training for charity walk

maleficent

maleficent

0
In August, I'm going to be doing a 3 day/20 miles per day walk for charity - and the charity's training guide basically says walk walk and more walk and not much else to get yourself ready...

that's walk walk andmore walk is easy and the 20 miles a day doesn't really scare me that much - the walk they say is basically 3 miles per hour.. so that's a casual stroll for me...

What I'd be interested in is training tips for strengthening other muscles that would probably get tired -

I noticed today when iwas out on an 8 mile walk -that my shoulders get tired and my hip got really tight when i sat down for lunch...

so any suggestions?

thanks
 
Are you currently doing any resistance training?

Getting sore and tight in this situation would stem more from your posture and flexibility. Do you have a current program that has focus on these things?
 
sort of - it's kind of an uninformed approach towards it - but working towards a more solid plan ( a hopefully helpful book will be arriving this week)

My posture leaves a lot to be desired -- I am a typical software engineer slumped in a chair... and have been lately working on reminding myself to sit up straight... (or imaging sister phillip standing behind my chair smacking my h ead with a ruler when i do slouch)

any thing in particular that works for improving posture?
 
maleficent said:
any thing in particular that works for improving posture?
Click to expand...

TONS! :)

When you work in that kind of environment it usually leads to bad problems with upper and lower postural distortions. What that means in short is you have some muscle that are too tight and some that are too weak. This in turn is going to make some more do more work then others to compensate and the chain results in everyone not doing their job so to speak.

How do we correct this?

A great start is implementing a corrective and flexibility program.
Focusing on two main types of stretching programs-Active Stretching (what is commonly thought of as stretching where you hold a position for 20 secs) and Self Myofascial Release with foam rollers. What this is roughly is self imposed deep tissue massage. Here is a brief explanation and a few instructions.
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This is the king of postural correct really. You can pick up a foam roller even at walmart or target.

Doing this daily will make big changes. All my clients are made to do this.

For your resistance training you would want to focus on balance and corrective movements incorporated into your programs.

For example if you are doing deadlifts instead of just regular deadlifts do contralateral (opposite side) deadlifts one arm deadlifts with dumbbells and then advance to one arm/one leg. One legged dumbbell squats with chair support and progress without chair and so forth.

This will recruit better stabilization muscles, increase balance, and work towards changing muscle dominance that occurs because of your daily repetitive activities.

Hope that helps, good luck on the charity walk and good for you to try and make a difference.
 
Thats great you're doing something like that for charity! Must you plenty of motivation for exercise too lol.
About the posture, I can sympathise being a techie myself I have to do a lot of coding for my degree (though I hate programming, bleh! Give me some networking to do any day lol!) you kinda find yourself leaning into the computer..
I find putting a small cushion behind my lower back helps keep me sat up straighter.
About the walking, im not sure how you would go about training for such a thing but if you find your muscles are sore you could try making sure you strech them before you go out then again when you stop? Ive never done anything like that so I wouldnt know, but you could give it a try.
 
Just don't forget about proper form. No amount of strength training is going to make up for proper form. I mean, for example, as a guitar player... if I play for half an hour, and then my right bicep and tricep is sore... that means that I should bump up the strength training for my arm, right? No, that means I'm a crappy guitar player, and should have been twisting my forearm instead of muscling it back and forth with my upper arm muscles in the first place.
 
You are amazing!!!

CONGRATS on committing yourself to do this. :)
 
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