Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Walking away maladies
|
A team of walkers in Kochi are promoting the goodness of plain and regular walking as the best and cheapest form of exercise. `Walk for health' is their motto. So let us put our best foot forward, says PRIYADARSHINI SHARMA
|
Started three years ago, the Walkers Team in Kochi has come of age. It has made a healthy point about the efficacy of plain and simple exercise of `walking'.
Mr Majid Makkar, the president and one of the founder-members was inspired to start such a club after reading a news item in a local paper in Kuala Lumpur.
It was a story of a small group of serious walkers ballooning into a behemoth of 77,000 health conscious people, taking to walking as the best form of exercise.
Inspired by this, Mr Makkar, along with other conscious walkers, formed the Walkers Team. Thus, like most successful happenings, it had a small beginning.
Today the club boasts of 73 members. Charging a fee of Rs 300, each member is provided with a `sweat-shirt' bearing the caption, `Walk for Health'. The only mandatory rule the club imposes on its members is to walk together on Sundays. It is this show of strength on a Sunday morning which compels diffident and reluctant walkers out of their beds.
It makes several other points simultaneously.
First and foremost it proclaims strongly that walking is the simplest, cheapest and a highly effective form of exercise. ''It requires only a good pair of canvas shoes,'' says a member. Secondly, unlike vigorous aerobics or supervised workouts at the gym, this requires no assistance. It has no dubious side effects. It is hundred per cent holistic.
Dr Rajendran, a neuro-physician at Westside Hospital and an active member of the club, says, ''We form a fairly conspicuous group on Sundays''. They take the most visible route on that day from the Parwana junction to Vasco da Gama Square, inspiring onlookers as they walk.
Last year, the group planned a walkathon, flagged off by the Assistant Commissioner of Police, Mr Venkatesh. This year too they plan a walkathon on 14th November, which is World Diabetes Day, prescribing walking as an antidote for diabetes.
With approaching rains, outdoor walking becomes difficult leaving only the few treadmill walkers to continue. The highly motivating secretary of the club and a sports freak himself, Bharat Khona is upbeat about walking even on wet, slushy roads. ''We have to deal with things as they are. The best option is to choose a good road on a wet day''.
To mobilise others to join, he says,''We change our routes on Sundays, so that people in different parts of the town get the message of the Walkers' Team''.
As there are no active lady walkers yet, the group plans to start a ladies wing. ''That is next on our agenda,'' says Mr Khona.
As it is a health related concept, there are a lot of doctors in the team. Formally prescribing a 45 minute brisk walk as a panacea for good health, the Walkers' Team spices it up by ending the walk with a talk on related subjects on health. Earlier, a camp on`osteoporosis' was held.
Thus as the walk ends it begins the working day for its followers with pep and energy, all raring to put their best foot forward.
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
|
