Getting bored with your usual routine? Here are three ways to give the same old workout a new twist.
If
you feel like you're wearing a groove along your everyday walking path,
it's time to shake things up a little. Reinventing your daily walking
workout not only keeps boredom at bay but also builds fitness as your
body adapts to the new routine.
Here are three ways to vary your workouts and keep the fitness gains coming.
Change your route, time or distance
This
may be obvious, but it's the easiest way to shake the cobwebs out of
your routine. In addition to the change of scenery, a new route can
give you the benefit of different terrain, such as hills or stairs,
which you can use for interval training (more on that below). Whether
you walk by time or distance, going for shorter and faster or longer
and slower walks than you're used to improves your fitness in different
ways. Short, fast walks build speed, while long, slow walks build
endurance. Just be careful not to overdo it. "You've got to increase
your long walk in short steps," says Ken Mattsson, M.S.,
fitness-walking and race walking coach in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "If
you're starting out, your long walk shouldn't be too much longer than
what you've done." He suggests starting with the longest distance
you've done in the last three months, then adding a mile the following
week - and one long walk a week is plenty.
Do part of it backward
Walking
backward targets different muscles in your legs, improves your sense of
balance and gives your mind something different to think about, says
Mattsson. Of course, common sense should prevail here. "Try it on a
track or in a park, someplace where you're not going to get run over,"
for a couple of minutes at a time, he says. "Try to do it without
turning your head." If you have a walking partner, take turns walking
backward so one of you can watch the road while the other does an
about-face.
Add intervals
Intervals - alternating
short bursts of speed with periods of recovery - are a fundamental part
of any cardiovascular work. You can do them for part of your regular
walk or devote a whole workout to them. Warm up at your regular pace
for 10 minutes and then walk as fast as you can for 30 seconds. Slow
down to recover for one minute and then repeat. You can vary the
intensity with longer intervals, shorter recoveries or both. You can
also try fartleks, or random intervals. For example: Go fast to the
next stop sign, recover until you pass three telephone poles, and so
on.
Taking hills or stairs is another form of intervals,
Mattsson says. "It takes more energy to go up a hill, stairs or an
incline on a treadmill, pushing your body to work harder." If your
route has only one hill or flight of stairs, try doing repeats: Walk up
the hill, recover on the way back down and climb it again. Include the
time or distance spent on hills as part of your overall workout, not in
addition to it.
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