19.3.12

Walking. The underestimated form of exercise

One day this year on my way back to home after attending a university lesson a choice came to my mind. My regular way of going back was get the subway and after arriving at the station nearest to my home  a 5 minute walk. That day though i was in the mood of trying to walk all the way.

My train of thought was something like this: my usual time in order to return home by using the subway(including the wait times in between the trains) was 30-40 minutes, with one more hour  i would be able to do this by walking the whole way. I had also planned a running session that day which would take an hour of my time that day. So i came to the conclusion that it would be nice to not run but to combine my return home with my exercise of the day. I started walking. After one hour and fourty five minutes,lots of sweat and roughly twelve km of walking i was home.


From that day i  always return by walking with the possible exceptions of bad weather or exceptional need of saving time in order to do other things. For some people this seems difficult but it isnt. The best benefit of walking is that even by walking for hours your body can recover easily provided you let it rest a day or something depending on the speed of the walk. Many athletes for example use it for active rest on their off days. This because of its low intensity. Burning calories without stressing your body is something that can be included in any schedule. The only restricting factor is time.

There are also ways to make it more demanding like carrying weight on you in the form of a weight vest or a back pack or walking on an inclined surface. These can provide a challenge but defeat the purpose of a recovery free exercise and it would be better to try a high intensity exercise like sprints instead. Anyway time under load sometimes can be beneficial depending on the goals someone makes. Finally let's not forget the role walking has as a steeping stone for someone who starts doing effort in order to get fit. After a period of time it will give the body the state to do more intense stuff.

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