Walking is one of the most underrated exercises we can do for our bodies and health. Our bodies NEED 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity or 75-100 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic exercise EVERY week as recommended by WHO. A brisk walk, and certainly a power walk, qualifies as moderate intensity exercise!
Also, running can be a great form of exercise. If you prefer to walk, that’s great! But, if you’d like to try running, check out our Running Tips and Resources.
Since walking is so great for your health, we want to give you ALL the resources to walk as much as you want, as fast as you want, for as long as you want with as few injuries as possible. The main components to succeed at this are the following:
- Proper mobility/flexibility (dynamic warmup and regular mobility work)
- Proper strength
Dynamic Warmups
Think of a dynamic warmup less of a “you must do this to be able to walk” and more of a “if you do this you can chip away at improving mobility that will help you perform better and get hurt less AND you will probably feel better during your walk.” Below, we have a walking specific dynamic warmup as well as our playlist with all of our dynamic warmups if you want more challenging warmups.
Flexibility/Mobility for Walkers
It’s important to have proper mobility and flexibility to be able to move your body through the ranges necessary for walking without compensating or over-stressing your muscles or joints. Check out the video below to assess areas you may need more flexibility in. This is not all inclusive, but simply the main areas people have flexibility limitations that can have the most negative impact on their walking.
For the hip, knee, and rest of you, any stretches that feel challenging and like a good stretch, they’re probably helpful for you. And yes, we included thoracic (mid/upper back) and low back mobility because those are important for walkers as well as your lower body flexibility.
Strength Training for Walkers
While we stated above that walking is enough to increase your heart rate and get the exercise you need, we see many walkers that get injured and no longer can walk for exercise because they have areas where they can improve their strength. It’s important to have more strength than you need for walking so you can properly control your joints without over straining your muscle.
We would recommend at least 2 days, if not 3, of strength work to compliment your walking. Below, you will find lots of resources to work on getting stronger. At the bare minimum, get to work on our 5 Strength Exercises for Walkers, however, we would recommend you better round out your strength work with the other lower body, core, and even upper body strength exercises. After the videos, check out the other resources for more education on strength progression and other ways to mix it up! You can even give our strength exercises for runners a try!
- 5 Strength Exercises for Runners
- Our top 5 exercises to give you the most bang for your buck
- In our opinion, you should be working more variety of strength as shown below, but if nothing else, this is a good base of strength!
- Strength Progression Charts
- Want a quick visual of our to progress your strength, check out our charts that match our YouTube video playlists
- Various types of workouts to mix up your strength training on your own
- Resources for mixing in your strength with time with your kids and family
If you want to self explore some more strength, check out our core and hip (lower body) strengthening playlists below (and yes, we included core because it’s important!):
Common Walking Injuries
Info related to common walking injuries coming soon. For now, check out this reference that is specific to running injuries, but has a lot of overlap with walking injuries: OHSU’s resource here.
Want to work into running?
As mentioned, walking is a GREAT form of exercise. Should you want to try to work into running, check out our Running Tips and Resources.
Summary
At Healing Motion, we are passionate to move our community to excel in health, wellness, and life! Walking is an excellent way to go about this! Remember that overall health and fitness is much more than just exercise. See our 6 Pillars of Health blog for more info. Lastly, if you need help getting out of pain, want to have an assessment to identify areas to reduce risk for potential future injuries, or want to perform better, we can help you with all of that! Schedule your appointment here.
Happy walking! We’re all stronger together!
Dr. Dane Happeny, PT, DPT, OCS, CF-L1
Doctor of Physical Therapy
Board Certified Orthopedic Specialist
CrossFit Level 1 Trainer
Experienced Runner and CrossFitter
Dr. Peter McMillan, PT, DPT
Doctor of Physical Therapy
Experienced Runner and Triathlete – Our resident “Running Expert”
Dr. Emma Bowman, PT, DPT
Doctor of Physical Therapy
Experienced Runner
