Making A Walk More Meaningful
by Exercise Specialist Jennifer Loeffler
During this time of social distancing and sheltering in place, keeping up with our daily exercise is extremely important. As the weather gets warmer a great way to do this is to get outside for walks. But how can we make our walks, more than just walks?
To gain a heart health benefit from your walks, maintaining a brisk pace is key. It can be tough to know what a “good” brisk pace is, as it varies person to person. It is a pace that you can maintain and you find it somewhat challenging for your heart and lungs, but not so fast that you find yourself “hitting the wall” or not being able to continue after a short amount of time. There are a few ways to measure this.
Heart rate is a great way to determine how hard your body is working during exercise. Ideally you are working between 50-85% of your max heart rate (220-Age=Max Heart Rate). Here are a few examples:
Age Heart Rate
50 85-145bpm
60 80-136bpm
70 75-128bpm
80 70-119bpm
For those that are taking certain medications (beta blockers) heart rate may not be the best way to measure how hard they are working. The talk test is a good alternative. Here all we want you thinking about is being able to talk to someone next to you, but you shouldn’t be able to sing to them. However, if you can barely get words out, then you are walking too fast.
Now that you know how to measure how hard you are working, here are a couple of ways to get that heart rate up during your walks. The
easiest way is to add hills into your route. Hills will naturally bring your heart rate up. Depending on the size and steepness of the hill your pace may slow down, which is okay, just try to keep a steady pace even if it is a little slower than on a flat surface.
Another way to bump that heart rate up is to use intervals. After 5 minutes at your warm up pace, see if you can increase that pace slightly above your regular pace for 2-3 minutes, then come back down to your regular pace for 2-3 minutes. Repeat this for 5 cycles and you will have your 20-30 minutes of walking. At the quicker pace, you should notice your heart and lungs working harder. During this time you should not be able to sing to someone.
Here are a few things to remember when you are out on your walks:
- Keep your head up, don’t look down at your feet when walking, instead look out front at the horizon.
- Keep your shoulders relaxed and your chest lifted.
- Walk with a good gait, think heel-ball-toe with each step.
- Let your arms loosely swing at your sides or lightly pump them with each stride to slightly increase heart rate.
When it really comes down to it, the most important thing to do is to just get out there and walk. If you are walking with others remember to keep at least 6 feet between you. Find a pace that both works for you and challenges you to get even more out of your walks. Lastly, enjoy the time outside, use it to take a mental break from everything else going on, and take in all that nature has to offer and the beauty of it as we move into spring.
