Yesterday I found myself at the gym due to Isaiah…the tropical storm. I don’t mind running in the rain, but I do draw the line at gail force wind and rain. So there I was forced to run on the treadmill and endure 4 miles of going nowhere. There were quite a few other people walking nowhere as well…and this is when it hit me. Every single person was holding onto the rails for dear life. I tried to see…did they have an inner ear problem maybe some balance problems, maybe a fresh hip replacement? But not a single person came into the gym with a walker, so why were they now using the treadmill like a walker? I mean they all seemed able bodied? What is it about those handrails that inspire people to hold on with a death grip, and then when they get off they seem perfectly capable of walking without holding onto anything! This is my confession…this is a pet peeve of mine, poor form on cardio equipment. I even had a fan page on Facebook titled “ Your Form on Cardio Equipment Sucks”. I know…I know…it was my pet even if it was ugly and mean, I released that pet into the wild. And then today…there it was purring at me from all those treadmills.
So lets move onto the “why” you should not be holding on those hand rails unless your 90 or a klutz. Walking is a movement that not only involves the legs, but the upper body as well. When you are walking your arms naturally swing to your side, unless you’re an ape or Tyrannosaurus Rex or Cee Lo Green. Researchers have been studying the effects of walking on the lumbar spine, and while with some individuals walking reduces back pain with others it increases it. Most of this disparity involves the speed at which the participants were walking. When you are walking slow (strolling) the shear forces and compressive loads on your spine are actually higher than if you were walking faster. The reason for this is because when you are walking at a faster pace, you are also increasing the muscle activity in your trunk and arm motion.
Researchers found that at a faster speed with the arms swinging vigorously, there is an increase in the trunk musculature activity reducing lumbar spine stress and spinal loads by 10%. The swinging action of the arms increases the muscle activity in the trunk musculature improving energy transfer efficiency and load sharing. The study results indicate that the benefits do not occur with a slower walking pace because there is less trunk muscle activity and an increase of static loads on the spine. In other words swinging your arms redirects the energy off your spine, we call this “unloading”. I found an article in a Science magazine (Cosmos Magazine) and yes…I am a science nerd…the article was a story about robots and the study of motion. The robots without “arms” …tended to spin and fall down, and when he added arms VIOLA they moved like humans! Holding onto handrails is not a natural way to walk, that’s why you rarely find handrails winding around through your neighborhood, mall or Mt. Everest. Holding onto handrails ruins your spinal alignment and actually teaches your body an unnatural gait pattern. And if all of that is not reason enough for you to let go, how about the fact that you are burning fewer calories when you have the death grip AND it’s raising your blood pressure! Release that grip and you will burn 20-25% more calories. You think that walking on the treadmill at a 15% incline is doing wonders for you…think again. If your are doing the death grip on that incline you are cheating your legs and butt from doing most of the work. And by the way the bigger the muscle the bigger the calorie burn. Not to mention the stress you are putting on your back. If you can’t walk on an incline minus the handrails without falling over, reduce the incline. If you can’t walk at 4.2 without handrails, then reduce your speed. You’re only fooling yourself and killing your back.
Let go…you can do it. Release The Rail!!
