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Blake Worrall-Thompson's Worldwidewalk Blogs
Become a better walker: strengthen your lower body
 Most of us in today’s world are weakest in the backs of our legs. The two main reasons for this are a lack of exercise and lengthy eperiods spent sitting at desk jobs. They’re also the reasons we’re dealing with an obesity epidemic in Australia.
In order to become a better, faster, stronger walker you must spend time strengthening your legs. The stronger your legs, the easier it will be to maintain the pace, walk further and march up the hills you once dreaded. Strong legs will also reduce the chances of injuries.
The four most important muscles to strengthen to increase your walking power are:
- Calves – lower back of the legs – work as shock absorbers
- Quadriceps – upper front of the legs – tend to be our strongest and are important for preventing knee injuries
- Hamstrings – upper back of the legs – Do a lot of work because our glutes don’t do the work they need to
- Glutes -bum muscles – One of the most under-rated muscles of the body.
If you’re a gym goer chances are you don’t do full range exercises. For example, if you’re doing a lunge it’s important your back knee touches the ground to ensure you’re getting full range. If you’re doing a push up, you should be getting your chest as close to the ground as possible. The more range you have, the more muscles you will engage!.
If you’re limited in range you tend to only strengthen a small number of muscles, leaving a large number of muscles weak.
High heels play a major role in effecting leg strength for women and inhibit our range of movement. High heels change the weight distribution in your feet from the middle of the foot to the toes. In an ideal world we want the weight evenly distributed between our toes, the middle of our foot and our heels. The excessive weight shift to our toes leads to a strengthening of our quadriceps and a weakening of our hamstring and gluteus. In fact, our gluteus might not be working at all.
If you’re an advocate for high heels, you need to spend some quality time stretching out the front of your legs and working on strengthening your ‘bum’ muscles and hamstrings to balance the body. If your body isn’t balanced you increase your chances of injury and decrease your ability to get the best results.
In short, if you want to be a better walker, the best way to build those leg muscles is to strengthen them through specific exercises. There’s no short cut but some form of weight training at least twice a week will speed up the strengthening process. A qualified trainer will ensure you do the exercise correctly.
Good luck!
Blake.
Treadmill Vs Outdoors
Have you ever wondered why you always feel a little sorer when you walk outside as opposed to walking on the treadmill?
Does your bum hurt a little more when you go for a walk with your girlfriends outside and you're not feeling much on the treadmill?
Walking is walking no matter where it takes place, right? Wrong. These two different environments are causing you to work two different sets of muscles! True!
Let me give you a very brief outline on how this could possibly be happening and what you need to do to balance your body. First of all we have two major 'chains' of the body. The anterior chain (front side) and the posterior chain (back side). Most females will find that they are too strong in their anterior chain (front part of their legs) and their posterior chain (hamstrings and glutes) is too weak, hence the reason a large number of females have weak bum muscles.
From a mechanical point of view, because the treads on the treadmill are rolling to the rear it decreases the need for the hamstrings (the back of our legs) to pull the upper body forward so we find that the front part of your legs now have to work harder to control the foot from being dragged backwards. A decrease in force generated forward (because the belt is moving underneath us) means that there is more loading on the front of our legs as opposed to the posterior chain (hamstring and glutes). Over an extended period of time this will lead to a severe imbalance between the front of your legs and the back.
The positive from treadmills is that there is less impact on the joints so for someone with ankle, knee, hip or back issues and this may be a safer way for you to start your exercise. This can also be very effective for people that are extremely overweight because it’s important that you minimise the impact on your joints. The heavier you are the more pressure and impact you have on your joints.
If you decide to use the treadmill do not hold onto the rails! By holding onto the rails you're altering your natural gait (walking pattern). If you continue to do this it will lead to an injury!
The treadmill also gives you the ability to change the incline of your walking and the speed. These are two very important variables when working towards weight loss.
So when deciding whether to use the treadmill or walk outdoors consider this
- Is your posterior chain strong enough or are you going to create more of an imbalance between the front of your legs and the back
- Does your body need a softer introduction to walking, if so treadmill is the preferred choice
- Are there enough variables outdoors? Is there hills you can walk up? Are you likely to increase your speed over time as you become fitter?
Good luck and get walking!
Blake
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