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.

Walk and Yoga

Rarely does one exercise (type) helps in weight loss or toning up. It has to be a combination of sorts.  Walk and yoga make an excellent one.  Especially, if one has the time to spare in the mornings, an hour long walk followed by a 45-minute session of yogasanas, rounded off by about 15 mins of pranayama is possibly an ideal workout.

Personally, having tried this combination, doing yoga the first thing in the morning, is not exciting for me, primarily because of the stiffness in the body.  Even loads of stretching doesn’t really help.  What I have found out is that yoga, when done after a nice, long, brisk walk is a super experience.  This is because, the walk warms up the stiff body, the blood circulation gives a good boost to the muscles to stretch well which, otherwise it doesn’t, right after a long night’s sleep. 

Start with the basic stretches before you begin your walk.  After the walk, begin with the basic yogasanas such as Paschimottasana, Trikonasana, Tadasana, going on to Bhujangasana, Dhanurasana, Shalabasana, Ardhamatsyendrasana, Gomukhasana, Pawanamuktasana and finally Shavasana.  Three repetitions of each with correct breathing motions gives you a great workout.  This should be followed by Pranayama and lastly a few minutes of meditation. 

This done, you are ready for a long, stressful day at work minus the negative effects of stress on your body.  You have already given your body the protective shield it needs to handle the stress for the day!

What more to do?

My doc-cum-instructor is as puzzled as me over the fact that I am not budging on my hips, thighs and bottom inspite of doing my workouts religiously all these days.  What has  moved and is still moving is my waistline, having dropped a good 2.5 inches. 

My instructor has added more and tougher exercises to target the hip and the lower body.  On my part, I am seriously doing my bit and trying not to cut corners or take shortcuts.  I even try to add an hour of brisk walk to my day whenever I can!  So, now my exercise regime consists of cardio (increased level), leg (thighs n calves) stretches, hip exercises, ab crunches (atleast 40-50 in 4 – 5 different variations). Ofcourse, not to forget the stairs that I do everyday!

In an endeavour to make my weight move, she has asked me to cut down on carbs especially for dinner. I have to stick to soups, salads and cooked vegetables but get completely off carbs for the night.  Well, Iam gonna try this for a week to see if it makes any difference to the scenario! So, that’s the latest update on my work out regime.

Do the Duet!

Getting a like-minded partner for exercising daily is a great way to keep the motivation strong and achieve fitness targets faster.  A friend, an acquaintance or anybody who shares the same time and venue with you for workouts should be welcome.  The main criteria is to share the passion to workout and get fit.  While it may appear a tad tough initially, you will be able to identify such a person sooner or later.  Having a partner for your daily workouts has various benefits such as -

-Motivate each other
-Complement one another for various exercises
-Keep a tab on the other
-Push you to do a bit more
-Encourage you
-Appreciate your efforts
-Give you that much needed morale booster from time to time

I have a “walk” partner with whom I enjoy my brisk walks regularly.  We share the same love for long, brisk walks and have done it long enough to have experienced the wonderful benefits of the same.  Apart from sharing the benefits of  walk, we end up sharing a lot of thoughts and ideas on various topics as well.  Going for a walk with my partner does wonders for me both physically as well as mentally!

Hello again!

Iam getting back to my fitness routine after a 2-day break. I sure did miss the workouts and was worried about putting back the kilo I had lost.  Having to eat outside food always gets me hyper about the extra fat that is used.  Ofcourse, I can’t deny the temptation of eating steaming, hot naans at a roadside dhaba with dollops of fresh butter.  The food was awesome (loads of fresh cream and butter can do that to any food!!??). But to compensate for that one meal, I had a light dinner (soup and fruit). I made up for my missed workouts to an extent with the longs walks that Sikandra and Taj accorded (this alongwith running after my brat, the whole time)