"Discover how engaging in regular walking for exercise can help lower your blood pressure -- and your subsequent risk of heart attack and stroke"
Since we are
living in Abu Dhabi, I usually walk near the Corniche when I am at home and I
walked even when I worked on Das Island which is just off the capital of the
United Arab Emirates
So what makes walking a workout? Regardless of your
starting level, the more vigorous your walking pace, the more dramatic the
conditioning effects will be. When
walking
for exercise, you should walk at a steady pace that is fast enough to cause
your heart rate to rise.
Walking Improves Health
Research reviews like the Nurses'
Health Study, Health Professionals Follow-up Study, Women's Health Study,
Harvard Health Study, National Health Interview Survey, Women's Health
Initiative, Honolulu Heart Program, and others show that walking considerably
diminishes the risk of developing heart disease, stroke, and diabetes in
different people.
How Much Exercise is Needed?
The U.S. Surgeon General along with
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of
Sports Medicine, recommend getting a minimum of 30 minutes of
moderate-intensity physical activity on most days of the week.
Moderate intensity exercise or
physical activity is activity that triggers a slight but obvious increase in
breathing and heart rate. One way to gauge moderate activity is with the
"talk test" - exercising hard enough to break a sweat but not so hard
you can't comfortably carry on a conversation.
Brisk walking is an ideal
moderate-intensity activity. For the average person, a brisk walk means walking
3-4 miles an hour, or about as fast as you'd walk if you were late for a
ball-game!
Benefits of walking
Some of the benefits of walking include:
A recent study compared walking and
vigorous exercise in almost 74,000 post-menopausal women in the Women's Health
Initiative for the prevention of cardiovascular disease. The following
conclusions can be derived:
Be prudent and you’ll get away from
injury
There are a few techniques to making
a walk more fruitful. Put on shoes with good soles to absorb the shock of
walking. Wear clothes that are loose-fitting and comfortable.
Warm up, cool down - Your muscles are shorter when motionless as contrasting to when
you're heated up. The laws of physics state that muscles work better when they
are longer ‑ much less prone to injury.
Warm up by
starting with a walk for at least 5 minutes. It's equally important to cool
down. This hastens up the recuperation cycle by helping get rid of the lactic
acid trapped in your muscles.
Stretch out
-Tense muscles cannot go through their full range of motion. Make sure you stretch
for 5 minutes after a walk when your muscles are warm and stretched out.
Back off -
If you walk every day, you'll wear your body down. You need to rest to help
your muscles repair fully. Never do long walks 2 days in a row. Give yourself a
day of rest between your harder efforts.
Chill out -
The surefire way to get hurt is to walk hard on a day when you're fatigued or
feeling sore. If you feel sluggish, give yourself a couple of days off.
Diversify – As
a sensible walker, look at other aerobic options to rest your feet and legs.
This will save you from injury. Swimming, cycling and rowing all complement a
good walk.
Work out
You can start by choosing to walk 3 times a week or less.
You should also consider walking at a faster pace, which will burn more
calories. You can attain more results purely from walking by building speed as
well as duration.
According
to American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), 20 to 60 minutes of aerobic
exercise, three to five days per week, at 50 to 85 percent of maximal oxygen
uptake is appropriate for individuals with mild hypertension.
However, for
individuals in Stage 2 or 3 hypertension, exercise should be at 40 to 70
percent of maximal oxygen uptake after patients begin pharmacological therapy
(Stewart, 2000). Resistance training is recommended as an adjunct to aerobic
exercise.
A few simple things you need
to know. The whole point of walking as an exercise is to improve your
cardiovascular conditioning. Therefore, you should
select an intensity that’s not too light but not too hard either. I usually
take my “training zone," or "target zone," as between 60% and 70%
of my age predicted maximum heart rate.
How to calculate your target zone using
the Age-Predicted Method
This
is the simplest method of determining your target heart rate and this should be
used if you don’t know your resting heart rate.
Step 1: determine your estimated maximum heart rate (MHR)
The
formula for maximum heart rate is 220 - your age
Example:
you
are 55
220
- 55 = 165 (your MHR is 165 beats per minute)
Step 2: Select an intensity range to work in based on your goals
and on your personal fitness level.
% of MHR Difficulty
50-85%
of MHR for individuals with mild hypertension
40-70%
of MHR for individuals in Stage 2 or 3 hypertension
Step 3: Multiply your MHR by your desired intensity range
Example:
Select
the intensity range of 60-70%
Multiply
your MHR by 60-70%
165
X .60% = 99
165
X .70% = 115.5
It’s important to realize that target
heart rates are only guidelines or estimates. That’s why you need to use good
judgment about how your body is responding to the exercise.
If you’ve been completely inactive or
if you’re in poor physical state, you may need to start at an intensity level
lower than your minimum target heart rate.
You can build a program that suits you but aim to walk 5 days per week.
When I started my routine looked like this:
And as my fitness improved, my present routine has evolved into this:
|
