I wanted to share this process with my fellow lovers of animation as I continue to learn and expand my knowledge base and tool set.

Stage 1 Blocking:

Setting up 33 frames in Maya to to set my major poses for the walk cycle. This will give me a frame work for 2 complete strides. Using the planting and passing poses as the major keys on frames 1, 9, 17, 25, and 33 in stepped mode. (Stepped mode takes out the inbetweens and lets you as an animator fill in the gaps without the help of Maya spoon feeding the missing frames).