Brisk walking and ten benefits of walking
1. Walking places little training stress on your body
Brisk and regular walking put your body under much less training stress than HIIT or other forms of aerobic training. Try combining another form of aerobic training with strength training week after week, though, and overtraining will soon follow.
It is very difficult to overtrain by walking. Even a substantial amount of walking causes little post-exercise stress. Stiff or sore calves may be your biggest problem, especially at first, but you can ease this by choosing flatter terrain, keeping your training volume in check and wearing the right shoes.
2. Walking promotes recovery, helping you recover faster from your more intense main workouts
You have probably noticed that you feel better after a walk, certainly no worse. Walking increases your metabolic rate and blood flow throughout your body, helping speed up recovery from injuries and tough workouts.
Some even say that walking has a mild “cleansing” effect on the spine, helping nerve impulses travel more easily. Quite a few people report that walking tends to relieve stiff, sore muscles.
3. Walking burns calories without sacrificing muscle mass
Walking is a low-intensity aerobic activity, which means that most of the energy you expend comes from body fat. Of course, a 10-minute walk does not burn much fat, but if your walking adds up to, say, 4-8 hours a week, with several of those hours at a brisk pace, the total energy expenditure from body fat is considerable.
The fact that walking does not compromise hard-earned muscle mass may be its most important benefit for people who train in the gym for aesthetic goals. In general, any high-intensity activity uses carbohydrates for energy, and this is particularly true of high-intensity aerobic training. Under normal circumstances, this may not be much of a problem, but it becomes one when you are dieting and your carbohydrate stores are consistently fairly low. In these circumstances, high-intensity aerobic activity that relies on glycogen stores triggers the release of cortisol, which starts breaking down muscle to release amino acids and convert them into glucose. This is certainly a problem if you are training to build and maintain muscle mass, because your body tends to draw more readily on whichever resource is most abundant. Most people have ample fat stores, so their bodies draw on these relatively readily during any activity. Muscular individuals with a relatively low body fat percentage, however, have more muscle, and energy stored in protein, than fat. To your body, this is actually “excess” tissue and, in a sense, unnecessary. During an energy deficit, it therefore draws more readily on this muscle mass, which is not essential for survival, especially during high-intensity activity.
4. Walking does not cause muscle fibers to change from one type to another
Walking stimulates type I muscle fibers, rather than type II fast-twitch muscle fibers. HIIT affects type II muscle fibers, causing type II b or II x fibers to begin taking on the characteristics of type II a fibers. High-intensity intervals lasting 30 seconds may be very short for aerobic training, but they are long enough to negatively affect strength and explosive power.
Brisk walking and aerobic capacity
5. Walking improves your aerobic capacity and, in turn, your work capacity
Of course, brisk walking will not turn you into a marathon runner, but it will certainly improve your maximal oxygen uptake. Walking briskly on an inclined treadmill or uphill at 6-6.5 km/h is not as easy as it might seem. Regular workouts like these will certainly raise your maximal oxygen uptake to 50+, which is enough aerobic capacity to cope with challenging strength training involving high-repetition sets.
When it comes to work capacity in general, the fitter you are, the longer you can train at moderate intensity. Walking helps develop that capacity. The most common criticism of people who train for muscle mass and strength is that they can handle high intensity for a short time, but fall short as soon as they have to sustain it for a little longer. There is some truth to this, and walking is one way to improve your endurance.
6. Walking relieves stress
Walking gives you a great opportunity to spend time with yourself, think, gather your thoughts and unwind. You will often find that by the end of a walk, you feel better and life no longer seems quite so daunting.
7. Walking is functional
The word “functional” can, of course, mean different things, but one meaning is that walking is something you do, or at least should do, every day as you go about your daily activities. It is an essential part of life. Walking could perhaps even be considered the most functional activity of all, since moving from place to place is very important for every living person.
8. Walking is low-impact, making it difficult to cause harm or injury
Walking is relatively easy and low-impact, so even if you have sensitive knees or a bad back, it should not cause them much harm. In fact, walking may actually have a positive effect in these situations.
The biggest mistake people make when walking on a treadmill is holding on to the handrails, especially on an incline. By holding on and using your arms to keep yourself upright, you effectively cancel out the incline and the extra effort it requires, making it much like walking on a flat surface.
9. Walking is better than running for strength athletes
Running and jogging naturally have their benefits too, but strength athletes should favor walking over these activities. Many strength athletes have noted that regular jogging clearly reduces their speed/explosiveness. What is more, the heavier the athlete, the more taxing running is on their body.
10. Fasted walking is suitable when dieting
The theory behind fasted aerobic training is that when carbohydrate levels in the body are low, the body uses fat for energy more efficiently during the aerobic training that follows. I agree with this, and walking is a form of aerobic training that works well in a fasted state.
Things go wrong when you start doing fasted high-intensity interval training. This is not a smart move, because high-intensity interval training in a fasted state will once again use amino acids mobilized from your muscles for energy.
The only drawback
Perhaps the only drawback of walking as exercise is that it takes time, especially to see the benefits. To get any fat-burning benefits from walking, you should walk for at least 3 hours a week, but 6 hours would be ideal. Unfortunately, even at a relatively slow pace, you cannot read, for example. Do not even try; instead, watch television, listen to music, lectures, reruns, etc., to help the time pass more quickly. Many people spend 3-6 hours a day watching television. If they did this while walking on a treadmill, they could lose weight at the same time instead of gaining it.
When should you walk?
Timing is not particularly important when it comes to walking. Walking at any time benefits your health. If you want to burn more fat, good times to walk are in the morning before breakfast and immediately after strength training, when glycogen stores are low. But generally, as mentioned, any time is a good time to walk.
Translated by Janar Rückenberg
Source: WHO – physical activity.
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