What is Power Walking?
Walking is one of the best ways to activate the body and power walking is ideal for burning calories. Therefore, we want to give you more details about one of the best ways to exercise your whole body while walking.
Power walking is brisk walking while you pump your arms, as part of an aerobic exercise routine. In fact, it’s a low impact way to improve the cardiovascular endurance and strength of your entire body.
It’s recommended for those who struggle with running, but want to stay in shape. You only need to swing your arms with your elbows bent at 90-degree angles, to increase your fitness results.
Keep the pace short and firm, and avoid turning your hips. The abdominals should pull the navel towards the spine to obtain the maximum benefits of toning and weight loss.
A new way of exercising
Power walking is an excellent way to practice aerobic exercise since it’s performed with a fast and technical rhythm to get the blood pumping. It requires less impact on the joints than other types of aerobic exercises such as running, although it allows you to burn a similar number of calories. It’s undoubtedly an excellent exercise to do as part of a weight loss strategy.
If your goal is to lose weight at a healthy pace and you want to increase your amount of exercise, try to introduce power walking sessions in your weekly workout routine. As a beginner, we recommend starting with short sessions of 20 or 30 minutes.
When you feel ready, you can increase the time spent power walking to between 45 and 60 minutes. As you add more time, you will begin to notice changes in your fitness levels and endurance. Take into consideration that, as with any form of exercise, wearing the right shoes is important.
Tips for power walking
These are some of the tips that you should take into consideration to get started with power walking:
1.-Perform a good warm-up
Although you may consider it to be an unnecessary activity, stretching is essential to prepare the body and avoid injuries. So, do not forget to warm up your muscles before beginning your power walking sessions.
2.-Keep your arms active
Activate your arm muscles and balance them with a purpose. Bend each elbow slightly and move your arms as you walk. This will help you to increase the strength of your upper body. Often, people don’t realize that it’s their arms that control their speed. The more your arms work, the faster your feet will go.
3.-Involve all your muscles
Think of the muscles that are involved in good posture, including abs. This will keep your body erect and your pelvis in the correct position, balanced and facing forward. Make sure you use all your muscles while walking. Your shoulders should be relaxed, but you should use your arms at the same time as your legs, and maintain the pace. Bend your elbows slightly and turn them as you walk.
4.-Take natural steps
You should know that most people tend to lengthen their step as they accelerate their pace, but this makes the technique of walking with force less effective. Therefore, we recommend that whenever you practice power walking you take natural steps.
5.-Use your hips
By turning your hips forward as you move, the forward leg should be straightened while the foot flexes and the heel hits the ground. This will increase the flexibility in the hips and help you to accelerate the pace without straining the lower back.
6.-Variety will help maintain your motivation
Plan your route so you know it well. It’s more interesting if the route is circular, and even better if it runs through a park. Plan two or three different routes of different distances so that the variety of circuits keep your motivation intact.
Before finishing, we remind you that power walking is one of the best activities to burn calories. Don’t forget to start at a pace that is comfortable and gradually increase it as you become fitter. You’ll soon find that your pace accelerates as your workout continues. We’re convinced that you’ll notice all of the benefits after just a few sessions!
