Fitness Tips: Power Walking

Making the most of what you have physically can only contribute to your mental and spiritual strength.
So long as fitness is not your god, the Real God can always make good use of it. As always, for a Christian Mystic, fitness is not an end in itself, but a tool to enhance what really matters. As a matter of God’s Laws, it is your duty to develop all your assets as much as opportunity permits.
Right now, I am still on hold. My future mission is just over the horizon from my conscious mind, but my spirit warns me it’s almost on top of me. Until that moment arrives when I engage it directly, I’m doing what is possible. I have a lot of time for fitness activities. In my case, the emphasis is on recovering and keeping so much as is possible of my previous athletic level of development. Over the next few posts, I’m going to describe some ideas I use, and they will be skewed toward older folks with arthritis.
There comes a point when running is simply not possible, or is most unwise. I am there. The knee and hip joints might be capable, but not without serious complaint, and most likely making things worse as the cartilage degrades slowly. To replace some of what running does for the body, a movie hero of yesteryear (Steve Reeves) developed what he called Power Walking.
Let’s talk about weight. The only point here is a percentage of your own body weight. We will be walking vigorously with weights, and the upper useful limit is 20% of your body weight. If your fitness level is poor to begin with, you’ll be somewhere below that. We will need equal weights for hands and feet to start. Check the second hand shops and garage sales, or if you have a shop and materials you can make your own.
In my case, I weigh 230 pounds (104kg) so I would shoot for no more than 50 pounds (22kg) of added weight. Nice theory, but in reality I can’t easily obtain such things. From garage sales, I managed to get some 5 pound (2.2kg) strap weights. For now, I put one each on my ankles and wrists, and two on a belt and harness I kept from my old military days. You could use various types of purpose- made weight belts. I’ll eventually use a backpack. You can use ordinary dumbbells for the hands, and any number of creative methods for adding weight to attach to your ankles. Anything less than 2 pounds (1kg) is pointless. Even at my weight, anything over 10 pounds (4.5kg) on each limb is too much.
So with a body weight, say, 175 pounds (80kg) and up, start where you believe you should with weights on your limbs between 2 and 10 pounds, the add any additional weights to a belt. For less body weight, you might want to stop around 5 pounds for limb weights.
From wherever you start in terms of weight, work your way up after you have achieved a good base time limit. For most folks, that initial target is at least 15 minutes, and 20 is better. Work with the low weights up to a half-hour, then start adding weights incrementally, until you hit the upper weight limit. Then stretch the time out to as long as you like. If it hurts, back off. Stop advancing when your body clearly refuses to go farther. Distance really isn’t the point here.
Strive to walk with as long of a stride as possible. The proper motion is keeping your arm swing straight back and forth, which is not natural. The reason has to do with balancing the motion with your legs. Again, keep as long of a stride as your body permits, because it is the hand motion which determines your pace. This is why we start light, so we can give the hands and arms training in leading the way.
There are a hundred other details we could hammer out, such as padding under strap weights, etc., but I’m going to assume you are fairly intelligent and creative about most minor difficulties. You can work this into your current routine where you like, but I recommend you not do it daily, all the more so as you get older. On the odd days take a regular walk at whatever pace you can manage. The idea of Power Walking is to somewhat approximate the workout of jogging or running, but with a lot less pounding. I wouldn’t try to bump up the weight or time more frequently than every three weeks.
Once you’ve been at it a few weeks, the next time you’ll really need to hustle some distance, you’ll notice it’s far easier than previously.