Any exercise will only be effective if we challenge our bodies and stretch our limits; otherwise it is boring. No wonder, some people walk for many years but end up looking the same and losing no weight.
And while surfing I found a very good website which told how you should walk in order to lose weight: Medimanage
So here are the things to consider when you take up walking as a workout:
Warm up: Like in all exercises, warm up is essential in walking too. When you walk without warming up, instead of burning the fat in your body, you tend to burn up the available sugar. So you will easily be tired but not necessarily burning fats.
Warming up for few minutes tells your muscles that you are going to do an activity and they have burn the fat deposits.
Start slow: For the beginners, start with walking for 15 minutes per day at an easy pace. Rather than starting with gusto and fizzling out soon; walk for 2 days at once and take rest on 3rdand again on the 6th. Build that consistency. The goal for a week can be 60 minutes of walking for the beginners.
Take it forward from here. Add 5 minutes after each week i.e. walk for 20 minutes in the second week and 25 minutes in the third week.
Increase the speed: After graduating to walking comfortably for 30 minutes in a week, start increasing your walking speed. But remember -don't do it if cannot walk for 30 minutes comfortably!
-Increasing speed is essential because your body otherwise takes it easy. Being comfortable essentially doesn't help you enough.
-When you walk at a speed of 50-70% of your heart rate, you get a good cardio.
-When you walk faster, the muscles are worked up; these muscles are taught to burn calories and are more effective in doing so. So, you burn more calories every day easily.
- You burn 1.5-2 times as many calories over the same distance.
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