Interval Walking

If your regular walking exercise has become boring and drab, add intervals to your regular walking plan to make it more interesting.

Interval walking is all about walking briskly, faster than your normal pace for short time period followed by recovery period of walking at your regular speed.

Before you start with interval walking, few minutes of warm-up like strolling and stretching is a must as it allows your muscles to warm up.

Determine your interval levels. Start with short periods of brisk walk followed by a longer period of recovery walking.

When you start the first interval walk, walk at twice the speed of your normal pace for a minute or two. Start by adding one or two five-minute high intensity intervals to your walk to build your stamina. Gradually increase your period of interval walking.

Maintain good posture while walking. Hold your abdominal muscles tight; lift your chest and keep your chin parallel to the ground. Keeping your arms bended at 90^o helps you walk at a faster pace than your usual speed.

Slow down to allow your body to recover from your strenuous workout. The recovery interval should be about twice as long as you’re walking interval.

Once you’ve mastered interval training and enjoyed the benefits, you might be tempted to push yourself to do even more. Avoid doing so as your body needs to rest and recover.

+ves

Interval walking burns fat and calories and challenges your body to prevent it from hitting a weight loss plateau.

It improves your cardiovascular fitness. Faster walking means your heart beats faster, showing a higher demand for oxygen. That strengthens your heart; increases your blood flow and improves you’re overall fitness level.

Workout Buddy

Revamping you’re eating habits, starting an exercise plan and improving your overall lifestyle is not easy. These are big changes and one definitely could use all the encouragement and support required to maintain these changes.

Experts say people who have support and encouragement are successful in maintaining their diet and exercise programs.

Having a support or making a commitment to improve your lifestyle along with someone like a close girlfriend/buddy, significant other or your own child – will make you want to stick to your program, simply because that person is counting on you.

If you’re on a look out for a buddy, ask your neighbour to commit to walking together for 30 minutes daily a week, sign up for a dance class with your friend/spouse, play a sport with your child or cook healthy meals over weekend for your family. This will help you keep up your new lifestyle changes.

You can also look for support online. Like your best pal, who is just an email away or sign up with any of the weight watchers sites where you will come across inspiring stories of people who have successfully managed to shed off pounds and improve their lifestyle through proper healthy diet plans and exercise regimes.

Sindhu and I started this blog for supporting and encouraging one another in our journey towards healthier lifestyle. Along the way, we have come across people who appreciate that the fact, a workout buddy is a must. We have been successful to a certain extent, but we still have a long way to go.

Go find that extra support. There is no time to waste.

Walk-O-Mania

Walking is by far the easiest form of movement for humankind. One that can be transformed into a cardiovascular exercise simply by adding pace and hand movements.  Walking (outdoor walking) is easy for people with mobility problems.  It is good for people who like to be in control of their body’s responses and not be overwhelmed by it (as in case of jogging or running).   Walking is an exercise where you can increase and decrease your speed as per your comfort level, without stopping.  A good, brisk walk lasting for about 45 – 60 mins is a great cardiovascular workout.  

Walks can begin with a leisurely pace for about 1/2 km.  Once you get the rhythm, you can gradually start adding pace.  Walk faster, move your body faster, push yourself to go to the maximum speed.   Achieving that maximum speed is not as simple as it sounds! For one, you might be quite unaware of the pace your own body can achieve in the first place.  If you are a first-time walker, you could begin by timing yourself.  Check how much time you take to finish one round (a set measure is helpful in knowing how much you can walk each day, distance as well as time).   Clocking the distance helps in upgrading your pace in each round by putting a wee bit more effort each time.  Try to better your timing each day, it might begin with as little as one minute the first day, slowly increasing  to 3-4, even 5-7 mins as the days go by! Give yourself a pat on the back and keep going!

