In Women’s Fitness: Fast, Fit & Fulfilling, I told you about the fitness regimen prescribed by Raphael Calzadilla of eDiets.com. In that same vein, let’s talk about ramping up the intensity of your walking program in order to maximize your caloric burn in the same amount of time you spend walking now.
The busier we are, the more we look for ways to improve our fitness options. This is a potential option for you if you enjoy walking outdoors or in. My preference as stated here several times is for the treadmill that I use to work out and catch up on my television viewing from the previous day. So without further ado, let’s burn a few extra calories in the same time investment.
- Ramp up your incline – if you use a treadmill this is very easy and we’ve talked about using incremental inclines as a part of your walking program. If you’re walking outdoors, use inclines like hills or stairs to increase the difficulty of your walk. The incline on a treadmill is the easiest for you to control manually – you can judge the difficulty and the intensity by measuring it on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the easiest and 10 being nearly impossible – your regular rate is probably somewhere around a 5, so take a minute every five minutes and push yourself to an 8 or a 9 and then back to a 5
- Think Fast Feet – Speed increases, incremental or otherwise, increases your heart rate and number of breaths you take. Average walking speed is about 2.5 on a treadmill, if you can increase it to 3.7 for a minute or two every 5 minutes, you will increase your burn and will keep your heart rate elevated for another minute or two past when you slow back down
- Let Your Arms Find Their Groove – Have you ever seen someone who was walking swinging their arms or pumping them like they were doing hammer curls? This actual increases the flow of blood to your arms and puts more stress on your heart. While your legs contain the largest group of muscles in the body, getting your arms into the program requires more oxygen, more calories and more energy to burn – so find your groove and get your arms moving
- Nordic Walking – Nordic walking involves using ski like poles while you are walking. The poles don’t have to be weighted down and in fact, just regular walking poles that you use in comfortable stride are more than enough to increase your calorie burn by 25% or more – so don’t worry about looking funny – think about how great your going to look!
Have you ever done any Nordic Walking? I’ve not had an opportunity to try that out as yet – I need to check out where we can get some walking poles and how much they cost. I’ll be sure to post what I find for those of you interested in checking it out.
Related Articles:
Step Up: Join the Walking Craze – Book Review