Featured Exercise:  Speed Walk

This was an exercise Lynda made up spur-of-the-moment for an injured sprinter who needed to fire her fast twitch fibers but couldn’t put any weight on her sore knee. It’s a great high-intensity builder of coordination and strength.

First a student, client, or patient has to master the three basic techniques of Deep-Water Intervals: Deep-Water Run, Power Walk, and Flies.  Then, if they are not holding the side of the pool, they are probably ready to learn Speed Walk. It’s the most of advanced of the deep-water interval training techniques.  They need good balance, strength, and coordination – and doing Speed Walk will give them even more of all those qualities!

Once they can do Speed Walk, you can make it more challenging by asking for more speed. Ask them to count how many times their right hand comes forward in thirty seconds.  That means every time a right-left cycle is begun. You’ll need to encourage them to work on cadence, which is the number of full cycles of the exercise that can be accomplished in 30 seconds. It’s a good measure of athletic performance.  For instance, top sprinters can always do more than distance runners. With practice, many people can get more than 60, which is more than 2 cycles per second. A professional jazz dancer was able to accomplish 82! See what you and your students, athletes, or dancers can achieve.