Walk for your Health: Tips to Rapid Walking

Due to my knee discomfort recently (because of jogging), perhaps the tar area of the pathway is too hard and harmful to my knees. So, I opt to walk rapidly instead of jogging. In fact, many studies show that walking is the most simple yet effective exercise for health and fitness maintainance. It all depends on how you walk and how long you walk.

Fitness benefit:

1. Helps to burn down the fats when your heart rate increases from the swing of your arms and the rapid walk.
2. Less Impact exercise for your knees, hips and ankles which is suitable for those who suffer knee pain/injuries, osteoarthritis but it does strengthens the muscles of the joints gradually. Thus, also helps to cure and prevent joint pains.
3. Improve flexibility and coordination of the body.
4. Walking tightens the hamstring muscles which makes your thighs more firm and most of all helps to eliminate unwanted cellulite gradually.
5. Walking burn more calories than jogging longer time is spent when walking compared to jogging for a same distance. Therefore, burning more calories while walking especially walking rapidly.

Health benefits:

Lowering the risks of :

1. High blood pressure – regular walking makes your heart stronger and your heart pumps more blood effortlessly. When your heart work less to pump, the arteries receive lesser force thus making the blood flow smoother and decreasing the blood pressure.
2. Cholesterol – walking can lower the bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein, LDL) and raises the good cholesterol( high-density lipoprotein, HDL). Combine with proper diet, rapid walking of only 8 miles increases HDL level in addition to losing weight and lower the total level of LDL.
3. Heart stroke – studies found women who walked for 2 or more a week had a lower risk of stroke.
4. Arthritis – Muscles work like shock absorbers, thus doing strengthening exercises like walking have demonstrated to be very effective to reduce joint pains.
5. Osteoporosis- 30 minutes rapid walk or more in a day is a great weight-bearing exercise that enhance weight loss and maintainance to aiding bone strength.
6. Getting obsess - a moderate of 30 minutes or more of rapid walking  burns down stored fats and build up muscles to speed up metabolism
7. Constipation – a simple 10 to 15  minutes of walking regimen several times a day helps your body and your digestive system work optimally. The stretching from walking helps alleviate constipation.

Rapid walking is most ideal for:

1. warming up exercise
2. those who just started to work out after a long period of time
3. those who are less fit for high-intensity cardio work out

Tips for Rapid walking exercise:

There are few tips given from some web sites to increase the effectiveness of rapid walking.

Tips from ezinearticles.com

1. while walking take in deep breath each minute to maximize the oxygen intake to help in fat burning.
2. In hale for 5 seconds, hold the breath for 5 seconds and exhale for for 5 seconds.
3. these helps you to burn off an extra 22-30 % more calories during walking.

Tips from lifemojo.com

1. all walks should include warm up and cool down.
2. the best way of warm up is simply to start with an easy pace and increase the pace gradually.
3. to cool down, gradually decrease the intensity of your walk during the 5 to 10 minutes of exercise.
4. carrying extra weight (too heavy) will not  provide resistance need to tone your muscles but increase blood pressure and place strain on ligaments and tendons which lead to joint problems.

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