The experts agree: Nordic walking is good for you

Several researchers compared the health benefits of Nordic walking with brisk walking and jogging. They concluded the following:

• "...with regard to short- and long-term effects on heart rate, oxygen consumption, quality of life, and other measures, Nordic walking is superior to brisk walking without poles and in some endpoints to jogging."
• "Nordic walking exerts beneficial effects on resting heart rate, blood pressure, exercise capacity, maximal oxygen consumption, and quality of life in patients with various diseases and can thus be recommended to a wide range of people as primary and secondary prevention."

This particular article was a review of research articles that involved  randomized controlled trials (participants are divided into groups and go through different types of tests; the results are then compared) and observational trials (participants undergo the same test and the results are analyzed). The tests described in those articles involved 1,893 people, a pretty impressive number of people.

In addition to the above broad conclusions, the researchers observed:

• Nordic walkers increased their lung capacity and improved their overall cardiorespiratory fitness because the activity engaged more muscles.
• Nordic walking filled an intensity level between regular walking and running.

• Nordic walkers also lowered their body mass index (BMI) , total fat, LDL cholosterol, triglycerides, and waist circumference.  They also increase HDL cholesterol.

This is a very encouraging statement: "Current [research] literature unanimously identifies Nordic walking as a safe, feasible, and readily available form of endurance exercise training, which exerts a panoply of beneficial effects in a wide range of people with various diseases and the healthy."

Poles

Available at Amazon: The rubber feet on these poles are rounded to facilitate the pushoff.

An idea of how Nordic walking became popular

I came across a scholarly article about what made Nordic walking a popular activity.

The authors made the interesting point that, although Exel and other manufacturers promoted Nordic walking, it was the practitioners who actually shaped how others perceived the activity and facilitated the sport's growth in popularity. Those practitioners started with the early adopters like "cohorts of middle-aged ladies" who were willing to be seen engaging in this unusual-looking activity.

These early adopters presented Nordic walking not as a way to get from one place to another but as a form of exercise typically done in one's leisure time without the inherent risks of more vigorous and elite sports. A relationship developed between the manufacturers and practitioners, the manufacturers formally promoting the sport and practitioners evangelizing for the sport, person to person.

PS. One point I might clarify in that article: the Leki (a manufacturer of Nordic walking poles) concept that "people should learn to walk all over again…[because] walking with two sticks does require a minimum of new technique."

• When using the teaching technique of having students drag their poles and simply swing their arms naturally, they notice the poles plant themselves naturally on the backswing.
• This makes it easier to point out that Nordic walking is simply an extension of the natural walking motion. So, I'm not sure the statement has to be that stark.