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Three Ways To Take Your Walking Workout To The Next Level

Three Ways To Take Your Walking Workout To The Next Level

From FITBIE.com (TNS)

More of a stroller than a sprinter? You’re still getting a solid workout. Study after study confirms that being active throughout your day is an effective way to stay slim, and realage.com, which offers a test that assesses your “real” age in terms of how your body is aging, claims that taking at least 10,000 steps a day is the equivalent of subtracting 4.6 years from your chronological age for women and 4.1 for men.

What’s more, logging lots of steps may improve your diet choices: A recent German study found that taking a walk can even stop sugar cravings.

But while a regular walking routine is a great way to stay in shape, nearly all fitness experts agree that mixing up your workout is crucial if you want to keep seeing results in the mirror and on the scale. An obvious way to increase your aerobic activity and challenge your body in new ways? Pick up the pace.

Want to take your walking workout to the next level? Follow this advice from celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak, author of 5 Pounds.

  • Brisk walking, meaning a speed of about 4 miles an hour, clearly burns more calories and increases oxygen intake more than a 2-miles-an-hour stroll. Gradually build up your speed by increasing the pace for a minute or two, reverting to your accustomed rate for 5 minutes, and so on. Over time, increase the length of the faster-walking periods until you’re maintaining that rate overall. Compared with jogging, faster walking is easier on the hips and knees and diminishes the risk of injury.
  • Jogging isn’t the best choice for everyone. Unlike brisk walking and running, which are more horizontal in nature and therefore not as likely to jar your torso, jogging involves moving your body up and down, which taxes your joints more. For some people, if done too long or too often, it can lead to injury. On the other hand, if you like to jog, be sure to wear shoes that give you the right support. If you’re a runner, feel free to continue and/or blend it with walking.
  • Short bursts of fast running burn the most calories of all these activities. Research shows that a combination of sprinting and walking is even more effective than jogging. Like walking, sprinting is more likely to encourage good posture than jogging. Sprint interval training is a subcategory of high-intensity interval training (HIIT), which alternates low-intensity (walking or jogging) and high-intensity (sprinting) aerobic activity. As you get stronger and fitter, you can try a single 30-second burst a day, then two bursts a day, and finally three a day. Then you can increase the bursts to 45 seconds and later 60 seconds long. Always warm up before sprinting by taking a short walk or run. Again, listen to your body.

(c)2015 Fitbie.com, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Photo: Jeffrey via Flickr

Walking Might Just Be The Ideal Exercise

Walking Might Just Be The Ideal Exercise

By Craig Hill, The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.) (TNS)

Answers to important questions nobody has asked me yet:

What’s the best exercise for getting in shape and avoiding injury?

When I posed this question to Florida spinal surgeon Alfred Bonati, he issued a warning before he answered.

“You’re going to laugh,” he said.

He recommends briskly walking about five miles per day while doing curls with light weights. In fact, he said, walking is usually the only exercise he recommends.

And, yes, I did laugh. But only because, for some reason, the first thing that popped into my head was Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch in a track suit speed walking past my house while doing curls with three-pound weights.

But if you’ve ever dealt with nagging back and joint pain, maybe it’s not so funny.

“The people who do excessive or forceful exercise, like football players, I’ve found they look OK early in life, but in their 40s and 50s they have lots of problems,” Bonati said.

Bonati said walking with light weights is an ideal way to “maintain muscle and protect the joints.”

“From what I’ve seen, that’s perfect,” Bonati said.

So what if you want to do something more challenging?

“You need to prepare your body,” Bonati said.

Start and progress slowly and avoid the temptation to exercise excessively.

“It’s like school,” Bonati said. “You don’t go for three days and then graduate. First you do this and then this, and it takes time to graduate.

“If you are too eager you can get hurt. And people who get hurt usually quit.”

Bonati said don’t expect to roll into a gym and find a perfect exercise class, either. The classes may, indeed, be very good, but the exercise program that is perfect for everybody does not exist.

“You have to use common sense,” Bonati said.

He said you are the only one that will ever be the foremost expert on how you should exercise. Take the time to learn what works for your body and what doesn’t.

Maybe it’s intense CrossFit sessions or an impact-free endurance sport like swimming or cycling.

