Walking 30 minutes a day may not seem like a lot to make significant changes in your health, but in my experience, it’s the activity that can make all the difference.
Often when we talk about exercise, it’s about doing more; more miles, more reps, and more sessions each week. No matter the reason behind the training, many of us find that once we start doing something, we feel the need to do more. Taking a step back and focusing on doing less can have many benefits for our mental and physical health. It can also, as I’ve found, encourage us to think differently about how we exercise in general.
I’m just as guilty of the “more” mentality as anyone else. I really enjoy working out and find myself in the gym, running or in a spin class most days of the week, probably for the best, considering I’m also a digital health editor for woman&home. However, recently I have been struggling with how exercise in winter as darker days make early mornings and later nights less inviting. I have been looking for a change and something to refresh my routine for the darkest days.
I have faced myriad fitness challenges (most recently, I have written about how to start running as i approach my first half marathon and I was wearing a Fitbit on my ankle. for a week), so I was very prepared to give myself a break from my regular cardio activities, switching to a daily half-hour walk. Here’s what I learned about the benefits of cutting back on activity and just focusing on walking 30 minutes a day.
What are the benefits of walking 30 minutes a day?
1. Walking is a great source of cardiovascular exercise.
Starting with the basics, even though I was no longer running twice a week, I was still getting enough cardio to keep my heart pumping.
Walking is a kind of LISS cardio exercise. As the more relaxed twin of HIIT, it’s all about keeping your heartbeat at a relatively low level, around 40 to 50% of your maximum heart rate. Over time, research university of wisconsin (opens in a new tab) shows, this can have a very positive impact on your cardiovascular fitness.
Also, instead of coming home tired in the evenings and having to lie down like I would after a late night run, I found I had more energy in the evenings, as if my brief burst of cardio and fresh air had perked me up afterward. sitting in the office most of the day.
2. Walking for 30 minutes a day pushes you to discover more places
I found that the 30 minute time limit forced me to venture out. At the beginning of the month, I followed the same roads and paths that I had traveled hundreds of times before – I only had half an hour, how far could I really go?
I started out just doing a half hour of steady walking to and from work every day, plus going to the coffee shop or taking an afternoon walk on the weekends, but by the second week I was finding new ways to walk.
Having discovered the all trails (opens in a new tab) app a couple of months ago, I found new routes in my local area pretty quickly. The app has more than 350,000 of them around the world. Despite living in my area for almost two years, I have found new places to explore and even new terrain as I hopped on the train a couple of stops to get a little further away. In the last two weeks alone, I’ve hiked trails, canals and heaths, and it’s true that I’ve walked a little over 30 minutes.
Walking is one of the most versatile exercises, as I discovered, and it pushes you to go further.
(Image credit: Grace Walsh/Future)
3. Walking for 30 minutes a day is totally adaptable
Naturally, as I live in the UK, it rains quite a bit. There’s nothing like that to stop me from heading out the door early for a walk before work. However, I have a gym membership and there is a treadmill in my gym. That’s the great thing about walking – you really can do it anywhere and anytime, even if you don’t feel like going outside.
However, I started to get really bored just walking on the treadmill before my regular gym sessions, so I took the 12-3-30 training about a week in the month. One of the most famous HIIT treadmill workoutsthis program went viral on social media last year for its simple approach to working out:
- Get on the treadmill and set the incline level to 12
- Set speed to 3 mph
- Walk for 30 minutes uninterrupted
Although I maintained my normal pattern of walking at a moderate pace on the other days of the week, every time I entered a strength training session that was more focused on the upper body than the legs, I incorporated this HIIT workout somewhere.
4. It’s a great way to get from one place to another
Living in a city, where the hustle and bustle of public transportation can make getting from A to B difficult at times, makes walking one of the best modes of transportation. Living in London, I am lucky to have access to a good public transport network. However, the metro, buses and trains tend to get very busy very quickly with commuters, no matter what time of day.
Over the past month, I’ve swapped my 10-minute walk for a 30-minute walk and reaped the benefits of personal space, along with more exercise. Being able to do this also kept me going on days when I didn’t really feel like walking. As much as the idea of walking in winter weather isn’t appealing, I’ll always take it instead of a rush-hour bus.
5. Improvements in my mental health
We have all heard of the benefits of walking for our mental health, but I always assumed this applied to hilly hikes and walks in leafy surroundings rather than 30 minutes down a city road. Just a few days into the month, I noticed that I felt brighter in the mornings and included a slightly longer walk as part of my Sunday reset routine it changed the game, giving me space to work out my pre-Monday anxieties.
While walking is not a substitute for professional mental health help, there are plenty of studies confirming that taking time to exercise can do wonders for our mental health. Two of these studies, from the Iseigaoka University (opens in a new tab) Y boston university (opens in a new tab) respectively, even found it to have some serious long-term benefits, including decreased risk of depression, insomnia, and anxiety over time. While I can’t speak to the long-term benefits of this walking routine, I intend to stick with it to find out.
Is it enough to walk 30 minutes a day?
if you seek to know how much exercise should you do a week, then rest assured, 30 minutes of walking every day will have you covered under NHS and CDC guidelines. Both health institutions recommend two and a half hours of moderate exercise per week, or one hour and 15 minutes of vigorous activity.
In total for seven days, walking half an hour a day at a good pace will mean you do three and a half hours of exercise a week, which is one hour more than the recommended minimum.
Tips to get the most out of your ride
- Take music or a podcast with you: Unless you’re in a hurry or practicing walking meditation, it can be difficult to focus on your walk and all the benefits of being outdoors. I found that connecting to music or a podcast helped the time go by faster, whether I was walking outside or at the gym.
- Take a friend with you: In the days of confinement, going for a walk with a friend was the highlight of many of our weeks. Now that the world has opened up again, we’re not doing it as much. Taking a friend with you on your 30-minute walk is a great way to fit socializing into your exercise schedule, without losing too much of your breath.
- Stay safe: Walking has many benefits, but depending on the number of cars and people around you, it can lead to some problems. I always make sure I have something hi-vis in my bag for night walks and when I walk at night, I use my shokz headphones (opens in a new tab) where I can still hear everything going on around me or just listen through a headset.
- Count your steps: Using one of the best fitbits or another fitness tracker, count your steps during your 30 minutes and check your insights through the app to see how you change throughout the month.
- Plan larger hikes for the weekend: If you don’t have time to leave your local area for a 30-minute walk during the week, plan a longer route for the weekend. I found that doing this gave me something to look forward to and provided a change of scenery.
