Liven Up Your Walk

Good Tip for any walk? Bring along a friend!

We all know a universal truth about walking: It can get down right boring. So the key is to find ways to stay interested!

To liven things up this week I'm aiming for 3 or 4 days of  30 Minute* interval walks. This plan can be tweaked to your liking, but here are the basics to get you started..


Start off slow - Walk at a very casual, leisurely pace for 5 minutes. This is your warm up, but make sure you do a few stretches before actually starting to walk. During this 5 minutes, you can also pump and stretch your arms to get your circulation going.

Speed up a little -This speed should be about half way between your fast walk, and your warm-up walk. 2 minutes

Start the intervals - This section is 14 minutes of alternating Fast and No-So-Fast. Start out walking slower than your fastest comfortable speed, but you should still be faster than you were just walking. Do this for 1 minute. Then you alternate to 30 seconds of your fastest comfortable speed (As fast as you can go without hurting yourself). Initially, this doesn't feel like much, but by minute 14, you will feel the difference!

Ease up a little -You should be a half-speed again. 2 minutes

Slow it down - This is your 5 minute cool down. Remember to stretch again when you're done.

*Average 30 minutes - some days are a little more, some are a little less.


So that's it. You can do this walk several times a week, or just once. But, like strength training, don't do this two days in a row.

Additional ideas can be found here for treadmill users.


Happy Walking!

The photo can be found here.