Perhaps the most ideal and universal type of physical activity for all is walking. After all, whatever one may say, every person who is able to move around walks every day: some more, some less.
In order to lose weight, you really don’t need to invent anything new, everything has long been invented by nature itself: a person is designed in such a way that during natural movement, he spends much more energy than he consumes with food. In the old days, a person had to walk considerable distances every day, and this circumstance helped people to keep themselves in good physical shape and had a beneficial effect on the general condition of the body.
But the modern way of life is much more passive. Today, a person can work, pay all the necessary bills, and have fun without leaving the apartment, and even without getting up from the computer desk. Therefore, it is not surprising that from year to year there are more and more people suffering from overweight.
But it turns out that losing weight and significantly improving your health is very simple. All you need to do is walk more! Among other things, scientists have proven that a daily half-hour walk on average prolongs a person’s life by two years. It should also be noted that when walking, blood pressure normalizes, cholesterol levels in the body decrease and bones become stronger.
But in order to get rid of the hated body fat, a simple ten-minute walk around the house is not enough. Scientists have proven that in order to maintain good physical shape, a person needs to take more than two thousand steps a day, and in order to lose weight while walking, it is necessary to take at least ten thousand steps a day. You can count the steps taken with the help of a pedometer, which today can be purchased at almost any sports store.
Start walking, like any other type of physical activity, you need to gradually. Naturally, the higher the pace of walking, the more calories burned. But, nevertheless, first you need to choose the most optimal pace for yourself and an acceptable distance. It is also necessary to measure the number of steps that fit into the initial distance segment, and then every week add two hundred to five hundred steps to it, and so on until the person reaches the cherished ten thousand steps.
Walking should not be treated as an exhausting form of training, and there is absolutely no reason to walk the same route every day, but for starters, you can just walk a few stops on your way home from somewhere. Walk with pleasure, then the mood will be good, and the result will be much more effective!
And after some time, when a person is already accustomed to walking long distances daily, he may well go in for race walking.
Types of sports walking
- Walking upwards remarkably strengthens the muscles of the legs. In this case, it is enough just to walk uphill or climb the stairs, while the hands must be relaxed.
- And in order to strengthen the muscles of the buttocks, it is necessary to walk with tense gluteal muscles. This type of walking is practically no different from the usual one, but during the lifting of the leg from the ground, you need to strongly strain the buttocks, while the back should not strain.
- But for those who want to strengthen their back muscles, it is best to walk backwards. To do this, you need to choose a flat road, pull in your stomach, put your hands on your belt, while your back should be even, you need to start walking slowly, gradually accelerating.
