How do you feel?” my Nordic walking instructor asks me. I’m standing on a grassy knoll, breathing hard, having propelled myself to the top. My efforts earn me a sprawling view of windswept trees and lush green fields.
“Good,” I reply, before pausing to catch my breath. “Really good, actually.”
The environment plays a part in this feel-good factor, providing a more inspiring backdrop than the interior of your average gym. But there is something deeper going on too.
It’s my first time Nordic walking, my technique is far from perfect, yet every now and then I feel the rhythm of my feet and poles dovetail like a dance of sorts. When I do, the sudden surge of forward momentum is akin to stepping on an airport travelator, and it’s immensely satisfying.
But why am I here? This experience all started when I spoke to INWA-certified instructor Katie Atkins for a feature on Nordic walking. “It’s like flying,” she told me at the time, and as a fitness journalist, I was intrigued. Then, when hundreds of thousands of you read the resulting piece, my mind was made up: I wanted to give it a go.
This is what happened.
Nordic walking does not start with poles
I meet Nordic4 founder Katie at Ashton Court in Bristol – an 850-acre country park on the outskirts of the city. She greets me with an open grin and we launch straight into a stroll, chewing the fat about our backgrounds and other such matters. After a few minutes, she stops.
“You walk opposite hand to opposite foot, which is good – you’d be surprised how many people don’t do that,” Katie says. It is only now that I realise my lesson has already started.
She is holding two sets of poles but is yet to offer me either. I don’t question it.
To start the session, we simply walk. I’m encouraged to have a relaxed arm swing starting from the shoulder, feel my feet roll through each stride and keep my head up.
“Some people think looking at their feet is safer,” Katie explains. “But then you can’t see what’s coming and prepare for it.” Her point is proven moments later when I take a slight detour to swerve an ankle-biting divot in the grass.
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Nordic walking was not a case of simply walking with poles – I am taught that there is a rhythm and technique to learn if you want to get the most out of the activity (Harry Bullmore/The Independent)
To practise keeping my head up, Katie instructs me to look forward while switching my focus to see near, far and at the periphery of my vision.
I have been up since 4.30am, coaching the morning classes at a gym before hammering away at my laptop keyboard. It’s now 1pm and, in all honesty, I arrived feeling a bit tired and stressed. But after this exercise, I feel immediately calmer.
There appears to be some scientific method behind this. A focused eyeline goes hand in hand with a stressed nervous system, while softening your gaze can offer the opposite. After this experience, I am happy to vouch for the latter.
We continue walking for a while, and Katie tells me this is how she starts teaching Nordic walking to most people. There is rhythm, rotation and relaxation to be drawn from normal walking, and these base traits carry over to the real thing. It is then that she extends a hand towards me – a hand holding two walking poles.
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Nordic walking offers a way to train your arms, legs, core muscles and more (International Nordic Walking Federation (INWA))
There are levels to this game
I slip my hands into the straps of either pole – a crucial inclusion, I am to learn – and let them hang loosely by my side.
“This isn’t just walking with poles,” Katie warns. She sees a lot of people using trekking poles to compensate for a lack of stability, bending their elbows and hacking away at the ground in front of them as they take small, scuffed steps forward.
Nordic walking comprises a longer, fluid stride, with the poles complementing your natural cadence rather than acting as a crutch. They still offer support and stability while taking load off your knees, hips and ankles. But you must learn to use them properly to reap these benefits.
Immediately, I can feel the corset of core muscles wrapping around my midsection kick into action, and shortly after the triceps on the back of my arm welcome the dull ache of hard work
We start with an exercise called “the drag” – walking normally, still with a relaxed arm swing, while letting the poles hang from their straps and drag behind me at a 45-degree angle. As each foot steps forward, I can feel the opposite pole lightly bite into the ground, like the clutch of a car baiting me into pressing the accelerator.
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Pole position: I enjoyed the task of learning a new skill while getting my exercise for the day (Harry Bullmore/The Independent)
After a few minutes of this, I am encouraged to grip the poles and start using my arms to powerfully press the ground away behind me in every stride. Immediately, I can feel the corset of core muscles wrapping around my midsection kick into action, and shortly after the triceps on the back of my arm welcome the dull ache of hard work. It’s a full-body experience.
