Walking is the most natural exercise forms of exercise. It’s also suitable for every fitness level. When you walk, you tone up, burn off excess body fat, and improve your health and well-being. Brisk walking also has a raft of benefits that are not to be scoffed at.
In today’s article, we are going to share 7 tips that will enable you to get more out of your brisk walking routine.
1. Perfect Your Brisk Walking
Arm swinging is really important to pick up the momentum whilst brisk walking.
Keep your elbows pointing directly backwards and avoid flaying your elbows out to the sides.
Next, focus on how you take your strides. Keep your steps within a comfortable range of motion and your hips level.
Make sure your hands are slightly cupped and your chin’s up, parallel to the ground.
2. Speed and Calorie Burn
It’s important to know your speed because that determines your calorie burn rate.
First, there is strolling. A slow speed will burn about 230 calories per hour.
Next up is a brisk pace. This is a walking faster walking pace but where you can still hold a conversation. You will be burning about 340 calories per hour brisk walking.
Finally, there is power walking. With power walking it’s hard to hold a full conversation, but you will be burning about 560 calories per hour.
3. Increase Walking Speed
There are 2 ways to increase your walking speed:
* increase the frequency of your steps
or
Increase the pace of your steps making sure to roll through your feet and push off with your toes. This movement will use the lower leg muscles.
Make sure to warm up beforehand by walking for a few minutes, then by walking on your heels for a few meters.
Swing your arms like a pendulum keeping your elbows bent at a 90-degree angle and not letting your hand swing higher than your chest.
Coordinate the frequency of your arms swinging to the cadence of your steps.
Secondly, increase the length of your steps by pushing your foot further forward. To do so, you need to increase the rotation in your hips.
Extend your arms further when swinging to propel yourself further forward. When your arm goes backwards slightly unfold it by reaching far behind and when it comes forward, bend your arm at a 90-degree angle again. Try not to bring a hand higher than your chest.
Don’t be surprised if lengthening your stride makes you tire out quickly. Adjust your pace up or down as necessary to suit your needs.
4. Walk Over Sand or Hills
Walking in sand works the legs much harder and increases the intensity of your workout. The other great way to up intensity is to find some hills and walk on inclines to increase calorie burn.
Read this article for tips on how to walk up hills.
5. Tone it Up
There are a couple of exercises you can do to tone up your upper body whilst you’re walking. It also means you’re burning a few more calories.
- draw your arms in together
You have them out at the side and keep your elbows in line with the shoulders. This is great for helping to lift the bust and tone through the arms.
- do a shoulder press
Lift your arms above your head. Do 10 reps of each and repeat several times
6. Best Your Personal Best…Again
Head out and walk as fast as you can in 10 minutes. Once you’re done, turn around and walk back to your starting point trying to beat 10 minutes.
7. Walking Ab Exercise
Working on your abs whilst walking involved pulling in your belly button while tightening your spine. Hold for 10 seconds and release. Repeat throughout your walk and you will strengthen your core.
Wrap Up
If you are engaging in brisk walking, don’t forget to take your smartphone and download the sweatcoin app to convert your steps into digital currency. Keep sweatcoin on you whenever you walk anywhere and trade the tokens in for discounts on hundreds of merchandise.
