Grays On Trays

If you plan to go cross-country skiing but leave your skis behind, does that mean that you’re nordic walking?

Last night I went to a beginning-of-the-season meeting of the Midwest Sport/Ski Council, a collection of ski clubs. The purpose of the meeting seemed to be to introduce members and prospective club members of upcoming group trips, and give people the chance to socialize.

The biggest block of time was given over to a fellow (I’ve forgotten his name, so I’ll call him Sven) who gave us an introduction to “nordic walking.”

To recount a few items Sven mentioned, which I shared from my Twitter account,

• Nordic walking started in Europe, and is extremely popular there;
• It’s a whole-body workout, using 90 percent of your muscle groups;
• Digging the poles in the ground as you walk provides some upper-body workout;
• Nordic walking can be enjoyed on snow, dry pavement, and even ice;
• It’s best done with poles uniquely designed for the task; downhill poles are too heavy, and trekking poles aren’t as good, either. For some reason which I forget, cross-country skis aren’t good either.
• Unless you’re going downhill, you don’t put the poles in front of you as you walk; you put them behind you. With the pole strap keeping the pole attached to your body, you can release the pole as you reach back further than you could were you to put a death grip on the pole. This in turn promotes a greater extension and a greater workout.
• It’s great for people with orthopedic problems; the military is using nordic walking in the physical rehab of wounded soldiers.

I have to admit that I was skeptical when Sven talked about his great experiences having a nordic walking coach. A coach? For walking? What’s next–a coach for sitting down for dinner?

As I think of it now, there’s more to the biomechanics of it all than I understand, and I suppose it’s possible that there really are ways to make your movements more efficient that take some time to pick up.

But at the end of the evening, I still thought “What does this do that cross-country skiing doesn’t?”

Here are some possibilities I came up with: It might open up some terrain that might not be suitable for skiing. Sven says he lives in downtown Minneapolis. He can walk the city sidewalks with his poles, but he can’t take out XC skis there. And unlike XC skis, you can use nordic poles during the summer as well as the winter. Just use a different set of interchangeable tips.

For some people, nordic walking is good because skis are just too slippery. With nordic skiing, you can get a good trip with the right pair of shoes. Sven swears also by Yak Traks, which are like tire studs for your shoes, for walking on ice. (I know from experience that snowboard boots don’t always provide a sure footing on ice!)

Finally, nordic walking can provide good training for cross-country skiing, but for some people, it becomes the primary winter activity.

There’s more to the subject than I know at this point, but if it interests you as an activity, one place to get more information is SkiWalking.com. It’s not Sven’s site (in fact, it touts a different brand than the one he backs), but it appears to be a useful site on the subject.

Tags: related sports

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 24th, 2009 at 3:00 PM and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.