The Complete Guide to Nordic Walking

Gill Stewart

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Sport
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781408186572
• eBook ISBN: 9781408186596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine

Nordic walking – a specific technique for walking with poles that is far more effective in burning calories and whole-body toning than walking alone – is growing rapidly in the UK and worldwide. Here at last is a clear, simple guide to help you understand everything you need to know about Nordic walking whether you are a beginner, a more experienced Nordic walking enthusiast or a health and fitness professional. The Complete Guide to Nordic Walking expels all the myths and simply provides advice and information on how to Nordic walk, who with, where and most importantly why. Organised into clear sections to help you to find exactly what you are looking for quickly, the guide is packed with tips, case studies, research, exercise plans and equipment advice, it is the complete manual for Nordic walkers of all levels. The book is endorsed by Nordic Walking UK and has contributions from worldwide experts including Martin Christie (who brought Nordic walking to the UK) Tom Rutlin, Jose Manual Fernandez Molina and Fabio Moretti.

PART ONE 1

GET STARTED

1 LEARNING THE BASICS

If you are impatient and just want to get started on your first Nordic walk, the basics are covered in this chapter.

Before you start, however, please read the following sections:

•For more information about poles or clothing see Chapter 9.

•If you are looking for low-level exercise and want to learn quickly or have balance or grip issues, before you decide which method to follow see Chapter 2 on Exerstrider technique, here.

•If you have any health issues or are not confident about your ability to exercise it is important to do the mini health check. See here.

YOUR FIRST NORDIC WALK

To begin Nordic walking, you will need:

•A pair of Nordic walking poles.

•Shoes or trainers with flexible soles and ideally waterproof.

•Comfortable clothing suitable for the weather on the day.

You can find more detailed information about them in Chapter 9, but as long as you have the basics you can get going.

It is always worth learning from an experienced, qualified instructor. No matter how much you practise, it’s virtually impossible to ensure you are engaging the right muscles at the right time, unless you are walking in front of a huge mirror. Having an expert who can point out any faults and ensure that you are using the correct Nordic walking technique from the start is invaluable, although this book will guide you through the basic movements.

The basic movements will enable you to understand the technique, but you will benefit from going along to some lessons as well, in order to perfect your technique and also ensure that you get to experience the full potential of Nordic walking.

Before you begin any exercise, however, you should always warm up effectively (see Chapter 12).

HOW TO WALK EFFECTIVELY

It is important that before you even attempt to walk with poles, you make sure that you are getting the most out of every step when walking for fitness.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of exaggerating movements when you begin walking as part of a fitness regime, and this can create difficulties when Nordic walking.

Rule one is to always remain relaxed and move naturally. Avoid tense, hunched shoulders, furious short-arm swings and stomping – all things that you see people commonly doing as they assume they are walking to get results.

If you follow these basic rules, you will feel your body enjoying the movement.

From the feet up, practise getting your body into walk mode and then go for a walk.

Walk mode

Stand up straight with both feet facing forwards, about a shoulder-width apart.

Focus on each area of your body from the feet up and do the following checks:

1.Make sure both your heels are aligned.

2.Align your hips; make sure one hip is not further forwards than the other.

3.Relax your buttock muscles.

4.Semi-engage your tummy muscles by tightening them just enough to draw the tummy button towards the spine. Do not over-tighten.

5.Concentrate on achieving a neutral pelvis position – which means you need to make sure you are not tilting it forwards or back.

6.Relax your arms and practise swinging them gently. They should bend gently at the elbow after they have started to swing from the shoulder. This is called the ‘double-pendulum effect’. Bend them into a relaxed position with the hands pointing towards the centre of your body, not straight on – and remember to keep using this action when you start to walk.

7.Open the chest area by gently pulling your shoulders back.

8.Relax your hands and your shoulders. Make sure your shoulders are not hunched up by your ears.

9.Look ahead with your chin up, but make sure it is not jutting forwards.

Figure 1.1 Walk mode starting posture

Figure 1.2 The double-pendulum effect

Now you have completed the above checks, you are ready to start fitness walking. Follow the guidelines provided below to make the actual step movements correctly. It is important that you regularly go through the nine checks listed above. By doing this you can see if you have reverted to any bad habits once in motion. If that’s the case, you will need to re-educate your body, but by memorising the checks and getting used to running through them until they become second nature to you, you can avoid this.

Foot strike

The first rule of effective walking is the foot strike.

Try to make sure that the heel hits the ground first, and that you consciously roll through the foot and push off from the toes. This will engage a lot more of your leg muscles and will also make you walk with better posture instantly.

Expert tip

Stand with one leg in front of the other and step forwards placing your foot flat on the ground, as if taking a step. Now do the same with the heel-first rolling motion of the foot strike, and feel how it uses more muscles and immediately feels better.

Practise walking this way while checking that the pelvis and tummy are all in the correct positions (see points 4–5). Now, you are ready for the next stage.

Bring your arms in. Remember to remain totally relaxed and perform the nine checks again to make sure your shoulders are not hunched and your arms are slightly bent, with your relaxed hands pointing to the centre line.

As you swing your arms forwards, make sure that you allow the swing to start from the shoulder and follow with the gentle bend of the elbow, hands pointing towards the middle. On the backswing take the arm past the hip. Note that this is a fitness walking arm swing and will be adapted later for use with the poles.

If you are completely new to exercise: Practise this fitness walking for at least a week, making sure each time that you perform the checks above before you begin. Each time, try to go slightly further than the last time you walked. It’s important to try to do both the warm-up and cool-down exercises from Chapter 12 before and after each walk. This will gently prepare your body and get you into the habit of exercise.

Figure 1.3 The fitness walking arm swing with good backswing

Expert tip

If you are particularly new to exercise, want to lose weight or relieve stress, you may also like to include ‘mindful walking’ and ‘4 × 4 breathing techniques’ when out walking (see here and here).

PICKING UP THE POLES

Now for the exciting part!

As soon as you grasp the propulsion element of Nordic walking, you will see how you can walk faster, further and more effectively than ever before. The method described in this section is designed to help you to instantly see, feel and understand the action. It will not, however, immediately make you an accomplished Nordic walker. As you work through this book, you will be able to decide whether you want to simply enjoy recreational results-based walking or move on to developing perfect technique, and therefore work on specific areas of your fitness.

Full Nordic walking technique is difficult to explain in one go, so we will begin with the ‘NWUK 4-gear method’ that is taught by instructors across the UK. In this section, however, we will only go through to Gear 3, which results in really effectiv...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• CONTENTS
• Introduction What is Nordic walking?
• PART ONE GET STARTED
• PART TWO THE BENEFITS OF NORDIC WALKING
• PART THREE WHAT’S NEXT?
• PART FOUR NEED TO KNOW
• PART FIVE IMPROVERS
• PART SIX FITNESS AND HEALTH PROFESSIONALS
• PART SEVEN WANT TO KNOW
• eCopyright