Or maybe its five-mile walks while doing arm curls.
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A dancer, a rookie and a regular walk into a barre, who gets the better workout?

When former professional dancer Lianne Gamble opened Barre253 in Tacoma, Wash., a year ago, she promised a workout program that would improve strength, flexibility and help people look and feel better.

A year later, the South Sound’s first barre studio is hopping. With more than 300 members (mostly women) the studio has grown steadily, adding classes. It hasn’t hurt that barre workout programs have grown in popularity at the same time, with classes popping up at other locations around the South Sound.

Barre is the French word for bar, and the exercises in barre workouts are done using the handrails (the barre) ballet dancers use to warm up. The workouts and atmosphere are geared toward women, but open to all.
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How’d that Seahawks game day workout go?

Well, in the interest of full disclosure, I should confess that I didn’t try the Seahawks workout designed by South Sound trainer Jesse Ewell.

I’d asked the owner of Innovative Fitness in Fircrest and Gig Harbor to design a workout that could be done during the Seahawks NFC championship game against Green Bay.

But once the game started I was too antsy to give it a try. I did, however, strap on an activity tracker in an attempt to monitor just how much I paced during the game.

The device said I paced 3.3 miles during regulation and ran another .3 mile when the party turned into a flag-waving run around the block with my son and his friend.

I did hear from several readers who did the workout.

“We weren’t very busy in the first three quarters, but did get in our 100 steps during most of the commercial breaks. There are a lot of commercial breaks,” said Julie Shanafelt of Olympia. She said her party started with only four people exercising but finished with everybody participating. “The end of the fourth quarter was a whirlwind.”

She said the exercises meant they ate fewer snacks.

“We will definitely incorporate exercise into the Super Bowl game,” Shanafelt said.

Photo: Giorgio Minguzzi via Flickr

How To Stay Fit In Your 60’s And Beyond

How To Stay Fit In Your 60’s And Beyond

By Steve Brandt, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

MINNEAPOLIS — Dr. Jamie Peters counsels his patients on fitness for the aging, and Denis Nagan is the model patient.

Nagan, 69, has been active in sports or fitness since grade school. Peters is a sports medicine specialist caring for aging athletes and other older adults wanting to preserve or improve their fitness.

Peters advises older people to stay active, with at least three days a week of moderate activity, intensifying the effort if possible to the point of not being able to carry on a conversation. He advocates cross-training to spread the stress of exercise among different muscles. It’s particularly important to exercise the core muscles, he said, because a strong core will diminish the kind of awkward gait people adopt when compensating for joint pain. But when cross-training isn’t possible, Peters advocates walking — it’s better than not walking.

Nagan has found his own path, on the brink of qualifying as a septuagenarian, to most of what Peters prescribes. Fitness has been an integral part of his life since he joined a swim club as a kid. But in his late 60s, he found himself adapting his regimen to meet changing physical and mental health needs.

He has biked throughout his life — for transportation, for fitness and to compete, culminating in the 1,200-kilometer Paris-Brest-Paris ultramarathon bike tour. He was a runner for the same reasons, to the point of logging 50-kilometer training runs with former Olympians. But these days he’s more likely to move at a pace that fits his age and lifestyle, something that many older adults can emulate.

“I walk for utility and I walk for aimlessness,” the northeast Minneapolis resident said. A trip to pick up an item at Home Depot? That’s a two-and-a-half-mile walk. A walk downtown to the library, or to catch the Blue Line to the V.A. hospital, is 7 or 8 miles round trip.

“It’s been very beneficial both mentally and physically,” Nagan said. Walking lacks the cardio intensity of biking and running. Sometimes he’ll jog up a hill, just to push his heart rate and get some of the cardiovascular benefits Peters prescribes.

“My legs are strong and I can hike all day,” said Nagan. “I just can’t go as fast as I used to, and I don’t know that that’s important. There’s no reason to go fast other than you did at one time go fast.”

For a greater challenge, Nagan tackles the physically demanding ups and downs of the Superior Hiking Trail, a trail edging Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. “If I’m in the city, I call it a walk. When I’m in the country, I call it a hike.”

