Tsaritsyno to get a health walk route

31.03.2017 18:00 Просмотров: 67 Печать | E-mail

The park walk will be more than two kilometres long.

A health walk route will open on May 1 at the Tsaritsyno State Historical Museum-Reserve. The new route differs from other walking tracks in that it has only gradual drops and rises of around 15-20 degrees. 

“Walking this route offers the chance not just to admire Tsaritsyno’s nature, but also to improve your health,” the Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve press service said. “Walking a route with grade changes has positive effects on blood circulation, breathing, and the heart and nervous system, and can help with losing weight.”  

The route runs for 2.2 kilometres and is around 2,000 steps on foot. It begins at the Orekhovo metro station and passes close to the burial mounds of the Vyatichy, ancient Slavic inhabitants of the area. It then passes by the park’s pavilions and summer houses built for Catherine the Great. The route’s most difficult stretch, 100-150 metres, involves a small rise and drop and crosses the famous Tsaritsyno grotesque bridges. 

Directional signs will be posted at intervals along the entire route. The clear and simple signage system will ensure that people will stay on the path and complete the number of steps needed for beneficial health effects.

“The health walk route is totally free throughout the entire year, during the park’s opening hours – from six in the morning until midnight,” the press service said.

The idea of walking routes specifically designed for health benefits, or ‘terrain cure,’ as it was known, comes from the mid-19th century and was first put forward by German physiologist Max Josef Ertel, who studied the function of the heart and prescribed walks in the fresh air, rather than the usual treatment methods, for his patients. 

Ertel believed that walking was good not just for physical health, but also for fortifying morale, particularly if the walking routes involved small shifts in gradient. The length and difficulty of the routes that Ertel prescribed depended on various factors. Patients with weak health kept to very level routes, while other patients tackled steep passes. The positive effect was so marked that health routes began appearing not just at health resorts, but also in city parks. In Russia, the most famous routes are in the resort areas of Kavkazskiye Mineralniye Vody, Sochi, Gelendzhik, Altai, and Baikal, and vary in length from 800 metres to 8 kilometres.

Source: mos.ru