Walking for Health and Fitness
Updated: 12/29/20
Walking for Health and Fitness
Walking - The Easiest Way to Get in Shape and Stay in Shape!
Why am I so enthusiastic about walking for health and fitness?
Well, I’ll give you 3 reasons:
Walking is free.
Walking is easy to do.
Walking is easy on your muscles, joints, and bones!
There’s no question that walking for exercise is good for you.
Think about the tortoise and the hare!
Amazon #1 Best-Seller 10/22/23
When you step back and take a long-term view at the benefits of walking for health and fitness, you’ll see it makes so much sense to slow yourself down in order to continue walking well into old age.
But, you will be fitter, stronger, happier, and walking will help you live longer!
Walking is an aerobic exercise, which stimulates and strengthens the heart and lungs, thereby improving the body’s utilization of oxygen.
It also lowers the risk of blood clots as the calf acts as a venous pump, contracting and pumping blood from the feet and legs back to the heart, reducing the load on the heart.
Walking is an investment in your most important asset… you!
Walking Prevents Heart Disease
Walking is a form of aerobic exercise and is one of the easiest ways to increase your physical activity and improve your health.
Walking for Exercise:
increases your lungs' ability to take in oxygen
lowers blood pressure
reduces body fat
improves blood sugar and cholesterol levels.
YouTube Videos: Walking for Health and Fitness
Walking Prevents Cancer
Exercise has a number of biological effects on the body, some of which have been proposed to explain associations with specific cancers, including lowering the levels of hormones, such as insulin and estrogen, and of certain growth factors that have been associated with cancer development and progression.
Walking Prevents Obesity
Walking helps to prevent obesity and decrease the harmful effects of obesity, particularly the development of insulin resistance (failure of the body's cells to respond to insulin) by reducing inflammation and improving immune system function
Exercise, in general, alters the metabolism of bile acids, resulting in decreased exposure of the gastrointestinal tract to these suspected carcinogens thus limiting the amount of time it takes for food to travel through the digestive system, which decreases gastrointestinal tract exposure to possible carcinogens.
Walking Prevents Diabetes
One possible reason why: when you perform a moderate exercise—like walking three miles, your body taps into its stores of fatty acids to fuel it more than it does when you exercise vigorously, like if you jogged the same distance.
That’s good news for your diabetes risk as an elevated level of free fatty acids can make it harder for your body to process the hormone insulin.
Type 2 Diabetes: A 2012 study of 201 people with type 2 diabetes found that every additional 2,600 steps (approx. 1 mile) of walking each day was associated with a 0.2% lower A1c.
Pre-diabetes/Overweight/Obese: A 2007 analysis, which included five studies examining walking and the risk of type 2 diabetes (data from a staggering 301,221 people), found that those who walked regularly (about 20 minutes per day) had a 30% lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
Click here for Walking for Health and Fitness Slideshare Presentation
Walking Helps Improve Back Pain
Learn More >> Easily Walk Away from Back Pain!
Walking is a much lower impact activity than running. You can walk away from most back pain and you can enjoy other great benefits as well. By adopting a regular walking routine you will strengthen your hips, legs, ankles, and feet as well as your core.
This helps to provide better stability for your spine. It also helps to increase circulation in the spinal structures, draining toxins, and pumping nutrients into the surrounding soft tissues.
Pain often restricts mobility. Walking helps to improve range of motion and flexibility. You will find that your posture improves as well as your mood. A stronger body and increased flexibility help to prevent injury.
Walking at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes is great for overall wellness and a strong body.
Combine it with a healthy diet and stress relief techniques and you will look, feel, and move better – and your pain will be easier to manage.
Walking Improves Circulation
It also wards off heart disease, brings up the heart rate, lowers blood pressure and strengthens the heart. Women who walked 30 minutes a day reduced their risk of stroke by 20 percent – by 40 percent when they stepped up the pace, according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.
Walking Helps You Do More, Longer
Aerobic walking and resistance exercise programs may reduce the incidence of disability in the activities of daily living of people who are older than 65 and have symptomatic OA, shows a study published in the Journal of Clinical Outcomes Management.
Walking Lightens the Mood
A California State University, Long Beach, study showed that the more steps people took during the day, the better their moods were. Why? Walking releases natural painkilling endorphins to the body – one of the emotional benefits of exercise. Read more about how to stay inspired with Walking Inspiration: A 12-Month Plan to Inspire Your Health and Fitness with 365+ Quotes and More.
Walking Leads to Weight Loss
A quick 30-minute walk burns 200 calories. Over time, calories burned can lead to pounds dropped.
Walking Strengthens Muscles
Walking tones your leg and abdominal muscles – and even arm muscles if you pump them as you walk. This increases your range of motion, shifting the pressure and weight from your joints and muscles, which are meant to handle the weight, helping to lessen arthritis pain.
