If you want to walk to raise your fitness level or lose weight, you’ll need to increase the intensity, duration and frequency of your walking routines.
Reaching a target heart rate is one way to elevate the intensity of your activity. Before you calculate your target training heart rate, you have to know your resting heart rate. Your resting heart rate is the number of times your heart beats per minute while it’s at rest. The average resting heart rate is 60-80 beats per minute, but it’s usually lower for physically fit people. It also rises with age.
To take your pulse, use the tips of your first two fingers to press lightly over the blood vessels on your wrist. Count your pulse for 10 seconds and multiply by 6 to find your beats per minute. Your target heart rate will be between 50-85% of your maximum heart rate which about 220 minus your age.
You can also use the “talk test” to gauge your exercise intensity. If you can say about 6-8 words between breaths, you’re in the aerobic zone. If you’re gasping for air and can’t speak, you need to lower the intensity. If you can talk normally in one breath, you may not be working out hard enough.
Make it more challenging
Increasing the distance while reducing the time is one way to turn your walk into a workout. Ultimately, the best to kick up the intensity is to walk faster. Here are some other ways to make your walking a workout:
Try race walking.
Race walking is a competitive activity, but you can mimic the techniques to increase the intensity of your walking.
Head for the hills.
Walking up inclined surfaces requires more energy and burns more calories.
Head for the beach.
Walking in the sand is harder than walking on sidewalks or school tracks. As a result, you burn more calories.
Hit the trails.
Walking on natural, uneven surfaces and around rocks or over fallen trees uses more muscles and more energy.
Try snow shoeing.
Put on snowshoes instead of walking shoes in the winter for a very strenuous workout.
All Blogs are written by Professionals in the fields of Nutrition, Human Development and Diabetes.