While walking you could take smaller, quicker steps keeping your hands flexed at the elbows, much like the walkers in walkathons, this style helps you increase and maintain a good speed.  The other style could be to take longer steps, extending your leg to the point where your knees flex a bit and then take the next step.  In this style (from my personal experience) is that though the speed is a bit lower, you can work on your buttock muscles simultaneously.  Squeeze your buttock muscles as you move each leg forward, a super add-on for those shapely bottoms!  Being a avid walker myself, I find the benefits of walk generally helps me get over a stiff neck without much more than a couple of my usual brisk rounds, I attribute this to just the simple movements of the body while walking that  kind of rattles the little bones back into their places and easing out the pain in turn!  Walking is beneficial not just to your heart, lungs and skin, it helps keep your legs in good shape not just externally but also with regards to  bone density since its a weight bearing exercise for the legs.  Depending on your area/place of walk, you could add variations such as try out different routes, add inclines whenever possible, this adds variety to the daily regime. 

Having a walk partner is great fun, preferably someone who shares your passion for walking.  Talking or being able to hold short conversations while walking is a good measure to check if you are overstraining yourself, you are not if you can talk and reduce your pace a bit if you can’t.  Again from personal experience, my walk time gives me “me-time”, time to discuss the most trivial to the gravest issues in life with my walk partner, whether its advice, tips, problem-solving, lending a helping hand, I get all this and more during my one-hour walk time!  On the days, I have to walk alone, my radio accompanies me for a constant jingle of music in my ears.  There are days when I abandon my phone/radio and opt to spend my time walking with just reciting my prayers, meditation on the go! 

Walking can be done on the treadmill in an air-conditioned environment if you so wish, though personally I prefer the outdoors with the wind rushing on to my sweaty face!  Walking on the treadmill can be an option if the weather outside is not suitable for a brisk walk (rains, snow etc).   Walking is addictive, believe me but be regular with it and continue it long enough (a time-frame of say 2 weeks) to know or rather for your body to enjoy the benefits of a daily walk, so much so that you start missing it when you skip it.   As you start be prepared to brave aches and pains in your legs – calves,  shin and thighs. Understand, that these are not really aches and pains but the teething troubles as your body gets used to this new form of exercise gradually.  Enjoy a good night’s sleep as you get regular with walking and drift off into slumber with pleasantly fatigued muscles.

Last, but not the least, a sturdy, good quality pair of walking shoes is the only material requirement to start walking. Go, girl, go!

The Tiff with the Hip

A lot of women (including myself) have to struggle with the flab below the waist. I am talking about women who are heavy on the thighs and hips.  This is one region that really needs to be worked out on if you want to slim down the lower half.  After having worked out regularly for a month, I discovered that although I have managed to lose inches around my waist, what I haven’t been able to do is shed the inches on the thighs and hip region!  When I discussed my predicament with my doc-cum-instructor, she is of the opinion that while Iam strong with certain muscles of my legs, there are some that are not quite there.  Besides, the inner thigh region, abductors and hamstrings have to be stretched regularly and loosened up to achieve more flexibility. 

Once the stiffness is overcome in these areas with regular stretching, the fat will begin to reduce.  I am into stretching and gradually strengthening these areas during my regular workouts everyday. So, let’s hope things move the way they should!  I will try add and add an hour long walk for good measure to speed up things!

Did it in a day!

Yes, I have kept that promise I made to myself. Did manage to fit it all in a day.  Started with a brisk walk @ 6.00 am, back @ 645.  Did a few stretches after getting back home.  After breakfast, getting kids ready for school, packing lunch, getting them to have their milk, plaiting hair and rest of the chaos.  Dropped the little one to his playschool and did the stairs on the way back, all of 9 floors! This had me sweat like crazy as I got back home.  So, wrapped up some balance cooking while waiting to cool off. 

The rest of the day went by as usual.  This was followed by my routine Kickboxing-cum-Pilates workout for an hour in the evening.  So, this means I could manage my 3-pronged approach in a day! This also means I am that much nearer to my goal and have discovered how much I can push my body!Yyippee!!!

A Promise to Myself!

Had to miss my workout today, I feel so bad I had to!  I had to take the children to a birthday party and the timings clashed with my workout! But, it was unavoidable so I had to give my workout a miss! My first one since August 1st (when I began my workouts).

The weekends weren’t great either as I just could not do any of the things that I have been so eloquently advising all and sundry! I feel guilty about it and want to make up for it tomorrow.  Plan to go for a brisk morning walk (5 kms) and do my stairs besides going for my workout in the evening.  That’s my promise to myself, will let you know tomorrow as to how much of the promise I have been able to keep! Till then, ciao!