Nordic Walking for Parkinson's: Better Posture, Stride Length, and Balance

Now, before we get into the how-to of Nordic walking, let's clear up a common misconception.

When people hear Nordic walking, they often picture someone huffing up a steep mountain trail with these heavy hiking poles, or running fast through the woods with these hiking poles.

That's not what we're doing here, and that's not what we're talking about here.

Nordica Walking originated in Scandinavia as a summer training regimen for cross-country skiers.

It uses specifically designed fitness poles with ergonomic wrist straps or glove-like handles that allow you to actively plant, push, and release while you're walking.

Now, unlike regular walking, where your upper body essentially goes along for the ride, Nordica Walking is going to engage your core, your chest, your shoulders, and your back, all the key muscle groups that we need to maintain good balance.

And also it activates about 90% of your skeletal muscles, doubling the muscle engagement of a normal walk.

And just think of how many extra calories that you're burning as well as engaging all those skeletal muscles.

So engaging all those muscles again is gonna help us with our balance and our stride length.

All right, now why is this such a big deal in Parkinson's specifically? All right, let's take a look at the science.

Researchers in movement disorders have put Nordic walking through some rigorous clinical trials, and the results are pretty remarkable.

For instance, there was a landmark study published in the journal Movement Disorders in 2011 that evaluated Parkinson's patients over a six-week training program and found that Nordic walking significantly improved walking speed, functional mobility, and and quality of life compared to standard walking.

That's pretty impressive.

Next, there was a study that was published in 2014 that demonstrated how structured physical exercise programs that included Nordic walking significantly improved cognitive aspects of movement preparation, cued reaction times, and gait variability.

Now, when you use the poles correctly, they're going to act as extrasensory cues.

So they're going to give you a little bit more of a feeling about what's going on around you while you're walking.

They're going to widen your base of support.

They're going to combat the tendency to hunch forward, which we tend to do in Parkinson's.

And it's going to force bigger, more symmetrical arm swing, which a lot of us lose as Parkinson's progresses.

Maybe you have arm swing while you walk.

Maybe you don't.

I know I don't.

And as any movement specialist will tell you, bigger arm swing is going to lead to naturally longer and safer strides.