Learning to Walk All Over Again

I hear a lot of people saying everyone should take at least 10,000 steps a day. I’m sure that there are health benefits from doing so.

Lots more than sitting on the couch.

Here’s the problem. Depending on your stride length, 10,000 steps can take 1 hour and 40 minutes to 2 hours. That’s a lot of time in your day. Can you devote up to 2 hours a day to that?

Me neither.

I came across another type of walking that I really like. We’re going to try it for those who can in our assisted living homes. I’ve tried it several times myself as well.

It’s called high-intensity interval walking and it was developed in Japan. Here’s how to do it:

Make sense? Any questions? Good.

For those of you who don’t read Japanese, interval walking consists of alternating 3 minute rounds of normal walking and ‘fast’ walking. One of the big benefits of this walking is you only have to do it for 30 minutes or so a day. Like when you walk your dog.

There are also benefits for your health apparently. A study in the journal Science Direct found that high-intensity walking had more health benefits that walking 10,000 steps a day (although the study compared high-intensity walking to people who walked 8,000 steps/day).

Specifically the study found:

• Isometric knee extension improved by 13%

• Isometric knee flexion by 17%

• Peak aerobic capacity for cycling by 8%

• Peak aerobic capacity for walking by 9%

They also found resting systolic blood pressure improve more for the high-intensity walkers over the lower intensity, many-step walkers.

There are also claims interval walking can reduce depression, cut stroke risk, strengthen muscles, boost the immune system and improve sleep efficiency. Although I have not been able to find studies to back up those claims.

I’ve always been a big fan of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) from my younger days. I still try to sprint multiple 30-second runs with little break at least once a week up a hill near me. Now it’s good to know we can also work on benefits for elderly people who can’t sprint anymore.

So how do you know how intense you should go? After all, we don’t want elderly people falling or having heart attacks doing this.

The recommendations seem to be walk fast enough that you can still hold a conversation but you should not be able to sing. It’s about 60-70% of your max heart rate if you’re monitoring that.  If you want to challenge yourself more, walk up a hill, carry some weights or go longer than 30 minutes.

I like this because you can also do it while walking your dog or pushing your grandchildren in a stroller. They might like the burst of speed!

Now you’ve spent enough time reading this. Get up off the couch and start moving!