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What is a brisk walk anyway?
Brisk walking is quite a loosely defined term.
I take it to mean walking with purpose, or even walking with attitude!
That is, you’re not on a stroll but you are walking at a pace and trying to get somewhere!
What that pace is is really up to you, your abilities and fitness levels. Brisk walking is easily tailored to fit these and easily adjusted as your fitness improves.
Anyone can brisk walk successfully and get the benefit from it.
Characteristics of a brisk walk are:
- Walking faster than normal, at an energetic pace that you can [just] sustain for a reasonable period
- Noticeable breathing, elevated heart rate
- Making a slightly longer and more purposeful strides than normal
- Rolling your foot and pushing off on your toes
- Swinging your arms, engaging your upper body and abdomen
That definitely doesn’t sound like a stroll.
Brisk walking in style
The list above is based on my brisk walking style, which works for me.
I arrived at this by just going with my own walking style and making some changes based on power walking examples that I have seen.
There are plenty of different styles that you can adopt or you can take parts of them that work for you and create your own walking style that you are comfortable with too.
In either case, most styles include the characteristics I’ve listed above.
To give you some examples as a starting point to work with, I’ve included some of my favorite brisk/power walking videos below.
Video #1
This is only a snippet of a video that is no longer available on www.mindbites.com. its a pity as the original covered a lot.
There is enough in the snippet to give you the idea. I have still included it because I have seen so many people out walking with a style like this.
The amount of hip swing they show is a bit unnecessary I think, as its wasting energy. I do want to burn calories but I’s also like for as much of that energy going into some good technique that will help my running form too.
Video #2
This is the closest to the style I like, the guys at feelfit.com have done really we here I think. The technique has much less hip swing in it than Video #1.
I like their attitude too, as they really make a point of reminding you to ease up to full pace over the first 5 minutes. All great advice! and well worth the watch.
Video #3
And finally just to show you how far you can take this is, if you really want to. brisk walking Miami style.
Watch out for the music on this one though.
So ok, that last one is just a bit of fun 
But seriously, do spend some time trying out a brisk walking style that is comfortable for you.
It’s an invaluable part of training, for warm ups, warm downs and interval training but you’ll even use it throughout your future running, whenever you need to drop the pace a bit, easing back to a brisk walk is a good active recovery technique and so much better than stopping.
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