Walking Workout

why walk?

Walking is great for a number of psychological and physiological (read: health) reasons.  Here are a few walking workout highlights:

Psychological  

• Walking workouts offer an opportunity to spend time with friends and family as these seem to be decreasing as the work-week becomes longer and longer. Walking with a partner or small group allows you to spend some time with friends or family you might not otherwise have time for.
• Getting outside for some fresh air and sunlight will improve your mood by relieving even minor symptoms of SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER (SAD), which, in a nutshell, is a form of depression stimulated by long, dark, cold days.
  

Physiological

• Even 10 to 15 minutes of sunlight during your walking workout will provide you with a much-needed dose of vitamin D, which can help improve bone strength, muscular strength and balance, all of which reduce the risk of falls. This is especially important for black individuals, as this segment of the population has a higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency. It's also important for older adults, as fractures resulting from falls have huge functional and financial implications.
• Around 120-150 minutes of walking per week (30 minutes/day) has extensive health benefits, notably reducing the risk of Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. Yes, regular walking can significantly reduce your risk of death. These benefits are all independent of body composition. Bluntly put, this means it doesn’t matter how fat you are — you can reduce your risk of disease and death by embarking on walking workouts regularly.

Walking workouts lead to numerous health benefits, and they can be done anywhere, anytime...

  

Getting started

Like any fitness program, the best place to start will depend on your current training status. In general, the higher the intensity of your activity, the better the health benefits and the more likely you’ll also experience fat loss (if that’s a goal of yours). If you’re just getting started, don’t be discouraged by the high-intensity recommendation. Start slowly. A beginner progression might look like:

• Week 1: 15 minutes at a comfortable pace, 3-4 days
• Week 2: 20 minutes at a comfortable pace, 3-4 days
• Week 3: 20 minutes at a comfortable pace, 4-5 days
• Week 4: 30 minutes at a comfortable pace, 3-4 days
• Week 5: 30 minutes at a comfortable pace, 4-5 days
• Week 6: 20 minutes at a vigorous pace, 2-3 days; 30 minutes at a comfortable pace, 2-3 days
• Week 7: 20 minutes at a vigorous pace, 2-3 days; 30 minutes at a comfortable pace, 1-2 days; 45 minutes at a comfortable pace, 1 day
• Week 8: 20 minutes at a vigorous pace, 3-4 days; 30-45 minutes at a comfortable pace, 2-3 days
  

At that point, you should be ready to add in some higher-intensity work in the form of intervals. The two “on the road” ways to increase intensity during an interval are to pick up your speed or to walk up a hill. Move at your own pace, but the idea of interval training is to work at a higher intensity than you could for a sustained period of time, and then recover as much as possible during the rest interval. If you decide to embark on the high intensity- interval walking workout journey, split your work and rest intervals into 20-second and 40-second sets (20 seconds work, then 40 seconds rest) in the beginning, and work your way up to 30 seconds work, 90 seconds rest; then 30 seconds work, 60 seconds rest. Try to use a digital watch to pace yourself and respect the time intervals — they're there to help you on your walking workout.
After going through each of these phases, you can cycle back through each of them working at increasingly higher intensities (faster speed or bigger incline) during the work intervals.

walk on

With all the benefits associated with walking, you’d be crazy not to make time for a walking workout. Follow the progressions presented in this article and you’ll be on your way to improved health, fitness and body composition.