Nordic walking keeps the intensity on track(less stressful on the legs

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-bound28mar28.story

FITNESS BOUND
Nordic walking keeps the intensity on track
With roots in skiing, it's as vigorous as running, but less stressful on the legs and knees.
By Emmett Berg
Special to The Times

March 28, 2005

Between rain showers on the Santa Monica beach, we march beneath the palms at a fast walk, striding in coordination with stabs from our modified ski poles. My brow beads with sweat, rare for being just minutes into a stroll over flat ground.

"It's Nordic walking," our teacher, Malin Svensson, tells a curious onlooker behind us now on the sidewalk as we start up a hill. Our measured pace begins as a groove but is now my enemy as I try to keep time up the sustained grade. At the top, my pulse hits 180 — a high-intensity workout without running a step.

Svensson waits for me to cool down and then tries an experiment: I walk back down the hill without my poles, rest and then walk back up at the same pace as before. I try hard, but at the top my pulse is just 150.

Fitness researchers at the Cooper Institute in Dallas, a nonprofit health and education research center, have found that walkers with poles using proper Nordic technique typically burn 40% more calories than regular walkers.

Another major benefit of Nordic walking is what fitness scientists like to call "perceived rate of exertion." Put another way, Nordic walking delivers a high-intensity workout for your body while feeling more like a sustainable walk in the park.<SNIP>