Benefits of Brisk Walking

Brisk walking is beneficial for both the young and the elderly.  One needs only a good pair of running shoes and a commitment to enjoy walking regularly.

A survey among 3,753 American doctors supports brisk walking as the most effective way to battle short breath, bulges, extra chins, and that general “run-down” feeling.

Walking is extolled highly by doctors because it is an exercise in which the factors of strain and fatigue are reduced to a minimum.  Nature intended all of us to walk.  She deliberately adapted our muscles, limbs, toes, organs and lungs to this form of locomotion.

Literally every part of the body is called upon to perform when walking.  Lungs dilate with fresh invigorating air; muscles stretch and turn and knead themselves with every step; joints automatically “oil” themselves to make the going smooth.  Senses perk up.

Medical records compiled over the past fifty years confirm that everyday walking gives the best health results at any age, according to Paul Brock, an American physical fitness researcher.  And you can be as good a walker at sixty as at twenty, if not better, for the more our walking machinery is used, the better it functions.  As the saying goes, “use it, or lose it.”

In spite of the almost complete absence of strain in walking, the exercise demands real physical effort without the walker being uncomfortably aware of it.

Experiments have proved that the energy expended in a five-mile walk performed at a steady pace of three miles an hour is twice that expended by a good tennis player playing three grueling sets of singles.  The actively engaged muscles take in such a wide area, and the effort involved is so widely distributed that no one set of muscles runs the risk of being overtaxed.

How to Walk.  A four-mile-an-hour gait is about top speed for the average walker, with three-miles-an-hour more frequent.

One hour of continuous walking at three-miles-an-hour is a vigorous and stimulating workout for everyone.

At an easy walking gait, the hands ought to dangle loosely – well below the waist – swinging in and out like a pendulum.