Walking is an excellent aerobic activity with numerous health benefits, including improved cardiovascular fitness, improved circulation, reduced risk for chronic diseases, and noticeable boosts in your mental health.
While walking may not always burn as many calories as higher-intensity workouts, it carries low risk and is a great way to get active if you struggle with physical activity. Here are a few tips and strategies to make the most out of your walking workout and increase its effectiveness.
How to Step up Your Walking Workout
Use these tips to stay focused, turn up the intensity, and feel better after your workout.
- Use Your Arms: Pumping your arms can help you tone them, walk faster, and burn more calories. Keep your arms close to your body to control your movement and avoid strain on your back and shoulders. You can also add hand weights to increase your walking intensity.
- Make a Walking Playlist: Grab some earphones and fill your playlist with upbeat and energetic tunes that will motivate you to keep walking. Music can also alleviate boredom and help you stay focused.
- Add Some Moves: Walking lunges, walking sideways, knee raises, and jumping jacks can increase your metabolism and workout intensity. If there are benches nearby, you can also try push-ups and triceps dips.
- Add Intervals: These can be short bursts of jogging, but they can also include variations to your walking speed that rev-up the intensity.
- Walk Outside: Instead of walking on a treadmill, try a place outside with varying levels of elevation so that you get a more effective workout. Fresh air is also good for the body, and it can boost your mood.
- Bring Some Company: Beat boredom and stay motivated by bringing along a friend, whether it’s a human friend or one with four paws.
- Use a Fitness Tracker: It can keep track of your distance, the number of steps you take, time passed, heart rate, and more. A fitness tracker is a great way to measure your exercise intensity and have some form of accountability.
- Maintain Good Posture: To prevent pain and injury, remember to keep your back straight, your chin up, and your shoulders aligned over your hips.
Conclusion
With some small additions to your walking workout, you can improve the quality of your walk and reinvigorate your routine. You will also notice changes to your mood, body, and hopefully, your weight management goals.
