Walking with your friends

Nordic walking is a great social activity. The poles make it possible to increase the intensity of physical exertion without increasing the perception of physical effort. That means you still feel like you're exerting yourself as you always have in traditional walking but you won't feel too tired to enjoy each other's company.

You may have gone out on your own and walked briskly, feeling like you've accomplished something when you get back home sweaty and breathing heavily. What about when you Nordic walk with others? Here are some thoughts:

• You may think you're reducing the effectiveness of your walk because you're in a group. Maybe you normally walk faster than the others, meaning you feel like you need to slow down. Maybe you walk more slowly than the others and feel some pressure to go beyond your capabilities to keep up. Don't worry. The fact you're with others has positive effects on your health.
• When you're with others, your focus changes a bit. The walking group will want to be more sensitive to the abilities of others. In a group, the purpose isn't to max out but to encourage each other.

You don't have to walk with a group all the time. It may be a weekly get together so members can work at their own pace the other times. 

Let the poles take care of themselves

Now there's an act of faith. I tell Nordic walkers the poles are better trained than their pets. They'll keep up with you, being available to grip on the front swing and planting into the ground for push off on the backswing. You don't have to do anything except walk and swing your arms naturally.

Isn't that a key element of faith: Expecting something and having confidence to the degree you think of it as if it's already come to pass. Have that kind of confidence in the poles.

Why would I say something strange like that? Beginning Nordic walkers forget how to walk. In trying to remember the different points in the technique they were taught, beginners overthink things and get discombobulated in their walking. The most common way is to mess up your arm swing.

• In regular walking, the opposite arm swings forward as a foot steps forward, left foot forward/right arm swings forward.
• Then as you move forward, your front foot becomes your back foot, and that opposite arm swings to the rear on the backswing. For example, when the steps continue, the left foot has become the rear foot because the right foot stepped forward. At the same time, the right arm will have swung back.
• That opposite foot/opposite arm movement (how we normally walk) is called diagonal walking by some Nordic walking instructors.

In my experience, beginning Nordic walkers are trying process the new information they gained and put it into action. The problem is, they overthink it as if running down a checklist to make sure everything has been covered. That distracts from walking because the poles haven't become part of the routine yet.

How do I know this? I ran into the same problems when I was starting out. The key is to have faith the poles will be there when you need them. If that happens, revert to the dragging technique where you don't even grip the poles nor let them go. Just drag them on the ground, swinging your arms naturally. Before long, you'll be back in synch.

Walking is at the heart of Western culture

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is supposed to have said, "I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs" (Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking. Available in hardcover, paperback, Kindle, and audio). Did he really mean walking helped him ruminate? I've read that meditation is emptying one's mind of distractions, but, if walking was a favorite activity of philosophers, did they engage in that kind of discipline or did they walk to jump start their thinking of particular topics?

Some saw walking as a cultural act that began with Rousseau and traced it back to Greeks to legitimize it. They pointed out the school in Athens had a covered colonnade called peripatos that facilitated walking. Today we see peripatos in words like peripatetic.

Here's a summary of the relationship between walking and philosophy:

Location	Setting	Activities	People
Athens	Grove that predated Aristotle's school	Taught rhetoric; delivered information and ideas to public	Sophist (sophia = wisdom) philosophers
Athens	Area with shrines to Apollo and Muses	Teachers and students wandered among the classes	Called Peripatetic philosophers
Athens	Vicinity of stoa (colonnade) Greek architecture accommodated walking groups	Exchanges between teachers and students while walking	Stoic philosophers
Europe Philosophers copied the Greeks and walked	Philosophenweg (Heidelberg)	Walked to think and relax	Hegel
	Philosophendamm (Konigsberg)	To take a break from writing	Kant
	Philosopher's Way (Copenhagen)		Kierkegaard
		Favorite activities: reading, music, walking	Nietzsche

I read some time ago that people involved in highly cognitive verbal activities like writing, teaching, and even politics, tended to take up less verbally-intense activities like painting or low level physical exertion activities like walking. In my personal experience, I've had ideas come to me while driving, which is very low intensity and the most physical exertion involves managing the steering wheel.

Given Rousseau's statement, walking promotes an active mind. In fact, to call walking a cultural act is to see in it a vigorous quality that relaxes the body while invigorating the mind.