We all start out the same way — as beginners. But with each step and each intentional walk, we discover our abilities, our stamina, and our desires and often we begin to feel challenged to push ourselves to the next level. To quicken our pace and extend our intervals. To elevate our walk from that of a beginner to more advanced. But how do you know when you’re ready to “step” it up?
We talked to Olympic Racewalker, Rachel Seaman, for her advice on increasing your pace during your intentional walks. Here’s what she shared with us.
How do you determine your walking pace when you first start walking?
When you first start walking, your pace shouldn't be faster than a conversational pace. You should be able to talk comfortably for the duration of your walk without getting out of breath. This will help build up your cardio while getting used to time on your feet.
How do you know when you're ready to increase your pace?
Once you have been walking at a comfortable conversational pace consistently for at least 2 weeks, you should be able to do some walks where you start to increase your pace.
What's the first step you should take when increasing your pace?
When you decide you are ready to increase your pace, do so in small increments and increase as you see fit. First, do a warm up so your body is loose and warm. This can be anywhere from 5-15 minutes. After the warm up, add 1-minute intervals where you push your pace and then go back to walking at an easy pace again for 3 minutes.
Repeat the 1 minute fast/3 minute slow intervals as many times as you feel comfortable, for a minimum of 3 times. After the first week of doing this workout 1-2 times, you can increase the faster interval time to 2 minutes fast and then 3 minutes easy. As your fitness improves, you can increase the time you go fast.
Don't forget to do a cool down after the intervals of 5-15 minutes of easy walking so that your body relaxes from the faster intervals and you lower your heart rate.
Should your whole walk be at a single pace, or are intervals better?
At first, you should start with small intervals so that you introduce your body and mind to a faster pace than just a conversational pace. Once your fitness improves, the faster intervals will increase and you may get to a point where you do just one long interval, instead of going back and forth between fast and slow. No matter the workout, you should always do a warm up and cool down to avoid injuries.
What are the benefits of increasing your pace?
The benefits to increasing your pace is introducing different muscles while you walk. You have slow twitch and fast twitch muscles and the different types of workouts can help build those two different muscle types. You can gain fitness quicker by adding in some faster paced days because you build those fast twitch muscles that will help increase the pace of your slower paced days. The slower paced days will feel easier after introducing faster paced walks.What do you need to look out for when increasing your pace? What injuries might occur, and what can you do about them when they do occur?
You need to be careful to not do too much too quickly. This is the case when you are just starting to walk and are going easy or when you are introducing faster paced walks.
Everything you do needs to be introduced gradually. If you try to do too much too quickly, you have a much greater chance of injury or overuse fatigue. If you start to feel any sort of pain or discomfort, and especially if it lasts your enitre walk or the pain increases as you continue to walk, this is a sign that you may need to be cautious. Sometimes these pains only last one walk but more often than not, it can persist if you ignore the pain and turn into an injury.
At the first sign of pain/discomfort, stop briefly during your walk and stretch the area and surrounding areas and see if that helps. If it does, make sure to stretch the same areas after your walk and before you walk again. If stretching doesn't help, try icing or heating the area and give yourself an extra day's rest from your regular walking routine. If neither of those options help, seek the help of a specialist.
How can you prevent injury?
The best way to prevent injury is to not overtrain, make sure you give yourself enough recovery between walks and stretch. Don't overtrain, meaning only do as much as you can handle and that you are able to recover after one walk and are able to feel good by the next walk and aren't overtired.You should always stretch before you walk and after. It can be as little as 5 minutes. You want to make sure that your muscles are loose enough to be able to handle the time you spend on your feet walking.
Also, if you have the time, doing some strength exercises can really help prevent injury because your muscles will be strong enough to handle the repetitiveness of walking for an extended period of time and will also help you recover better.
Rachel Seaman is a professional track and field athlete and specializes in the racewalk. She competed in the Olympics in 2012, missed the Olympics in 2016 because of a hamstring tear and is now training to compete in the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo. She competes for Canada and holds every racewalk record from 1 mile to 20km’s. She is married to two-time USA Olympian Tim Seaman, and has 2 daughters, Isabella and Blaise. She lives in sunny San Diego!
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