The importance of exercise is well known to all of us. You may be surprised to discover how many health benefits you can gain from a simple walk around your neighborhood. The many benefits of walking are strong bones, reduced anxiety, and lymphatic cleansing. You can push your body into moderate aerobic exercise by understanding how to increase your walking speed and implementing these tips. In this article, we will explore more reasons why you should increase your walking speed.
Why You Should Increase Your Walking Speed
Your walking speed should increase over time for a variety of reasons. As a result of walking faster, your heart rate increases, which provides a variety of health benefits, including:
Increased Energy
We can all benefit from more energy, and simply increasing our walking speed can help. Besides increasing metabolism, walking also helps you sleep better at night, which increases your energy levels during the day.
Aerobic exercise is especially good for your heart because it can lower cholesterol and increase your “good” HDL cholesterol. It can even prevent coronary artery disease by reducing your heart attack or stroke risk. Walking is an ideal aerobic exercise because it doesn’t require any equipment and is easy to do anywhere. The most important thing about walking is that you enjoy it. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t be motivated to continue doing it.
Burns More Calories
Taking a stroll each day can burn a significant number of calories depending on the distance you walk each day. The number of calories you burn per hour increases as you increase your walking speed. In addition, your heart rate increases as well, resulting in additional calorie burn.
The secret to success is picking a program you can do with ease. You want something that will be easy for you to do but also challenging. This way, you’re constantly pushing yourself, but not so much that it becomes overwhelming. Make sure you have a good pair of running shoes. If you have an injury, don’t run until you are 100 percent healed. You don’t want to cause any further damage by running too soon. When you do run, you should wear comfortable, supportive footwear.
Prevents Obesity
Among the safest exercises, you can do is walking. You don’t need equipment or a gym membership, and you can increase your daily exercise and prevent obesity and disease with a pair of good shoes.
The National Library of Medicine states that physical activity reduced BMI by about 0.010-0.14 points for males and 0.20 points for females by participating in leisure-time physical activity exceeding 1.5 kcal/kg per day (i.e., walking at least 30 minutes).
However, these effects are not likely to be clinically significant. Walking is an excellent way to increase overall fitness. Walking can be as simple as taking a stroll around the block or as complex as jogging a marathon. The important thing is that you get moving! If you don’t have the time, money, or energy to walk for an hour or more, try walking briskly for five to 10 minutes. It’s a great way to start your day or end it. Include a walk into your daily routine.
Enhances Heart Health
You lower your risk of heart disease by walking briskly, which increases your heart rate. The benefits of walking have been shown to include lowering blood pressure, reducing cholesterol, and preventing diabetes.
The Honolulu Heart Program conducted a two-year study to see if walking reduces the risk of coronary heart disease among older men and found that walking less than .25 miles per day doubled that risk compared to walking more than 1.25 miles per day.