Video: Make Walking More Fun and Challenging
Walking is an underrated way to boost your fitness. In this video, I show you how you can make going for a normal old walk into a challenging and fun adventure.
It’s WalkTober! That means that it is time to once again celebrate that underappreciated mode of exercise and transportation known as walking.
And why not? As my favorite biomechanist, Katy Bowman likes to say “Walking is a superfood!” Sure, it isn’t going to make you super muscular, amazingly strong, or blazingly fast, but it will do one amazing thing—keep you healthy and mobile!Â
As I said in my article, Don’t Dismiss Walking, this movement superfood bestows many beneficial changes on our bodies. Here are just a few:
- Healthy adults who walk briskly experience lower resting blood pressure and postprandial triglycerides.
- Kids who walk to school are fitter overall than peers who do not.
- Walking improves longevity.
- Older healthy adults who walk briskly live longer than those who don’t.
- Regular walking improves working memory.
- Walking programs even improve cognitive ability in Alzheimer’s patients.
The day I shot this video, my homework from the “Walking Well” program was to challenge my ankles by walking on terrain that is not flat and level ground. To show you what I mean, I brought you along on part of my off-road walking adventure.
The online course called “Walking Well: A Stepwise Approach to an Everyday Movement” has really been expanding my walking ideas and abilities. Even if you don’t enroll, I still encourage you to follow my example and get off the sidewalks and challenge all of your walking parts!
As Katy Bowman also says:
Every geometry (shape) your body assumes creates a different load. Adding hills (both up and down) as well as slopes that challenge your ankles (think of the ankle’s experience walking the sloping shore of a beach) uses your body—and creates loads—in ways not available in the flat-flat-flat settings most of us are used to.
You May Also Like…
About the Author
Brock Armstrong was the host of the Get-Fit Guy podcast between 2017 and 2021. He is a certified AFLCA Group Fitness Leader with a designation in Portable Equipment, NCCP and CAC Triathlon Coach, and a TnT certified run coach. He is also on the board of advisors for the Primal Health Coach Institute and a guest faculty member of the Human Potential Institute.Â
