One of the most overlooked forms of physical activity (for a long time) is now getting its time in the limelight. Walking. It’s all over social media – commending its positive health effects. I’m going to remind you of those positive effects and how you can implement walking to help achieve your fitness and physique goals.
First let’s jump into the positive health effects of walking. This is probably what you’d expect. Walking briskly can improve your cardiac health, and lower your risk for all cause mortality, (death from all causes) according to this systematic review (PMID: 32563261). Physical activity of any kind is good for you after all, so it makes sense. It can also have a positive psychological effect, especially if you are getting out into a nice peaceful area. This evidence comes from a Japanese study from 2015 (PMID: 26569271), but you can feel that for yourself if you go for a walk in any of your local nature parks. I’m sure none of this is a surprise, but it’s nice to be reminded of how great something so simple, for most, can be.
So how do you implement walking into your training routine and why would you bother when you can do a higher intensity exercise like weightlifting or running? The answer is that you still do your higher intensity activity, but when you’re not doing that and you have the opportunity, you walk. By simply getting over 5,000 steps, you lower your risk of health issues, which lets you live longer. Get yourself a smartphone, or smart watch, or a pedometer and see just how many steps you get in a day. 10,000 steps per day seems to be the magic number for all the health benefits but you’ll see positive benefits from steps anywhere between 4,000-15,000 per day. The wonderful thing about counting steps is that everything you do pretty much requires you to walk to it.
The fact that walking is something we do every day makes it a super useful tool to achieve your physique goals as well. When you reduce your caloric intake, your body adapts to the calorie deficit by reducing the amount of non-exercise energy expenditure (among other things). You’ll see bodybuilders walking on the treadmill for hours to counteract that and get shredded but that isn’t necessary. You can get that “cardio” in by doing your activities of daily life. Sometimes you might purposefully have to go do something to hit your step goal but at least you can do something and don’t have to strap yourself to a cardio machine.
All in all, do your cardio because you want to improve your cardio performance, get your daily step goal up because it’s good for your health.