Polish Walking

Nordic Walking beats records of popularity in Poland. Young as well as little older people are walking with poles. People with walking poles appear not only in the mountains, but also in the cities. Along with this fashion, there comes an innovative design of MALAFOR studio - Polish Walking.

Polish Walking is the contribution of Agata Kulik –Pomorska and Paweł Pomorski, the graduates of Industrial Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Gdansk, to the growing popularity of Nordic walking in Poland.

Using super- lightweight walking poles made of carbon fibre, it sounds very impressive, but most people are not even able to use some of the characteristics of their equipment - says Agata Kulik -Pomorska from MALAFOR studio - For them, the simplest and the cheapest solution would be simply to reach out for a natural wooden stick while walking - adds the designer.

This idea has yielded a new one in MALAFOR studio- establishing the rhythm of walking through the usage of ordinary, random sticks found during the walk is much more convenient than carrying professional equipment with you all the way. But natural, wooden sticks have one drawback - they dont have any comfortable grips. Therefore, designers decided to create grips themselves that can be embedded on any stick, found in the woods.

In this way, the project Polish Walking was born. The grips are contoured and adapted to the shape of the hand, they are made of very lightweight plastic. They fit your pocket what is their undeniable advantage. They can be mounted to wooden sticks very easily. This, a little bit humorous but still very functional, idea can help us to shape our body to get a sportsman look, without buying expensive, professional Nordic walking poles.

For us Polish Walking is natural, intuitive and everyday sport - says Agata Kulik-Pomorska – Usage of lightweight grips may be treated as an official Polish contribution to the vogue for Nordic walking.

Polish Walking project was considered while choosing a gadget as an official gift of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs during the Polish presidency in the EU in 2011. However, the project turned out to be too bold and "Spinning top" were official gifts of Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Polish Walking is a prototype for now, but soon it will be deployed to production and will be available at stores.