should trace
an arc from your waistband at the back to chest height in front. (Taking
a longer arm swing will actually make you take slower steps.)
- Push off your toes. At the end of each stride, aggressively push
off the ground with your toes.
No-frills
drills
- The Straight-away
At your local track, jog along at a slow pace around the turn. When
you get to the straight-away, break into a fast walk, trying to stay
at the same pace as your jogging. When you get to the turn, jog again.
Do two to three laps. Next time out, make it four laps. Build up to
six laps.
When you feel
comfortable doing six laps, start to extend the drill to an entire
lap of walking for every half-lap of jogging. Build up to the point
(over a couple of weeks) where you can do six to eight laps of that.
When you feel comfortable, move up to walking an entire half-mile
or mile at a time at a brisk tempo. This could take as long as five
or six weeks.
-
The Prance
Start at one end of the track. For 10 seconds, walk with the shortest,
quickest steps you can take. Try to take three or four steps in one
second, which would put you at 180 steps per minute. If you can do
this, then getting to 150 steps per minute (the goal set in the Straight-away)
won't seem that extreme. Rest for a minute, then repeat a half-dozen
times. The goal here is to be able to go a half-mile or a mile at
a time at 150 steps per minute.
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