WHEEL WALKING AND RACE WALKING—ONE LEADS TO THE OTHER!
By Lessac Master Teacher Nancy Krebs
Nancy Krebs is a Master Teacher of Lessac Kinesensics and has been a professional actor/singer/musician since 1975. She taught with Arthur Lessac beginning back in 1995, and either directed or co-directed the Lessac Summer Intensive Workshops, as well as international intensives for 17 years. She has worked as a vocal/dialect coach for more than 150 professional and university productions in the Baltimore-Washington region since 1994. She recently ‘retired’ after teaching a four-year Lessac-based voice curriculum in the Theatre Department of The Baltimore School for the Arts. She continues to teach, coach and perform on a regular basis.
I have always been an avid runner, since my early 20s. But in recent years, I have been investigating other workout options to keep me fit as the proverbial fiddle. It is a known fact that as we age, running long distances can certainly contribute to shin splints, ankle and knee problems, hip issues etc., simply because of the impact that running has on the body. So I have been searching for a way to continue the cardiovascular and toning benefits given by running without the negative impact (pardon the pun). Enter race walking….
I used to make fun of the rather bizarre gait used by professional race walkers. It was smooth and efficient, but the swaying of the hips looked a little comical to me—and to many others as well. That being said, I would like to share with you as to why race walking now fascinates me, and has captured my attention and my heart only very recently. I have finally recognized the relationship between this sport/exercise and our Kinesensic wheel walking.
Arthur Lessac describes the action of walking (page 180-181 in Body Wisdom) as an exploration of motoring our legs like wheels along with arm loops to maintain a smooth balancing act. One foot always has contact with the ground, rolling from the heel to the toes, where the push off takes place, and the arms help this action along by the swinging forward and back in a looping fashion. The body has a curvo-linear feel/look from the crown of the head to the hollows of the knees. The crown of the head (where the parts come together) rests up as the highest point, not the forehead. When I am teaching the wheel walk in a workshop, participants are always struck by how smooth the gait is, how effortless the forward momentum, even when transitioning from a walk to a jog to an actual run, and into a sprint. That’s because you allow the Lessac Body Energies (NRGs) to work in you as you move. For instance, my upper body, from the waist up, induces a combination of Radiancy with some Potency sprinkled in—and the lower part of the body—from the waist down, has a resting-down Buoyancy feel. Radiancy is a body energy state that feels like electric sparks flying throughout the body, similar to an excited feel when anticipating something positive, so there is some ingredient of muscle shaking. Potency is chemically-charged, taking place in the muscles where there is a feeling of power, extension, release and a ‘muscle-yawning’. Buoyancy is an energy state where the body feels as if it is weightless, floating, and is always ‘fueled’ by oxygen, produced through the act of breathing. When I transition the wheel walk into jogging and then into running and sprinting, the physical strategy doesn’t change; the leg-wheels just roll faster and become larger.
I never really noticed the transition immediately before our ‘walk’ becomes our ‘jog’. This is what I discovered taking place after I began to analyze that isolated moment quite recently: when the leg wheels are in motion as we gain momentum—the hips have to sway from side to side to accommodate the speed without lifting off the surface to become the jog or actual running. This constant contact and rolling motion is actually ‘race walking’. According to the two rules to which race walking adheres—
1. one foot has to have contact with the walking surface at all times, and
2. the advancing leg must be straight, not bent upon that contact until the torso has passed over the advancing leg, i.e. until the advancing leg is in the vertical position.
Aha! We are adhering to both of these ‘rules’ when we perform wheel walking as it was intended.
Additionally, the arm movement of race walking is so similar to our arm loops or the scooping action that we use in our hill climbing, as to be indistinguishable. I was watching various race walking competition videos, and aside from personal preferences; the arm movement was identical in nature to how we use our arms in Lessac body training when either running or rolling up a hill with the arms assisting aerodynamically. Additionally, all the walkers maintained the crown of the head as the highest point, eyes gazing at a distance of about 20 feet in front of them. There was no bouncing, no heel ‘strike’, only a fluid transfer of weight from side to side, accentuated by the sway of the hips, and a curvo-linear look to the entire torso into the hollows of the knees as their feet held a straight line in front of them with minimal space between the left and right leg as they walked.
My own experience with race walking began several weeks ago, when I decided to try it from videos and some basic instruction. I found that it was very easy to perform the action of the walk simply by using wheel walking, and adding a more pronounced arm movement forward and back to accompany the foot work. It was no different, only more focused on maintaining a quicker pace without breaking into an actual run—which takes a lot of attention to detail. It requires a good deal of ‘staying in the moment’ to hold onto the pace, the rhythm, the arm movement, the form of the curvo-linear posture to do this well—but I am reaping the benefits already—even with only five weeks of testing it out on a daily basis. The hip action that accompanies the rolling heel-to-toe footwork creates a twisting movement of the upper torso that exercises its entire circumference. I can feel that action toning all those muscles already, even with just a 30-40 minute walk (roughly 5000 steps) every day. Additionally, the hip movement is working the gluteous maximus much more than in running, so those muscles are really getting toned. My arms are constantly rocking forward and back, much more than when running—so the entire upper body is getting a workout as well as the lower body. I can feel all the muscles of my legs muscle-yawning and getting stronger with each day of training. I would say that this new sport is firming up my entire body—a really good investment considering the only expenditure for me was a new pair of running/walking shoes! I am lengthening my workouts every day, and hope to find a coach in the near future to give me additional tips on style and speed. I’ll give you an update in a few months on my progress—I may even enter a race at some point.
I would strongly encourage anyone who wants to adopt a new workout routine with minimal investment; reap the many benefits of this sport for improved health, weight loss and well-being—to give race walking a try. If you know how to ‘wheel walk’, you already know how to ‘race walk’. One leads to the other easily and organically. So get out there and wheel-race-walk!