Walking Workouts
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| ...from a recommended article, WHY WE WALK |
Who says you can’t workout by walking! Below are some workouts to make your walking more challenging and interesting:
Continuous Walking - Set yourself a goal, a specific distance, time, and/or steps to cover. Start by covering it at an easy pace to establish your norm. Boost your pace by WALKING BRISKLY every few days. Keep track of your progress measuring distance, time, and/or steps. This will give you a mark to shoot at during your fitness campaign.
Interval Walking - Warm up by walking easily for five minutes. Then alternate between waking easily for 30 seconds then briskly for 30 seconds, and repeat until reasonably tired. Cool down by walking easily for five minutes. Progress by increasing the number of easy-brisk intervals and/or length of brisk intervals. Every few workouts, test yourself against the norm established in continuous walking.
Long Stride Walk - Insert into the above two workouts a period or periods during which you walk with the longest possible stride. This will help condition the hips and glutes.
Hill Walking - Warm up by walking easily for five minutes on the flat. Walk briskly up a small hill and come back down slowly, and repeat until reasonably tired. Cool down by walking easy for five minutes on the flat. Try to select a hill that will be challenging but not over-taxing to you. If a hill is not available, use stairs.
One of the advantages of walking as a fitness activity is enjoyment. (This applies equally to cycling, swimming, cross country skiing and similar activities.) If time is an issue, walking around your own neighborhood may be necessary. When that walk around the neighborhood can be converted to park trails (perhaps on the weekend), taking hills in stride without fatigue, then that’s when the real enjoyment of walking takes place.
For those wanting an even more structured walking program, check out the EOOC 5K TRAINING PLAN also located in the sidebar of the homepage. This training plan is designed to meet national physical activity guidelines for moderate-vigorous exercise (150 minutes per week) while, at the same time, gradually increasing the amount of vigorous exercise for more cardiovascular work. In this plan, replace the ‘Run’ portion with ‘Running Arms Walking’, as described in A RUNNER STUDIES WALKING. By adding race walking, with good arm action and a strong thrust off the toes, walking becomes vigorous exercise involving about 150 muscles. Sources indicate that when walking pace is increased to 8 kilometers per hour (5 mph), more than 550 calories per hour are burned at this pace, creating a greater general conditioning response.
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Thanks for reading! Check out the sidebar of the homepage where this article and other training resources are located.
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Experiment of One Coaching covers topics ranging from running, strength training, health & wellness, sports nutrition to travel. I usually post once or twice a month.
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