Walking?
May 1st 2007 12:23
Walking
One of the ways to sell magazines or get hits on a website is to offer much for little. In fitness this phenomenon revolves around the consistent claim that activities that require little exertion will yield significant gains in fitness. One of the victims of this kind of hyperbole is walking. Not a week goes by that I do not see some headline that makes great claims for walking. They can only be understood within a general context that is usually not provided.
Walking has an attraction for two reasons: it is cheap and it is not so taxing. The cheap part is incontrovertible. The taxing part is. The fact is that all able bodied people walk and many do a considerable amount of it. If you sit at a desk all day and on the couch at night, walking is a possible way to ratchet up your activity levels. In that situation a 20 minute walk will be a vast improvement over the nothing that you are doing. If you already walk a good amount and you are out of shape, you can see the limitations of walking. What you are doing is clearly not enough and for it to be enough you are going to have to add a considerable amount.
That is where the problem comes in with walking. At some point it becomes very time intensive. To get into better and better shape you will have to do more and that will be better measured in half hours than in minutes. Tying to walk off ten lbs without dieting? Unless you are in abysmal shape it is going to take a lot of hours. Want to increase the capacities of your heart and lungs? That increase is going to be minimal, unless you are in atrocious shape.
Is it possible to ramp up the exertion of walking? I think so,but it will be uncomfortable. Some walkers lengthen their stride and swing their arms very purposely. Are they doing any good? Some,but not as much as they would like,I venture to guess. How about wearing weights? It can't hurt. With these you are coming very close to serious hard work and that is not how walking for fitness is normally advertised. Walking up a lot of hills is also a good idea,but again contrary to the easy approach walking is presented as.
If you are seriously out of shape and you have stumbled onto this post, I fully advocate that you immediately start a walking program ,but walking is contrary to my approach: all out for brief periods. I suggest a real fitness program might involve walking to and from the gym! If you weigh more than 300 lbs, I have written about your problem in a post entitled"400 lbs of Tragedy." Check it out.Your servant, as always.
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