Turn your next walk into a fitness workout with bodyweight exercises
Walking for health and fitness has many great side benefits. By adding bodyweight exercises to your fitness walking routine you “supercharge” your walk. The benefits of fitness walking include building body strength, reducing stress, warding off of anxiety and depression and a host of other life changes
3 WAYS TO BUILDS A STRONG BODY AND HEART:
Walk Faster: In my blog post Increase Average Walking Speed with More STEPS I show you how to walk faster and more importantly why walking faster will help you live longer. Older adults capable of walking 2.25 miles per hour or faster consistently lived longer than others within their age group.
Walk Uphill: In How to Walk Up Hills, I explain the benefits of walking hills. You build balanced leg muscles, burn more calories, boost your heart rate, and improve our core muscles.
Add Bodyweight Fitness Exercises to Your Walking Routine: By fitness exercises, I mean bodyweight exercises you can do while out walking… no need for special equipment or a gym. Your body will provide all the resistance you need for a fit, firm, and strong body.
By adding bodyweight exercises to your walking routine you will supercharge your walks. Incorporating these basic bodyweight exercises is among the best fitness programs you can develop for yourself.
Walking Improves Sleep
A study from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle found that women, ages 50 to 75, who took one-hour morning walks, were more likely to relieve insomnia than women who didn’t walk.
Benefits of sleep and why you need more sleep:
Sleep helps our body Repair the organ systems including our muscles, immune systems, and other hormones.
Our immune system benefits as immune cells known as T-cells utilize our sleep time to race around our bodies doing vital repairs. Our body requires long periods of sleep to restore, rejuvenate, grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesize hormones.
Sleep also has a crucial role in our memory system, helping us to retain what we have learned throughout the day.
Our brain is a storage and filing system. We take in a tremendous amount of information throughout the day and rather than filing the information immediately, we need to process it. Many of these functions take place while we are asleep. Sleep allows our brains to transfer the information from short-term memory to stronger long-term memory in a process called consolidation.
Get more Walking for Health and Fitness Information
Brain Function - Immune Function - Bone Health - Breast Health - Improved Mood - Heart Health - Walking Inspiration - Fitness Walking and Bodyweight Exercises - Weight Loss - and More!
Walking Supports Your Joints
The majority of joint cartilage has no direct blood supply. It gets its nutrition from the synovial or joint fluid that circulates as we move. The impact that comes from movement or compression, such as walking, “squishes” the cartilage, bringing oxygen and nutrients into the area. If you don’t walk, joints are deprived of life-giving fluid, which can speed deterioration.
Walking Improves Your Breath
When walking, your breathing rate increases, causing oxygen to travel faster through the bloodstream, helping to eliminate waste products and improve your energy level and the ability to heal. Your breath, more specifically your breathing, is a powerful weapon in your healthcare arsenal. But, it’s an area of our health that we often take for granted. In this post, I’ll show you how to breathe while walking for better health so you can fully take advantage of one of the best and easiest activities to improve your overall health...walking.
Walking Stops the Loss of Bone Mass
Walking can stop the loss of bone mass for those with osteoporosis, according to Michael A. Schwartz, MD, of Plancher Orthopedics & Sports Medicine in New York.
A Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, study of post-menopausal women found that 30 minutes of walking each day reduced their risk of hip fractures by 40 percent.
Walking and the Superconscious Mind
Walking activates the powers of your superconscious mind by giving you the time to think and reap the physiological benefits that improve your health. Recent research led by the University of California, Los Angeles shows that taking a short walk each day can help to keep the brain healthy, supporting the overall resilience of cognitive functioning.
Your superconscious mind operates under two very diverse operating conditions:
Condition 1: When you are 100 percent focused and concentrating on the specific problem or goal you have in mind.
Condition 2: When your mind is busy with something else. This something else could be enjoying the view from a hill you just walked up or taking photos of the changing leaves surrounding the lake you walk around. The time you spend outdoors, whether in a beautiful natural setting or walking along a busy street, gives you the time to turn off your mind and escape from whatever problems you are facing.
You can solve your problems by both thinking and NOT thinking about them. Read, How to Solve Problems While Walking for more information.
Walking Slows Mental Decline
Available on Amazon: Walking Inspiration
A study of 6,000 women, ages 65 and older, performed by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that age-related memory decline was lower in those who walked more. The women walking 2.5 miles per day had a 17-percent decline in memory, as opposed to a 25-percent decline in women who walked less than a half-mile per week.
Exercise and learning go hand in hand. In fact, new research suggests that the real reason humans are primed to exercise is to support brain health! A number of studies have shown that aerobic exercise, can increase the size of the hippocampus.
The hippocampus, located in the medial temporal lobe of the brain, is at the core of the brain’s learning and memory system. Other research suggests exercise improves brain function by promoting the growth of a protein called ‘brain-derived neurotrophic factor’ (BDNF), which promotes the health of nerve cells and seems to have a role in improving memory.
Walking and Listening to audiobooks is a great way to motivate you to get out the door and will keep you healthy, entertained, informed, and will prod you to keep on walking!
Walking Lowers Alzheimer’s Risk
A study from the University of Virginia Health System in Charlottesville found that men between the ages of 71 and 93 who walked more than a quarter of a mile per day had half the incidence of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, compared to those who walked less.
Walking Leads to a Longer Life
Research out of the University of Michigan Medical School and the Veterans Administration Ann Arbor Healthcare System says those who exercise regularly in their fifties and sixties are 35 percent less likely to die over the next eight years than their non-walking counterparts. That number shoots up to 45 percent less likely for those who have underlying health conditions.
Several, new studies have shown that the benefits of walking at least fifteen minutes every day can add seven years to your life. So, if you are faced with a time crunch, taking a 15-minute walk could get you the same benefits.
With benefits like this, it’s a wonder why everyone is not out walking!
The Walking for Health and Fitness website, ebook, and program was created to get as many people as possible excited about the benefits of walking and to get you to get out and start walking!
Let’s Get Moving Start a Walking Program
It’s pretty obvious that walking is jam-packed with an enormous number of benefits and few if any, negative aspects.
How do you Begin a Walking routine?
This is an easy answer, just put one foot in front of the other! I know, that seems like a wisecracking answer but when you come right down to it, that is what walking is, one foot in front of the other, then just repeat this over and over again.
Along the way, you may want to improve on the thing you’ve done since you were a toddler. Here are some practical tips to get you moving in the right direction.
It Starts with Proper Technique
While there really isn’t much to consider when starting out walking, keep these simple form suggestions in mind.
Head up, looking forward: Keep the ground in your peripheral vision.
Stay relaxed: Especially in the shoulders and neck.
Feel the sensation of your arms swinging: One of the great benefits of walking is the cross-patterned swing of your arms and legs. This rhythmic motion can be hypnotic when you really get into walking.
Breath! In through your nose, belly-expanding to fill your lungs. Exhale through the mouth. A deep belly breath is so relaxing and good for your overall health.
Roll your feet from heel to toe: This simple movement will propel you onto your next step.
Set Practical Walking Goals
Most people think that having a vague idea of what they want and being positive and optimistic about accomplishing it is a goal. This isn’t for you!
Only 3 percent of people have clear, written goals with plans to accomplish them. Only 3 percent of people work on their most important goals each day.
You want to be among the 3 percent!
What Are Your Health and Fitness Goals?
Before you begin a walking program, consider why you want to begin then set some goals for the following area:
What Are Your Health Goals? Lower blood pressure. Lose weight. Regulate blood sugar levels. Improve your outlook on life.
What Are Your Fitness Goals? To be able to walk 30 min. Walk up the big hill in your neighborhood. Complete 20 pushups at a time.
Answer these two important questions to take charge of your health and fitness.
Goal Setting Made Simple
Before you actually “walk ” to your goal, you need to take a series of planning steps to dramatically increase the chances that you will be successful.
These seven steps will get you to set your goals!
Decide exactly what you want in terms of health and fitness.
Write down your goals and make them measurable.
Set a deadline.
Identify all the obstacles that you will have to overcome to achieve your goal.
Determine the additional knowledge and skills that you will require to achieve your goal.
Determine those people whose help and cooperation you will require to achieve your goal.
Make a list of all your answers to the above and organize them by sequence and priority.
By following these seven steps, you can accomplish any goal that you set for yourself.
How to Plan Your Walking Routes
This is my favorite part of walking! I love planning out where I will be walking. I use Map Pedometer to check out the mileage of my route, find alternatives such as if the road has a trailhead leading from it, and I love to get creative!
What’s over that hill? What are houses like in that neighborhood? What’s the coffee shop like in that town?
I’ve created dozens of walking routes that I save. When it’s time to walk, I look through my list and decide on which one to use.
I love finding new roads to walk on, seeing new areas of my town and the surrounding region. Finding a challenging route to a coffee shop for a break before turning around.
The planning is such a significant part of the walking experience. Finding someplace new to walk is exciting and keeps me walking more and more.
Read my Walking Destination post about High Point State Park and the coincidence of my hike there!
Track Your Walking Mileage
This goes hand in hand with planning and goals. If your goal is to walk 15 miles per week then tracking how far each walk you go on is a must.
I’ve always tracked my mileage going back to the days I was a runner. In the past year, I’m astonished I’ve logged 1,448 miles!
Keeping track of my mileage has given me the motivation to get out the door and add miles to my total even on days I’d have rather stayed in. After each of those walks, my mood was lifted and I was glad that I completed my walk!