Unlike many walkers, Nagan eschews headphones. That leaves his mind free to operate on two tracks. “I’m very aware of what’s going on around me. I’m always aware of who’s around, what’s around, what’s going on. I’m always tuned into the immediacy of the moment.” That includes the temperature, the breeze, the surface he’s walking on. “It’s always different even if you’re going the same route.”

Meanwhile, his mind is working subconsciously. “All of a sudden I might have a solution to a problem … The subconscious part of your mind is back there grinding away.”

That mindfulness is a carry-over from Nagan’s meditation and yoga practices, something Peters also prescribes for building core strength and balance. Why is yoga better than, say, pushups and situps? Yoga can be modified by a capable instructor to avoid positions that might impose undue stress on the body.

Lifelong athletes inevitably will find themselves making adjustments, with performance beginning to diminish after 40 or 45 years old. Peters recommends age-group competitions as a healthy adjustment for people driven to maintain high levels of fitness. “I think the healthy attitude is you set expectations that you can achieve,” he said.

Nagan finds other benefits from a less punishing exercise regimen. “The biggest is you’re not beat up all the time.” When he ran hard, “You’re always sore — there’s always something that’s sort of semi-broken. It feels good to not have to be worried about how fast you’re doing something.”

Joint issues are a common concern for aging athletes. The older a person, the greater the chance for joint pain caused by degenerative arthritis (i.e., thinning cartilage lining in the joints). Peters still emphasizes the importance of exercise, even for patients suffering from stiff or aching joints. Peters points to solid evidence that movement prolongs joint life by keeping the synovial fluid healthier and the cartilage better nourished. Here, too, it can help to emphasize core strength — a stronger core prevents exercisers from adopting one of those strange gaits, prone to cause even more problems. One low-impact way to exercise with arthritis is riding a bike or a stationary bike with mild to moderate resistance for 35 to 40 minutes a day.

Arthritis can also be addressed by relatively inexpensive steroidal injections. These can relieve discomfort for several months, Peters said. That relief makes exercise easier while allowing for a more normal gait and diminishing the chance of further injury.

Another big issue for older athletes is losing muscle mass, which can’t be replaced once lost. Peters recommends resistance activities such as weight workouts for all his patients, but especially those over 60.

Like Nagan, Peters at 61 has a stake in preserving a high level of fitness for his age. “I want to keep being able to hike high up in the mountains,” he said from Colorado, where he’d just finished a daylong hike at altitude. He runs weekly, which is as much as his knees allow, but also bikes both on the road and on a stationary bike, works out on roller skis for dryland training, and skate-skis during the winter.

Some of Peters’ patients embody the benefits of workout regimens like his. “I have the honor of taking care of a lot of octogenarians who are healthy and doing well,” Peters said. “They have a lifelong habit of staying active.”

Photo: Wicycle via Wikimedia Commons

2,000 Extra Steps A Day Cuts Cardiovascular Risk By Eight Percent

2,000 Extra Steps A Day Cuts Cardiovascular Risk By Eight Percent

Paris (AFP) – People with a glucose-tolerance problem — a driver of diabetes and cardiovascular disease — can cut the risk of heart attack or stroke by simply walking an additional 2,000 steps per day, a study said on Friday.

The experiment gathered more than 9,300 adults in 40 countries with so-called impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) who had also been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease or were considered at risk from it.

They all received a “lifestyle modification programme,” advising them of the benefits of reducing body weight and dietary fat and doing regular exercise.

They were also issued with pedometers, which clocked up how many paces they walked each week, both at the start of the experiment and 12 months later.

Volunteers who added 2,000 steps — around 20 minutes of moderate walking — to their existing daily schedule reduced the cardiovascular risk by eight percent by the time of the study ended, six years later.

The study, published in The Lancet, said IGT affects about 344 million people, or 7.9 percent of the world’s adult population — a tally expected to rise to 472 million (8.4 percent) by 2030.

“People with IGT have a greatly increased risk of cardiovascular disease”, study leader Thomas Yates from the University of Leicester, central England, said in a press release.

“While several studies have suggested that physical activity is beneficially linked to health in those with IGT, this is the first study to specifically quantify the extent to which change in walking behaviour can modify the risk.”

Photo: Damien Meyer via AFP