Three Ways To Take Your Walks To The Next Level

Three Ways To Take Your Walks To The Next Level

Walking is a fantastic way to improve your fitness. It’s simple, free, and suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels. Many people don’t see walking as exercise since it seems slow and inefficient. Others believe exercise must be done at a high intensity to see results. However, research has shown that even walking at a moderate pace has health benefits.

Those benefits can reduce the risk of health conditions, such as obesity, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease. Exercise can also boost your mood and mental health. This powerful combination can improve your overall well-being and quality of life.

If you regularly go for a walk most days of the week, you likely have noticed changes. These are positive signs that your body is adapting and your fitness is improving. However, you’ll eventually hit a plateau when you stop seeing progress. Fortunately, you can overcome this problem and take your walks to the next level by tweaking your routine.

The Brisk Walk

If you’re starting or restarting your fitness journey, you should build up your walks by gradually increasing them to at least 30 minutes. Aim for at least 5,000 steps in one go, which you can easily track with a fitness tracker. This will help build a fitness baseline. Once you’ve consistently reached this level of effort, pick up the pace to take your walks to the next level.

You don’t have to start running if you don’t want to. All you have to do is go faster than your normal walking pace. Even a slight increase in your pace will raise your heart rate and provide additional health benefits. Your goal should be to elevate your heart rate between 60% and 70% of your maximum heart rate. For example, a 50-year-old has an estimated maximum heart rate of 170. They’re in the sweet spot if they can maintain a heart rate of at least 102 beats per minute.

You can estimate your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220 or using a target heart rate calculator. A heart monitor and fitness tracker can show your heart rate while exercising to help keep you in the zone.

At some point, a brisk walk will feel easy, and you may have to go faster or farther to keep your heart rate elevated. That’s when you know it’s time to take your walk to the next level.

The Interval Training Walk

Interval training involves alternating between periods of faster and slower-paced walks. The goal is to get your heart rate over 70% of its maximum rate and sustain that effort for at least a few minutes. The easiest way is to go into a slow run for a short time, but not everyone can or wants to run. So, the alternative is to walk up an incline, like on a hill or treadmill, or wear a weighted vest. The effort to walk up an incline will increase your breathing and heart rate.

Interval training involves alternating between faster and slower-paced walking or rest periods. When done consistently, it improves cardiovascular fitness, burns more calories, and boosts endurance.

You don’t have to sustain this extra effort for your whole workout. Instead, the key to interval training is to engage in this extra effort, followed by a period of slower walking. You don’t need to do it for every workout. In fact, you should only do interval workouts one or two days a week to give your body time to recover between them with rest day workouts or complete rest in between. Here is an example of interval training:

SegmentMinutesEffort
Warm-up5Easy (< 60%)
Interval3Brisk (> 60%)
Recovery2Easy (< 60%)
Interval3Brisk (> 70%)
Recovery2Easy (< 60%)
Interval3Brisk (> 70%)
Cool-down5Easy (< 60%)

As your fitness improves, your interval workouts may start to feel easy. To improve your fitness even more, keep your workouts challenging, such as increasing your speed or the time you spend walking faster. If you want to mix things up with another challenging walk workout, you can do hill walks to take your walk to the next level.

The Hill Walk

Once you’ve got some interval training sessions under your belt, you can try hill walks. Ideally, you would fit one of these workouts into your routine once a week. Interval training increases your cardiovascular health and endurance with changes in pace. Hill walk workouts take your walks to the next level by literally climbing a hill. You don’t have to increase your pace. The incline will get you huffing and puffing and elevate your heart rate into that sweet moderate-intensity zone.

You may live in a flat area with no hills or only a few smaller ones, making it challenging to do hill walk workouts. However, you can create your own hills with a treadmill or flight of stairs. All you have to do next is climb, even if you have to do it at a slower pace.

Taking Your Walks To The Next Level Example Plan

Let’s combine it into a weekly routine that incorporates all three workouts. If you want to use this plan, you should adjust it to your current fitness level. You may want to start with shorter sessions and work yourself up if you’re a beginner. On the other hand, you may have to add more to this plan if you’re already fit.

DayWorkoutMinutes
MondayBrisk Walk45
TuesdayHill Walk30
WednesdayRest or easy walk20 – 30
ThursdayInterval Walk30
FridayBrisk Walk45 – 60
SaturdayHill or Interval30 – 45
SundayRest or easy walk20 – 30

Always listen to your body. If you feel tired or run down, you should take a day off to rest and recover. One or two days will not erase all your hard work. If you need help, you can talk with a health professional or personal trainer to help craft a workout plan tailored to you.

As you become more fit, you must continue challenging yourself to improve your fitness. Making exercise a part of your life can help maintain your fitness and quality of life as you age.

Tracking Your Progress

One walk alone isn’t helpful to know if you’re making progress or taking them to the next level. If you don’t track yourself, you could become frustrated just because of one result. For example, if you’re trying to lose weight and you weigh yourself, you may become frustrated if your weight is the same or slightly different than before. You probably can’t remember what your weight was beyond that, so you judge your progress based on what the scale says.

Tracking your progress can give you a birdseye view of all your efforts. Not only will you see your progress, but you may also see early indicators of trouble, which will let you adjust your routine sooner rather than later. As a result, you keep moving in the right direction. You may even reach your goals faster and learn what works and doesn’t work for you. It may seem like an additional step, but it’s worth it. In fact, using a fitness app, fitness tracker, or both can make tracking yourself easy and automatic.

The Takeaway

Walking is a highly versatile activity. By mixing brisk walks, intervals, and hill walks, you can constantly challenge yourself to improve your fitness and avoid plateaus, boredom, and burnout. Track your progress, aim for gradual improvements, and enjoy the mental and physical benefits of staying active. Fitness is not a race but a journey. Always listen to your body and take a day or two off to recover. It may be what you need to feel refreshed and ready to go for your next workout, stronger than before.


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Disclaimer: No content on this site should ever be used as a substitute for direct medical advice from your doctor or other qualified clinician.

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