Don't you think walking on the snowy road is annoying because the snow slips and the shoes get wet?
When you walk on the snowy road, you feel insecure because your ankle is unstable
and in some case you may fall down, or you may have sprain when your ankle or knee is twisted.
Walking on the snow makes you more tired than walking on a flat ground even in the same distance.
But since the ancient time, walking on the uneven and muddy ground was very common thing until just tens of years ago.
The environment these days in which people walk only on the pavement and excercise only on the flat ground is actually disadvantageous to our physical fitness.
When walking on the snow or on the sand, the knee and an ankle are twisted and the muscles have to work to control the disturbance.
The ligaments are stimulated all the time. The “ligament” is the organ which ties a joint and a joint together.
Dr. Markin, a famous sports medical scientist, has an advice;
“Train muscles around the joint and make a thick ligament which helps to prevent injury.
The best way is to run on the snow or on the sand.”
Also walking on the snowy road stimulate many muscles to keep the body balance. The muscle activities also stimulate and train the brain and nerve system.
Such ability is necessary for all sports as well as winter sports like skiing and skating.
In cross-country skiing, a marathon race, skating and many other sports the stamina (the ability to produce energy by taking oxygen in during the movement) decides the victory.
The amount of oxygen being taken in and the amount of calories being spent can be examined by collecting the the expiration gas during movement using Douglas Bag as shown in the picture.
The ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the expiration gas is measured and the amount of oxygen intake is calculated.
Walking on the snow makes you spend more energy than on the ground without the snow.
From this point of view, snow walking has a lot of training effecsts to improve the cardio-vascular ability to take oxygen in within a short period of time.
The study by Ramaswamy shows that the deeper the foot goes into the snow, the higher the exercise density. When walking slowly but the foot is as deep as 30 cm, the exercise effect is as high as running at 8 km per hour.
♦Relation between the depth of the snow and the energy consumption of people weighing 60 kg walking with natural speed (Ramaswamy et al, 1966)
