At KinetiX we always recommend our members to add walk as a supplementary activity to their routine. Of course it’s a great way to increase your overall activity but there are numerous other less known benefits to walking. No one can deny that the modern lifestyle has minimized our movement and decreased our physical activity. To fight the lack of activity everyone needs to not only exercise on regular basis but need to add walk to their routine. Here are some stats to give you an idea of how inactive we humans have become:
“In less than two generations, physical activity has dropped by 20% in the UK and 32% in the US. In China the drop is 45% in less than one generation. Vehicles, machines and technology now do our moving for us. What we do in our leisure time doesn’t come close to making up for what we’ve lost” – designedtomove.org
One of the less known benefit of slow-paced walk is “stress relief”. A study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine showed that university students who walked and did other easy to moderate exercise regularly had lower stress levels than couch potatoes.
There are numerous studies done in Japan which have shown reduced levels of stress and increased feeling of well-being among individuals who go for regular walks. Another interesting aspect of these studies is that they even compared individuals who walked in city environments with those who walk in areas with trees and found that those walking in parks with trees had even lower stress levels. Not only that they also found that the combination of walks and nature also decreased “brooding” among participants, even further lowering stress levels. In Japan they even have a name for it “shinrin-yoku” meaning “forest bathing”
Another study, which appeared in an issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders, found that volunteers suffering from depression who took a 50-minute walk in a woodland park improved their cognition, as measured by the ability to remember a random string of digits and repeat them in reverse order, compared to those who took a walk through city streets. An earlier study found similar results in subjects who weren’t depressed.
Now the question is how you can apply this to your routine. With any activity start with bare minimum and slowly build it up. Biggest mistake people make is that they go from being inactive to hyper-active and eventually they end up leaving all activities because it isn’t sustainable in long-run. So best thing to do is start with whatever is manageable and build it up. The aim is to reduce stress so forget about what your fitbit and just walk at your own pace and as long as you can.
