Is Walking Enough Cardio? What You Can Do to Improve It
I know there are walkers in the Unstill Life pantheon and I’ve heard from you these questions – Is walking a good workout? And if so, why and how is it good? And if not, how can I improve or supplement my cardio fitness if I’m primarily a walker? I got you, walkers! Let’s hit this topic.
For starters, walking is indeed great exercise and has a lot of benefits, among them:
It can (more on this in a minute) get your heart rate up, certainly more than if you were just hangin’ on the chaise longue like I am right now, and that is the goal of cardio exercise–increase in heart rate, breathing rate, burning of calories.
It is weight-bearing, meaning you support your own body weight and your muscles and joints have to work to maintain that. That is not true of biking or swimming, and is partially true of rowing.
It helps immune function by reducing inflammation.
It lowers risks of cardiovascular disease and lowers overall mortality rates.
If you walk outside, you likely lower depression and anxiety rates. It’s a balm.
It’s a great way to recover from more intense forms of exercise or to do when you aren’t feeling up for something more challenging.
So walking is, for sure, a great health and wellness unlock. But, I hear you asking…
Does It Count As Cardio?
It may, depending on how you do it and how long you’ve been doing what you’re doing. If you are new to exercise, walking may indeed provide an increase in heart rate and stress on bones, muscles and joints that will promote improvements in all those areas.
If you’ve been walking for months and haven’t changed up your routine, you may be maintaining fitness by walking, and reaping some of the benefits listed above, but you’re probably not improving your heart-lung capacity. You’ve adapted to walking and it no longer challenges you. When we introduce normal aging to the picture, we know our abilities are going to decline. For longevity, improving quality of life for more years (i.e.; health-span) you need to go beyond maintenance and stress heart and lungs to keep them stronger longer.
In order to have walking serve as good cardio, you need to increase the briskness, the work involved, the challenge, or the agility factor. There are several ways you can do this.
Increase Briskness/Intensity
Pick up your pace so you are walking faster for some interval of time. My colleague, honored substitute workout leader and mobile physical therapist James McAfee put together two guided walks with brisker intervals. You can use these to go from your standard walk to a more vigorous version. Both are quite accessible. Just set them up on your mobile device, plug in the earphones and follow James’ soothing voice. He even includes a warm up and cool down.
Add Weight
Wear a weighted vest or wrap dumbbells in a towel and put them in a backpack. I’m not a huge fan of ankle/wrist weights because they can mess with your normal gait, whereas weight distributed more evenly over your frame is easier to incorporate. Carrying extra weight will definitely increase your cardio levels.
Add Inclines
Hills and steps are plentiful in Seattle, so make sure you don’t avoid them, seek them out! If you have weight in your pack in addition to this, congratulations, you’re officially RUCKING, which is super hip right now for reasons enumerated in this post. Increasing your pace as you go up hill or stairs is a surefire cardio improvement method.
Make It Full-Body: Use Your Arms
Pump your arms vigorously and reach them overhead. Fun fact: bringing your arms overhead automatically makes your heart work a little harder. If you use a heart rate monitor, you can see this increase in real time.
Explore Other Ways to Move
So many forms of vigorous perambulation: skipping, sashaying, shuffling. These will establish your reputation in the neighborhood 😉 Even doing these for a few seconds at a time increases heart rate and lung capacity. Try inserting :10-:20 of skip each minute or two of walk. Increase from there.
Circuit training and other formats we use in Strength & Stamina classes are another solid way to improve cardio fitness. Flashback to this blog post of yore which touches on similar questions and has some more suggestions for walkers looking to improve cardio.
Dabble In Running
And walker, I’m not trying to make you be a runner, but you can do the same thing with very short bouts of jog/run, just like you might do if you were about to miss a bus. A few seconds every minute or so introduces a whole host of benefits that walking can’t touch. You may have seen the feature on the New York Times Well Blog on this very subject.
Once you realize running doesn’t have to be constant or even frequent to be beneficial, you may embrace it as something you can do. This post may encourage you.
If you’re in the Seattle area, check out Unstill Life’s outdoor workouts and walk/run group. It isn’t only about exercise, but about community, motivation, and working towards goals. Our group offers a supportive environment no matter what your fitness level is. We have morning park workouts (6:30am and 9:30am) and our walking and running group meets on Wednesday nights at 6:30pm, or join us for a Saturday neighborhood route. Get a great workout while connecting with amazing people! Sign up for our weekly newsletter so you know where we’re meeting each week. Sign up for our weekly newsletter so you know where we’re meeting each week.
Check out Unstill Life on Heylo, a fitness community app. You’ll see our classes and runs listed, see photos, and chat us up.
