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Do you want to revive your fitness routine? A simple but effective method might be to start walking backwards.
While brisk walking provides myriad benefits – strengthening bones, building muscle, promoting heart health and reducing stress – its familiar rhythm can become monotonous. This is where retro walking, or reverse walking, presents a compelling alternative.
Beyond simply changing perspective, this unconventional technique places specific demands on the body. Janet Dufek, a biomechanist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has researched movement mechanics from running to jumping to prevent injuries and improve performance. A former college basketball player and dedicated exerciser, he has personally adopted walking backwards.
In humans, reverse locomotion can increase hamstring flexibility, strengthen underused muscles and challenge the mind as the body adjusts to a new motion and posture.
“I see a lot of people in my neighborhood and they walk, and it’s nice,” she said. “But they’re still emphasizing the same elements of their structure over and over again. Walking backwards introduces an element of cross-training, a subtly different activity.”
on the treadmill
Kevin Patterson, a personal trainer in Nashville, Tennessee, recommends the treadmill as the safest place for a retro walk. You can adjust it to slow speed. However, Patterson prefers to turn off the treadmill—called a “dead mill”—and ask clients to run the belt themselves.
“It may take a little while to get the treadmill going, but from there we’ll have the horsepower for the treadmill,” he said.
Patterson said he uses walking backwards with all of his clients as an “accessory exercise” — a weight-training term for add-on movements designed to work a specific muscle group — or during warm-ups. Activity is usually a small part of a workout, he said.
“Treadmills are great for older clients because you have the handles on the side and you reduce the risk of falling,” he said.
off the treadmill
Dufek suggests taking 10-minute walks back in one-minute segments and adding time and distance as you become comfortable.
You can also do this with a partner; Face each other, maybe hold hands. One person walks backward, and the other walks forward and keeps an eye out for problems. Then change position.
“At first, you start really, really slowly because there’s a balance of adjustment and retraining of the brain. You’re learning a new skill,” Dufek said. “You’re using the muscles in different ways.”
If you do things your way run And get really good at it, then you can try running backwards in the marathon – 26.2 miles or 42.2 kilometers. Yes, people have done that.
Walking backwards as cross-training
Dufek classifies backward walking as cross-training, or incorporating a mix of moves into a fitness program. Performing a variety of exercises can help prevent overuse injuries, which can occur after using the same muscle groups repeatedly.
For many people, cross-training involves different activities and types of exercise: for example, running one day, swimming the next day, and strength training on the third day. But the modifications required to walk backwards work in the same way, but on a microscopic level.
Do small changes make a big difference? Dufek, once an avid runner, said she owned several pairs of running shoes and never wore the same pair for more than two days in a row.
“The level of wear on the shoes was different, the design was different,” he said. “Just by changing that one element, in this case the shoes, it will provide a slightly different stress to the system.”
Retro walking as rehabilitation
Physical therapists instruct some of their clients to perform reverse walks, which can be useful for people undergoing rehabilitation or recovering from a knee injury or surgery.
“From a force perspective, from a movement pattern perspective, walking backward is very different from walking forward,” Dufek explained. Instead of landing on the heel first, “you strike the forefoot first, often very gently, and often the heel does not contact the ground.”
“It reduces the range of motion in the knee joint, which allows activity without putting pressure on the (knee) joint,” Dufek said.
Walking backwards also stretches the hamstring muscles, a group of muscles at the back of the thigh. Dufek is interested in finding out whether this improves balance and reduces the risk of falls in older adults by activating more of the body’s senses.
athletes do it naturally
There is nothing unnatural about walking backwards. In fact, running backwards is a key skill for top athletes.
Basketball players do this. Football players do the same. American football players – especially defensive players – do this constantly.
“I played basketball and I probably spent 40 percent of my time playing defense and running back,” Dufek said.