Walking for Physical Fitness

Walking is one of the easiest and most popular types of exercises. It is a safe, gentle and low-impact exercise that anyone can start at any time. It is a suitable physical activity for most people. It offers numerous health benefits and physical fitness. Regular walking helps to lose excess fat, maintains a healthy body weight, reduces the risk of developing certain diseases such as osteoporosis, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, and improves overall fitness.

Types of Walking

Generally, there are two types of formal walking as an exercise. They are racewalking and power walking, which is also called speed walking. Power walking is a recreational activity, while racewalking is a form of sports. Both these types are the excellent forms of exercise that yield amazing health benefits and physical fitness. Routine walking requires no technique and no practice. You can do it for a stroll, as an exercise or walking the dog and you would get all the benefits.

Preparation for Walking

Before you start walking exercise, you should prepare yourself in order to prevent muscle pain and injuries. You should select comfortable footwear and loose fitting, comfortable clothes. Your selection of clothing should be according to the weather. Walk slowly for the first five minutes in order to warm up your muscles. Then you can increase your pace until you get sufficiently warm from the activity. It minimizes the risk of injury. After warming up, stretch your muscles including quadriceps, calf muscles, chest, lower back flexion and hamstring for about 5 minutes before start walking.

Walking Techniques

The technique for brisk walking, whether it is racewalking or power walking, is the same. The beginners should never overstride to walk faster. Overstriding can be inefficient and may slow you down. Instead of overstriding, you should concentrate on a powerful push off. Your front foot should land close to your body. You need to walk heel to toe. Avoid walking flatfooted to increase the speed. Your heel should first contact the ground. You need to rotate your hips forward and backward as you walk. Your waist should twist as you walk. You should keep your torso upright. Leaning forward or backward can slow you down. Your elbows should be at an angle of 90 degrees. Keep your hands relaxed. Keep your arms close to your body and swing them forward and backward. It helps to maintain your efficiency. If you speed up the arm swing, it will help to increase your speed. Your head should be upright and eyes should be forward looking . You should keep your neck and shoulders relaxed.

Health Benefits of Walking

Walking for physical fitness helps you to achieve plenty of health benefits. Here are some of the health benefits that you can get from walking:

• Reduces the risk of heart attack: Walking lowers the levels of bad cholesterol (low-density lipoprotein) and increases good cholesterol (high-density lipoprotein) and, thus keeps your heart healthy. Regular walking maintains a normal blood pressure and decreases the risk of heart attack, as high blood pressure is one of the contributing factors to heart disease. Walking improves the cardiovascular and pulmonary fitness.
• Manages the blood pressure: If you already are suffering from hypertension, regular walking reduces high blood pressure and keeps it normal.
• Reduces the risk of developing type 2 diabetes: Regular walking exercise minimizes the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Overweight people are at higher risk of diabetes. For such people, walking is an excellent exercise. It improves the body's ability for glucose tolerance (to process sugar).
• Beneficial for bones: Walking effectively reduces the risk of osteoporosis. The postmenopausal women who regularly walk about 1 mile everyday have higher bone density than the inactive women.
• Reduces the risk of colon and breast cancer: Women who have a regular exercise of brisk walking are at a reduced risk of developing breast cancer. This simple exercise also prevents the development of colon cancer.
• Maintains healthy body weight: Walking is one of the best exercise for weight loss. It burns excess calories and body fats. It helps to maintain the healthy body weight.
• Avoids the need for gallstone surgery: Regular walking minimizes the need of gallstone surgery by 20-30%.
• Beneficial for mental health: Walking significantly improves the cognitive function. It also reduces the symptoms of depression and stress.
• Good for physical fitness: Regular walking enhances the blood circulation. It improves the strength and flexibility of muscles and joints. It gives a relief from fatigue, arthritis pain and backache. Thus, walking plays a significant role in improving your physical fitness and overall health.

Now that you have understood the health benefits of walking, you can start this simple exercise right from today. Avoid the use of vehicles whenever possible and opt for walking. It will improve your physical fitness as well as protect the environment from the pollution.