Find out how many health benefits regular walks hide if you do them on a regular basis, day in and day out. Health and beauty are guaranteed for you. Hiking can not only be a pleasant pastime, but it can also be a great workout. If we compare this type of physical activity with others, then walking is the most affordable. Not all people can go in for, say, jogging or cycling. But everyone can devote a sufficient amount of time to walking. It should also be remembered that hiking does not have serious contraindications, which is also very important. At the same time, they can prove to be very beneficial to your health. Let's find out what benefits hiking can bring.
What is the use of walking?
It must be said right away that while walking, a fairly large number of body muscles are involved in the work. This, as you should be aware, helps maintain muscle tone. In addition, walking is an excellent means of preventing various diseases of the musculoskeletal system and helps to strengthen the ligaments and joints.
When you are hiking, your lungs are well ventilated, which improves the quality of oxygen supply to all body tissues. Walking perfectly accelerates blood flow, normalizes cholesterol balance, strengthens the heart muscle and increases the efficiency of the vascular system. In addition, scientists have proven that walking helps prevent the development of diabetes.
You can see for yourself that the benefits of walking are high, but that's not all. Walking helps to improve the functioning of the digestive system and speeds up the process of removing harmful and toxic substances from the body. As you strengthen your body while hiking, the performance of the immune system also increases.
Even with a slow pace of walking, the metabolic rate increases significantly. This has a positive effect on all internal organs and slows down the aging process of cellular structures. In addition, it has been proven that walking helps to improve the functioning of the organs of vision. Hiking is no less useful for the psychoemotional state of a person. They help reduce stress, eliminate anxiety and even depression.
Of course, to get these great results, you need to hike regularly, not every now and then. Walking daily is the best option. As a last resort, take walks at least three times throughout the week, and their duration should be at least 30 minutes. If you are not involved in sports, then start with short walks, gradually increasing their duration.
To warm up your muscles, each walk should start at a slow pace. After 15 minutes of slow walking, increase your speed, but your heart rate should remain steady. While walking, keep your back straight and relax your shoulder joints. Also use comfortable walking shoes to avoid discomfort. In this case, the health benefits of hiking will be invaluable.
Hiking and losing weight
Maybe not everyone knows, but walking can be beneficial for fighting fat as well. But at the same time, it should be remembered that walking is not enough for you to lose weight. In addition, several conditions must be observed. First of all, the regularity of the classes is important. If to maintain muscle tone it is enough to take about ten thousand steps every day, then when it comes to losing weight, you need to walk at least sixteen thousand steps.
To make it easier for you, you should use a special device - a pedometer. However, you can do without it, observing certain rules. First, the duration of the walk should be at least 30 minutes. Secondly, start and end the walk at a slow pace, and in the middle of the distance you need to increase your speed and walk about a kilometer in ten minutes. Try to use routes that are elevated. Thanks to this, you will be able to increase your energy expenditure, and, therefore, your walk will bring more benefits in terms of losing weight. If you have a large body mass, then to reduce the load on the articular-ligamentous apparatus, you should walk on grass or soil, but not on asphalt.
What to choose - walking or running?
Many people are interested in what is more beneficial - walking or jogging? Experts are sure that the effect on the body of these physical activities is approximately the same. This is due to the fact that the same muscles are involved in the work when running and walking. The main difference is that you must have at least a minimal level of fitness to run. There are no such requirements for walking.
All people who have not been involved in spotting before can be recommended to start with walking. When your body gets stronger, and the muscles are strengthened, then if you want, you can start jogging. However, you should not run if your body weight is large enough, as this can damage the articular-ligamentous apparatus. In addition, scientists believe that walking for an hour will bring more benefits compared to running for half an hour.
We have already noted that walking has no serious contraindications. However, it is not advisable to take walks with arrhythmias, after a heart attack (stroke), with high blood pressure, diabetes, during colds and with pulmonary insufficiency. But walking is recommended with low immunity, loss of strength and lethargy.
How to walk correctly?
If you decide to go for walking for health purposes or for weight loss, then you need to follow three principles:
- Do no harm to the body - the intensity of your walks should correspond to the general level of fitness of the body.
- A gradual increase in loads - the duration of classes and the pace of walking should be increased gradually.
- Regularity of classes - it is advisable to take walks daily. As a last resort, do this 3-4 times throughout the week.
You do not need to set aside time for walks. You can walk to work and return. If you live far from your place of work, walk for several stops. You should also remember that walking in the morning can energize you for the whole day. If you walk in the evening, you can improve the quality of your sleep. In the summer, you can go for walks in the evening and in the morning. In winter, you can increase the load on the body, as the cold will force you to increase your speed of movement.
How much and how to walk?
It is impossible to give an exact answer to this question, since everything depends on the state of your health. If your body is untrained, you should keep pace with your heart rate below 80 beats per minute to reap the benefits of walking. To do this, you need to move at about a speed of 4 kilometers per hour. For several weeks, the duration of classes should not exceed 40 minutes.
To obtain a strong healing effect, it is necessary to adhere to a movement speed of 7 kilometers per hour for 35 minutes. The heart rate should be between 65 and 80 beats per minute. The preparatory phase can take from several weeks to one year. As soon as walking ten kilometers stops fatiguing you, you can begin to increase the load.
In addition to the usual walking walks, walking on the spot can be very useful. It can be used not only to obtain a healing effect, but also to increase the endurance indicator. Scientists have found that the benefits of walking are about the same as walking in place. The average speed should be between 50 and 60 steps per minute. If you have not previously played sports, then the duration of walking on the spot should be about 10 minutes. Gradually bring this time to one or one and a half hours.
Walking stairs can also be very helpful. For residents of multi-storey buildings, there will be no problems with the organization of such classes, they will only have to refuse the elevator services. On average, a lesson will be effective if it lasts about half an hour, but much depends on the individual characteristics of the organism.
For more information on the benefits of walking, see here:
