Normally, we don’t think of the earth’s fields putting up any “resistance” to our motion through them. In fact, the urban legend is that anything that moves through “space” in orbit above the earth, will feel no “resistance” to its motion through any of the fields, but that’s not always true, as revealed in the NASA tether experiment.
The long wire of the tether feels a “drag effect” on it, caused by the wire moving through the earth’s magnetic field. This drag effect is what caused the NASA tether to fall behind the space shuttle after it snapped (you can find this information on several science websites).