We up the pace, I tackle some hills, and I soon understand how elite athletes can use this as a form of conditioning. A walk in the park, if that park is hilly and you are going at a decent rate of knots, suddenly isn’t a proverbial walk in the park at all.
“As an exercise, you can get what you want out of it,” Katie says.
You can go for a relaxed walk and talk. You can push the pace and do hill intervals. You can emphasise your arms and get more of an upper body workout. You can focus on your core, or your legs. You can use it as a teenager to take stress away from growing joints. You can use it as an older person to access new areas with more support and stability.
“Nordic walking is an activity you can take with you for life,” she concludes. “It’s physical literacy in action.”
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Instructor Katie Atkins says Nordic walking caters to all fitness levels, from competitive athletes to new exercisers of any age (International Nordic Walking Federation (INWA))
Physical literacy for life
Physical literacy is the idea that we learn movement like a language. The more movement options we learn and rehearse, the more fluent our bodies become. It is also the reason Katie took me out to the sticks for our session, rather than meeting in a city park.
A city park will teach you to walk on one or two types of surface: usually tarmac and flat grass. Here, we can be introduced to the fundamentals of movement – in language terms, “hello,” “how are you”, “two beers please”. You will still enjoy plenty of health perks, but there are limits to what you can learn.
But in Katie’s chosen location, there is mud, gravel, trails, sticks, hills and more. Traversing each one causes your physical vocabulary to grow. Training this way, the world becomes your gym, and few terrains are off limits.
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The poles can also be used for strength and mobility-boosting exercises within your walk (International Nordic Walking Federation (INWA))
The final stage
“This is a crash course,” Katie warns me. “We would usually introduce people to all of these stages over several sessions.”
However, it is now time to add the final piece of the puzzle – for today, at least. As I flow through each stride, I am to grip the handle and push the ground away. Then, when my arm is extended behind me, she tells me to release my grip and feel the pole fly backwards before bringing my arm forward with gusto, pulling the handle back into my grasp.
This peppy action reminds me of Dick Van Dyke’s turn in Mary Poppins. If my exercise habits can help me age like him, still training regularly at 100, I will be doing well.
It is also the stage that flummoxes me the most. The pole is meant to ping through the air like a dart as you pull it forward, but mine starts by dragging along the floor, then graduates to a wonky flight path into my palm.
Katie instructs me to regress the skill by using one pole at a time and practice the rhythm, then try a few drills to challenge my mental acuity and dexterity – walking forwards, backwards and sideways on command, following specific sequences.
Both the body and the brain remain at their healthiest when put to good use on a regular basis. Today, Nordic walking has ticked both boxes.
Eventually, I return to the full movement and attempt a few loops of a copse of trees. Every now and then I find the satisfying rhythm that Katie describes as “flying”. It’s fast, I cover ground quickly when this happens, and the more I practise, the more regular this sensation becomes.
It adds new levels to walking. Not only am I out in nature and moving my body, but I am also learning a new skill and challenging myself. When Katie asks if I want to try another hill, I find myself nodding immediately. As an ever-competitive person, I want to do better than before.
The straps on the poles are important as full Nordic walking involves releasing your grip as your hands push behind you then pulling the poles forward and catching them again (The International Nordic Walking Federation (INWA))
Should you try Nordic walking?
The end of the session rolls around incredibly quickly – or so it seems. Yet my fitness watch tells me we have been out for more than two hours, accruing more than 10,000 steps in that time. And while I’ve definitely worked hard, my body doesn’t feel exhausted – if anything, I’m leaving with more energy than when I arrived.
This is why I think Nordic walking has a lot to offer all-comers – particularly those who have never chimed with regular exercise before.
It exists outside the realm of staple school sports such as football, rugby and athletics; it gets you out in nature and invigorates the body; it keeps the brain engaged by challenging you to learn a new skill; it is accessible and scalable for most people, with the poles offering support and stability while also providing a full-body workout.
Every health authority on the planet is trying to persuade you to exercise regularly for better health. We regularly do things we enjoy.
If you can find a form of exercise you enjoy, that is most of the battle. And I certainly enjoyed spending an afternoon exploring a beautiful country park. That’s why I’m sure I’ll be trying Nordic walking again.
If you want to try it for yourself, you can read our feature on how to start Nordic walking. Alternatively, you can find your nearest INWA (International Nordic Walking Federation) certified group on the British Nordic Walking interactive map