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Who would have thought that by changing the way you have always walked you could alleviate pain, add to your endurance walking and enjoy this very normal form of movement. Simple to follow steps to improving your main mode of transportation. Very enlightening. I want to take the instructors course and teach others this method.
I purchased this book and it has surpassed all my expectations. Now I am back, walking 6 miles a day and without much pain. I have osteoarthritis in my feet, knees, hips, and back, but I always loved to walk. Before this book I had to stop walking. This is amazing. I feel alive again.
I believe everyone should be active and avoid injury as much as possible. I purchased the books and gave them away as gifts to my friends. I received good comments and they are starting to apply the principles of chi walking now.
This book makes walking fun as well as healthy. It seems that whenever I walk now it's not just walking it's working my body the way I want to.
Addendum: The day after my three-mile trial of Chi Walking my knees are aching like I jumped off a ledge. The basic method in both books is to let the body tilt forward slightly so gravity pulls you along. In Chi Walking, running coach Danny Dreyer applies the same principles to walking, but in my experience this does not work. Dreyer is unwise to assume the many readers who complained are all doing it wrong. A heavier person using this approach regularly will in my opinion almost certainly damage their knees over the long term (or more likely they will stop using it because it feels so jarring and unnatural). leaning too far forward from your ankles or waist puts extra pressure on the knee joint."I think Mr.
After trying this method of walking for half an hour I was feeling this slamming and tension in my knees, and figured I might be doing it wrong. In walking however you land more on the heels or midfoot, so if you are tilted forward falling towards gravity, the full weight of the body slams the knees with each step. I carefully reread the instructions and made the forward tilt very slight, tried to land on the midfoot rather than heel, etc., yet still the knees were slammed with each step, and all my back muscles became tense from holding the slight tilt position. After three miles, I stopped because it was quite clear I was forcing my body into an unnatural motion and damaging it.I looked on Mr. Chi Running is one of my favorite running books because it taught me to run in a way that is effortless and natural. These corrections slightly soften the bow, but there is still a noticeable shock to the knees on each step (the full weight of the body hits the knees at once instead of rocking onto them).Mr. Dreyer as pictured in the book is a very light, small-framed person, so he can probably get way with walking like this.
The corrections Mr. Dreyer suggests are complex, subtle and insufficient to fully eliminate the increased shock of this method.In my opinion this is a very risky technique, virtually impossible to use without shocking the legs and knees, hence the one star. He acknowledges that landing on the heels in this way is indeed "unhealthy for your knees, the slapping can bruise the metatarsal heads." He suggests that a change of technique--landing on the midfoot directly under the body, and twisting the pelvis--will completely eliminate this hazard. In running this works fine because your feet land more on the toes thus absorbing the weight of the body with no shock. Looking through my racewalking books, all advise upright posture, warning that a forward tilt puts strain on the neck muscles and knees.
Dreyers blog where he notes that "umpteen" reader have complained that their feet were "slapping the pavement much harder" with this approach. In my experience this is simply not true. Ron Laird, who won more national championships than any other racewalker, writes in Fast Walking, "Keep an upright posture with your hips directly underneath you. They are alerting him that his emphasis on forward leaning is imbalanced and potentially injurious.
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