Read “My Virtual Walk Around the United States” for complete detail on how I tracked my running and walking miles on physical maps as I make my way around the perimeter of the United States and how I “fooled” my students into believing I was in all the places I was photographed in!
Walking Keeps You Moving and Motivated
All of the above information should be more than enough to show you the benefits of walking and how to get the most out of walking for health and fitness.
Proper technique, practical health and fitness goals, planning, and tracking your mileage all come together to assist you in putting your “best foot forward” (sorry, I couldn’t resist!).
My blog post, Staying Motivated - How Walking and Mindset Go Hand-in-Hand will give you more great ideas on how to boost your motivation. Check out the information in the video.
I believe that walking is the easiest way to get in shape and stay in shape. By taking a long-term view of your health and fitness, you will be walking well many, many years from now and doing it stronger and faster.
Staying motivated has never been easier! Start your day with daily inspirational quotes to put you in a positive frame of mind. Work on your mindset daily by reading positive life quotes and inspirational books. Start with 40 Inspirational Walking Quotes, Plus 3 Great Life Quotes.
Also use fitness workout inspirational quotes to get you out the door and getting in 10,000 steps.
Read More: Walking Inspiration - Best inspiration quotes all in one book.
My goal for you in using this website and program is:
Develop a consistent routine in preparing to walk.
Develop good eating habits.
Develop good fitness routine habits.
Enjoy the walking lifestyle.
Why You Should Walk Everyday
Walking every day is powerful medicine:
Brain Function: Engaging in a brisk walk for 68 minutes or more a day may improve neuron health, according to a study in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease
Immune Function: Walking briskly for 20 minutes a day 5 days per week results in 43% fewer sick days than those who exercise once a week or less, per research in the British Journal of Sport Medicine
Bone: Women who walk 4 hours a week have a 41% lower risk of hip fracture than those who walk less than 1 hour a week according to the landmark Nurses’ Health Study
Breasts: The American Cancer Society found that walking 1 hour per day lowered your risk of developing breast cancer after menopause by 14%.
Mood: Walking just 1 hour per week could prevent 12% of all depression cases a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry found.
Heart: Regularly walking 3 miles per hour or faster can cut your risk of heart disease by half, compared with walking 2 miles per hour or slower according to a study in Circulation.
FAQ’s
Will walking help me get into shape?
Yes! I cannot emphasize enough about the physical benefits of walking. As I wrote in my book Walking for Health and Fitness, a quick 30-minute walk burns 200 calories. Over time, calories burned can lead to pounds dropped. Walking tones your leg and abdominal muscles– and even arm muscles-- if you pump them as you walk. This increases your range of motion, shifting the pressure and weight away from your joints and muscles, which are meant to handle the weight, helping to lessen arthritis pain.
Is walking good for relieving lower back pain?
This excerpt from my book, Easily Walk Away from Back Pain gives an excellent answer to the question about relieving lower back pain.
“Yes, walking is an excellent exercise to help you relieve lower back pain. Walking is a much lower impact activity than running. Most back pain is relieved with walking and you can enjoy other great benefits as well. By adopting a regular walking routine, you will strengthen your hips, legs, ankles, and feet, as well as your core.
This helps to provide better stability for your spine. It also helps to increase circulation in the spinal structures, draining toxins, and pumping nutrients into the surrounding soft tissues.
Pain often restricts mobility. Walking helps to improve your range of motion and flexibility. You will find that your posture improves as well as your mood. A stronger body and increased flexibility help to prevent injury.
Walking at least three times a week for at least 30 minutes is great for overall wellness and a strong body.
Combine it with a healthy diet and stress relief techniques and you will look, feel, and move better – and your pain will be easier to manage. What exercise does to muscles, joints, and ligaments.”
How do I stay motivated to stick with an exercise routine?
Let’s face it, life sometimes gets in the way of our hope, dreams, goals, and plans. Have you ever thought of giving up on your goals when the challenges you face seem too big to overcome? I have. And so have many others. Read my post, Staying Motivated - How Walking and Mindset Go Hand-in-Hand. It contains some helpful tips and a mindset music video with inspirational quotes and more!
Your Next Step
Sign up for my email list and receive my exclusive Walking for Health and Fitness “Get Out the Door” Checklist.
Also, you will receive a very special gift subscription to Walking Inspiration, the quarterly magazine from Walking for Health and Fitness.
Each issue contains walking for health and fitness information along with my photos; “What I See on the Road”, diet and nutritional information, walking safety tips, walking video how-to’s, and much more.
Then, get outside and walk!
Walk on,
Frank Ring
Author: Walking for Health and Fitness, Fitness Walking and Bodyweight Exercises, and my latest book Walking Inspiration.
Contact Frank at Frank@walkingforhealthandfitness.com
*This post was originally published on 1/1/19. Updated 5/6/20