It's All About the Hips

Even though you may not feel like you are using your hips when you race walk, you are to a minimal extent. Our goal is to get you to feel what rotating your hips forward feels like.

Try this exercise, preferably at the base of a hill.

Body Position

Stand like you would to start race walking.

Steps

1. Place your hands over your chest as a vampire would in a coffin.
2. Start race walking up the hill (Figure 4-46 & Figure 4-47).
3. Make sure you use proper technique in your lower body and straighten your leg appropriately.
4. Race walk up the hill for 50 feet or so.
5. Now, accelerate your race walk; You should feel a slight tugging in your hip as it naturally begins to rotate forward.
6. Go with the feeling.
7. Exaggerate the feeling while continuing to hold your arms against your chest and straighten your leg properly.
8. After about 50 feet of accelerating, lower your arms into proper race walking position and race walk using your new exaggerated hip motion. Ideally, if you can time the lowering of your arms to reaching the top of the hill and can walk on level ground you will have the best results.

The first analogy is to think of yourself as a gun slinger in the old west with a pistol on each hip (Figure 4-48). Imagine you want to walk thru a set of saloon doors that have a gap in the middle. However, you are not going to push the doors open with your hand. Instead, keeping your torso as still as possible, swing your right hip forward so the gun pops the door forward. Then repeat it with the left hip. Use the same hip motion when you race walk and lead your leg forward from the hip.

 

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