Walking is a great form of exercise..

In the lead up to National Walk to Work day, I’ve been invited to many presentations about walking and have been reading up about it. This might sound strange considering that walking is the most natural form of exercise for most of us and there’s not a lot to it, but you’d be surprised how much research has gone into the benefits of walking.

I recently met an American fitness expert who has literally built an empire on walking products. She encourages her target audience to walk the weight off and get into the habit of walking regularly, mostly for the health benefits. Following a detailed Q&A with her, it was apparent that her walking methods were more in league with aerobics than walking. Her course seems to work: it encourages people to walk a certain amount every day and fill in log sheets. The whole tone of the course is positive and ensures that you feel better each day and are improving. It throws in some strength training once in a while and makes a difference to all the participants who see it through. You are encouraged to walk more miles every day which are equated to steps and calories burned, with the aim being that by the end of 6 weeks your walking off a meal a day.

For the less aerobically inclined of us, standard walking itself is coming up trumps as a form of ideal moderate exercise. The rule of thumb is that you should walk for a short period of time exerting enough energy so that when you stop your heart rate has increased a substantial amount. In most cases this is so much so that you can still hold a conversation while drawing breaths in between.

It has typically been accepted that walking is a light exercise that has little effect on fitness and to accelerate fat loss and get into shape, you need to apply the principles of ‘high intensity interval training’ which is changing the pace of your cardio workout intermittently so as to have varying heart rates throughout a 20 minute jog or run that burns fat faster.

Mountains of recent research has proven that walking (low intensity cardio) has always been one of the most successful exercise methods for overweight men and women.
There is ample evidence which says that obesity may be the result of a very slight daily energy imbalance, which adds up over time. Therefore, even a small amount of casual exercise or activity, if done consistently, and not compensated for with increased food intake, could reverse the obesity trend. High intensity interval training gets the job done faster and requires more focus and effort, but that doesn’t mean low intensity cardio should be dismissed or that you should abandon your walking program.

Walking is a form of exercise that can be fitted into anyone’s day, even for the busiest of people. In the lead up to Walk to Work day next week, have a think about how much you walk at the moment and how much more you could walk, where and how.

Next week, I’ll let you know how you can begin fitting physical exercise in your daily routine, without setting aside a huge amount of extra time for it. If you’re in a desk job and don’t get much exercise apart from your journey to and from your desk, you’re in for a treat: we’re going to get you doing more without making demands on your time.

Have a good weekend: next week, we start thinking about walking more..

Reference:
Tremblay, Angelo, et al. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism. Vol 43. no 7 (July). Pp 814-818. 1994.