Schedule a Morning Sweat
There's a good reason to be a morning walker. According to a recent study in Journal of Applied Physiology, mental fatigue—a.k.a the brain drain you feel after a long day of working or dealing with family obligations—significantly affects workouts. When your mind is tired, exercise feels more difficult and you can't keep at it as long as you can when you're mentally rested. In the morning, your brain is refreshed from sleeping and not processing thoughts for hours on end, and your walks may feel easier during that time.
How to get started: Since most people become mentally fatigued during the afternoon or evening, aim to walk before you start your day. To ease into a morning routine, try leaving your walking gear and some grab-and-go fuel (like a banana) by your bed, so you'll have everything right there when your alarm rings in the a.m. If you're really not a morning person, try strolling during your lunch break, instead.
Log Your Miles
If you regularly keep tabs on how far you walk, it's almost guaranteed that you'll up your activity level. Men and women walked 15 percent more each day when they wore pedometers and recorded their daily steps in a diary than when they just wore pedometers but didn't track their progress, according to a study in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. The walkers who logged their strides also often tried to beat, or at least maintain, their step counts from the previous day. "Wearing a pedometer and recording your step counts gives you feedback on your activity levels, which may lead to personal goal setting and greater confidence in walking," says Stacy Clemes, PhD, the study's author and lecturer in human biology at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, United Kingdom.
How to get started: Purchase a pedometer and start keeping track of your daily steps. Aim for 10,000 a day, but don't get discouraged if you're not there yet—the average woman takes about 5,000 daily. To boost your number gradually, add 500 more steps a day, every few days, until you hit the magic 10K.
Walk to a Beat
Here's a good excuse to download some new songs: A recent study from the Journal of Sports & Exercise Psychology found that music can literally move you. When people walked in time to fast-tempo music (approximately over 120 beats per minute) with a strong rhythm, they walked 15 percent longer than those who sweated in silence. Why the big increase? Music improved participants' moods, motivated them, focused their attention, distracted them from feeling tired for longer periods of time, and helped them to move more efficiently, according to lead study author Costas Karageorghis, PhD, of Brunel University in West London.
How to get started: Use music to maximize your walking workouts by loading up your MP3 player with rock or pop songs that are around 120 to 145 beats per minute. To calculate beats per minute, simply count the beats during 15 seconds of a song and multiply that number by four. Sound too complicated? We've already done the math and created walking playlists for 15-, 30-, and 45-minute walks, plus playlists for walking at easy through speedy tempos.
Trek Uphill
Add some inclines to your walk and you'll torch some serious calories. A 150-pound woman walking at 3.5 miles per hour on level ground will burn 132 calories in 30 minutes. But walking at the same speed on a five percent grade, she'll burn 171 calories in a half-hour. "Walking up hilly terrain requires the muscles to produce more force to propel the body upward, which helps you burn more calories," says Julia Valentour, spokesperson and programs coordinator for the American Council on Exercise. Bonus: Walking uphill may boost bone density and will tone and strengthen your quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, and calves.
How to get started: Once you've established a steady routine of walking on flat terrain, try walking hilly routes one to two times a week. (Avoid walking those routes on back-to-back days so your body can recover.) If there are no hills in your neighborhood, go to a local school and climb up and down the stadium steps, or try the stairs in an office or apartment building. At the gym, hop on a treadmill and add an incline. Start with a five-minute walking warm-up with no incline, then increase to an incline you can sustain (anywhere from five to 10 percent) for 60 seconds. Drop back down to no incline for 1.5 to two minutes so you can recover. Work your way to walking uphill for 60 seconds and resting for 60 seconds. Repeat this several times during your workout. "The incline should challenge you but not so much that your breathing and heart rate accelerate rapidly," Valentour says.
No comments:
Post a Comment