RACEWALKING
Five Stages of transition from walking to Race Walking:
1)Working on arm Swing and arm angle
2)Shorter, quicker strides
3)Straighten knee
4)Now increase arm drive
5)Use the hips – both forward and downward rotations.
Stage 1:
While walking normally, bend your elbow to 90 degrees. You’re just bending the lower arm; don’t feel that you should hunch your shoulders. They should stay in the comfortable low position of your normal walk.
Stage 2:
Make your normal walking strides quicker by shortening them. When your foot isn’t on the ground, it’s not pushing you forward. In Race Walking, we try to get more push by using a quick stride rhythm.
We can work on lengthening your Race Walk stride later, BUT ONLY IF we can lengthen it without slowing down the rhythm of your strides. At this stage, work on short, quick strides.
Stage 3:
Lock (straighten) the knee of the leg which is on the ground. There are a couple of cues: choose the one which makes most sense to you until it comes naturally. You can pull your toe back (toes up slightly). Or you can tighten your thigh muscles(quadriceps) as your foot lands.
A useful tip is to concentrate on one side at a time when you try this action first. When you’re practising later, work both sides. But for now, just concentrateon one.
Stage 4:
Use your arms more! You’ll notice how you’ll go faster automatically for a few strides. With practice, you’ll be able to keep it up for longer. But remember Stage 1. Keep the elbow angle at about 90 degrees and swing from the shoulder.
Drive your elbow back behind you a little, but not taking the hand behind the mid-line of the body.
You may find a tendency for the shoulders to creep up into a shrug. If you do this, you are not alone. A lot of Race Walkers do it, especially if they’re getting tire. Concentrate on keeping the shoulders low, so that your hand moves at the level of your waist.
Stage 5: (the tricky one)
Use your hips more. Ideally, you want to feel that you are driving forward with the hip on each stride. Again, when you are starting out, just focus on one hip. The “hip forward” action will lengthen your stride much more effectively than by reaching out with your foot. By driving the hip forward, you actually carry the leg forward too.
This is the most unique and recognisable action of Race Walking, the hips move forward and down (not side to side. They are driven not wiggled!).
The motions accomplish the following:
(i)The forward motion increases the length of each stride. The advancing foot strikes the ground a little in front of the centre of mass (body).
(ii)The dropping of each hip provides the action which is often misinterpreted as the lateral wiggle. The hip opposite to the locked supporting leg drops. This allows the body’s centre of mass to move forward without the need to fully rise up over the locked leg on each stride. (Visually, the body is not bobbing up and down as runners do.)
The reason that this is the Tricky Stage is that hip mobility varies greatly from person to person. But many of us don’t have the mobility in our hips to do that move as easily. Young athletes tend to be much more flexible and therefore find this hip rotation easier.
If you practice each stage of the transition over 50 meters, four or five times each with about 30 seconds rest between each repetition, you’ll find it a good workout in itself. It’s a workout that is well worth doing to remind your brain of the proper action you need.