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Walking For Fitness: The Ultimate Guide

The Ultimate Guide to Walking for Fitness

Techniques, Programs, and Inspiration to Help Kick-Start Your Walking Program

Ready to kickstart fitness walking and reap its amazing benefits? Here’s your complete guide that has it all; from creating the perfect plan, to implementing practical techniques, to finding the right shoes and powerful inspiration that will turn walking for fitness into a regular healthy habit.

Table of Contents

Chapter I: Planning Your Successful Fitness Walking Program

Walking offers incredible benefits from improving mobility, to preventing chronic diseases and even extending lifespan. It doesn’t require athletic skills or special equipment and can be done at very little cost. Even a 30-minute walk a day has a significant positive impact to your health including energy boost, mental alertness and release of feel-good endorphins.

Here are good sources to plan your fitness walking program:

Chapter II: Top Walking Techniques – What the Pros Can Teach You

The good thing about walking is that you can do it wherever you want, whenever you want. Walking can be done indoor, outdoor, alone or with your friends and at virtually no expense. Fitness walking is easy and everyone can do it. While circumstances such as the weather, daily routines and even procrastination affect your fitness plan, there are ways to optimize your program to get the most out of each walk.

Get the most out of your walks with these techniques:

Chapter III: Easy, Quick, and Safe Walking Stretches

Individuals, specifically those who are living sedentary lifestyles, or people who haven’t done any exercising for a long time may experience pain the first time they do fitness walking. The pain could be felt in the thigh, calf, buttocks or feet after exercise and this problem may prolong. This is why stretches and some pre-exercise routines should be factored in.

Get to know these useful stretching techniques for painless walking:

Chapter IV: Top Field Guides to Strength Training

Leg power is essential for fitness walkers, especially if you are to do a brisk walk. The main power in your fitness walking comes from your lower body; so, leg power plays a big role. Among the reasons why rookie fitness walkers give up is because of leg fatigue; which is normally felt during the first days of walking.

The strength of your glutes, hamstrings and quads is what gives you power to do long walks. So technically, having strong legs should be considered a priority for fitness walkers. The right training helps your legs gain more strength and flexibility. As you continue your fitness plan, walking itself heightens your legs overall capacity for balance; making them stronger and more powerful.

Here are some useful strength training and leg power workout that you can do prior to or when walking:

Chapter V: Keys to Longer Walking Endurance

What makes fitness walking more effective is the length of time you spend and the distance you traveled walking. That being said, the longer you walk, the more benefits you will get. Yet, for many first-time fitness walkers, endurance is a big issue. You may easily get tired and feel like your energy is already drained even after walking a short distance.

Walk your way to longer endurance with these tips:

Chapter VI: Prevent Injury – Implement These Pro Tips

Although walking is one of the safest and easiest exercises, walking-induced injuries may happen; most of which stem from an old injury aggravated by the exercise. Pain could also happen when you overwork your feet. Soreness or swelling on the sides of the toes is also common and is often caused by ingrown toenail. This happens when you wear very tight shoes.

The real problem when injury happens is not just about the pain, it’s the zap to your motivation, which may fade away. Many people stop exercising and just forget about their goals. But not you, right? Learn to identify, treat and prevent the most common walking injuries.

Discover how to pain-proof your walks from here:

Chapter VII: Top Notch Energy Boosting Nutrition Programs

What makes walking the same as other exercises is that it also needs essential foods for you to reap its full benefits. The right foods, along with a good walking program, enhance endurance and improve your overall health. The truth is you do not need another fad diet. A walker’s ideal foods are those that are great energy boosters, less fat and have high nutrients.

These foods are what you need:

Chapter VIII: The Truth about Fitness Walking Shoes – Find The Shoe For You

Perhaps, the only “equipment” needed for fitness walking are good shoes and most of us already have them. A good brand doesn’t necessarily mean a good fit. The thing is, if you want painless and more effective walks, you shouldn’t consider just any old athletic shoes, but something that optimizes the benefits of your exercise.

From treadmills to outdoor, get to know how to find the right shoes here:

Chapter IX: Most Popular Walking Apps on the Market and a Perfect Playlist

So how do you keep track of your fitness walking progress? Conveniently, everything can be done through your phone; from finding a walking program to seeking good walking trail, tracking the distance you’ve walked and even counting the calories you burn!

Discover which apps will make your walks more enjoyable and effective.

Chapter X: Instant Walking Programs You can Start Tomorrow

While fitness walking can be done by just anyone, there is one way to maximize the benefits from this exercise: a walking program that is comfortable to you and fits within your schedule. A good walking program should be easy, quick, safe and reliable. It should have a proven success track from its previous users.

We’ve gathered some of the most popular walking programs here:

CHAPTER XI: How to Stay Safe When Out There

Walking is generally safe for everyone. Yet, as the old saying goes, ”an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. However unlikely, there are some minimal risks. Injury may happen during prolonged walks or if you aggravated an old injury. Bad weather may roll in.  There are some hazards you should be prepared for.

Here are some tips to keep your walks easy and safe:

Chapter XII: How to Win the Battle against Procrastination

Now it all boils down to one thing: staying motivated. Among the most common reasons why a fitness plans fail is due to the lack of motivation. There comes a day that you may not “feel” like doing it and even worse, lose interest continuing the healthy habit you’ve started. You don’t want your walks to become bothersome or boring. You want them to become habitual, fun and something that you will look forward to.

Explore these helpful hacks that will keep you motivated: