Hips Don't Lie

Physically, the primary difference between running and walking is hip agility. The more agile you train your hips to be, the faster you will be able to walk. I've seen a lot of people walking quickly who look like they are stomping around Godzilla-style, using their quads to power their way in a CLOMP CLOMP fashion. This is not going to get you anywhere, semi-metaphorically speaking. Quick walking is more similar to what you see when you tell an 8-year-old to stop running around a swimming pool. "DON'T RUN!!!" *they scurry along at the fastest possible pace that can still be called "walking"*

So how do adults achieve that stride? Practice, practice, practice. The two keys to hip agility are: flexibility, and turnover. Let's look at each.

Flexibility is the ability of the hip joint to move. Now, the hip is a ball-and-socket joint, so it can move in a lot of directions. There are also a lot of muscles that connect around this area, but we'll just think about a few. The glutes (scientific name: badonkadonkus giganticus) are the hip extensors. They should be the primary pushers. Your body has to propel forward somehow, and it is easier to "push" it (big glute muscles) than to "pull" it (small hip flexors), particularly uphill. As I just stated, you have the hip flexors in the front. The outsides are the abductors, and the insides (inner thighs) are the adductors. These are used for rotation, which is key for turnover, which we'll get to in a bit. But gaining the flexibility to move the hip joint efficiently within a fuller range of motion (ROM) can only be done through diligent training, with each walking session followed by a lot of stretching.

My standard stretching routine hits all the major muscle groups of the body, and includes 5 different hip stretches: inner thighs, outer thighs, glutes/hamstrings, hip flexors, and upper abductors. There is some debate in sports medicine about static vs dynamic stretching, but empirically I am a big fan of static stretches. Holding these stretches for over 30 seconds each (until the muscle relaxes) will help improve your flexibility. If a muscle is really fighting you, you can go a bit more dynamic and "rock into" the stretch until it relaxes enough to hold static.

Turnover is the speed with which you can move your feet. "Ideal running turnover" is 180 strides per minute. This is considered absolute perfection for endurance running. Walking is something different, and it is probably only top Olympic racewalkers who could approach 180. Ideal walking cadence is probably more like 140. Generally I recommend a novice walker focus only on taking short, fast steps, without worrying about the count. Short and quick steps are the absolute key to walking fast. Most people who are told "walk quickly for a block" or so will overstride, taking huge steps. This is WRONG-O, y'all. Overstriding can lead to injury, which is exactly what we started walking to avoid. Short and fast, that's the way to do it. Whenever you walk, you should focus on a quick turnover. If you are working on flexibility after your workouts, your stride will lengthen naturally, without you even thinking about it. Again, don't think about your stride length, because you don't have to. Focus only on turnover during the workout, with "short," quick steps. Eventually you will find that your "short" steps are getting longer because your hip ROM is increasing with each workout.

The exciting thing about focusing on your hips is that you should see very steady gains for the first several months of a walking regimen. If you are a beginning walker with a good diet and you are going about 15-25 miles a week, you should see about a minute per mile pace increase every 2 months if you focus on turnover and post-workout flexibility.