Walking is a great low-impact way to improve your cardiovascular health, but some people don’t see it that way and will try to tell you that walking is not exercise. High-impact workouts can help get your heart rate up but when you are physically disabled, sometimes low-impact exercises, such as walking, is the only way you can get a workout in because people with disabilities often are more limited than non-disabled people. As a physically disabled person, I am very limited on the types of cardio workouts I am able to do, and the only things I can really do are swimming, which you can’t do in the winter months, and walking. It can be very frustrating when I hear people say that walking is not exercise because that is one of the very few things that I can do that my disability doesn’t completely prevent me from doing. I think that a lot of the time, people say walking is not exercise because they don’t know how to make their walk harder and aren’t challenging themselves, so it is easy. Walking has a lot of health benefits because you don’t need to be doing high-impact workouts all the time to improve your health, and you should take a break from that because a twenty-minute walk can go a long way. How can you make your walks more challenging? In this post, I am going to talk about a few ways you can increase the intensity of your walks so you can challenge yourself more.
Find a hilly path and add resistance- When I walk, I don’t go anywhere because I prefer to exercise at home, and I set a timer for twenty minutes and walk up and down my driveway. There is no resistance when I walk down the driveway, and that is the easy part of that walk, but walking back up is a little challenging because it’s like walking up a hill, and there is a little more resistance. If you are struggling to challenge yourself during your walks and think it’s too easy, try adding resistance and find a hilly path, or get yourself a weighted vest. Adding resistance is a great way to increase the intensity of your workout without having to increase the duration of your walk. I walk differently than most people and have to walk slower because sometimes my foot drags, which destroys my shoes, and the only way to prevent that from happening is to pay attention to my form and walk slower. I sometimes will add my ankle weights to my arms to add an extra challenge, but I do want to invest in a weighted vest because ankle weights sometimes fall down after I get sweaty and get in the way. Resistance is a great way to increase the intensity because it gets your heart rate up and adds more of a calorie burn than walking with resistance, which is great if weight loss is your goal.
Walk for a longer period of time- When I started walking, I walked at a faster pace, but recently, I stopped doing that because it was destroying my shoes too quickly, and now I walk slower to improve my hip strength. Walking slower doesn’t get your heart rate up super high, which is why I doubled my time to continue to challenge myself. If you are not feeling challenged during your walks, it might be a sign that you aren’t walking long enough, and you might have to increase your time to get more of a challenge. When I started walking slower, I doubled my time because the time I was using when I was walking faster wasn’t long enough at a slower pace. I am working on increasing the distance of my walk rather than getting my heart rate up as high as possible, and just doing that increases my heart rate because when you walk longer, you get more fatigued. As a physically disabled person, I think that challenging myself to walk for longer is important because when I can train myself to stand for longer, it makes my life easier. There are times in life when I have to stand a little longer, and if it weren’t for my exercise, I wouldn’t be able to.
Walk at a faster pace- I am working toward being able to walk at a faster pace without destroying my shoes, and I think my slow pace is getting a little faster, but it takes time to build hip strength. If you don’t have orthopedic challenges like I do, walking faster might be something you need to consider because sometimes the reason your walk doesn’t feel challenging is that you are walking too slowly. Pick up the pace and challenge yourself to walk faster because slow leisure walks sometimes don’t get your heart rate up high enough, and the faster you walk, the more calories you are going to burn. People sometimes like to exercise with a friend, which is a great idea if you struggle with motivating yourself, but I personally don’t like to do that because I get distracted and am more focused when I am alone.
Find a different path- As a physically disabled person, I don’t have a lot of options for exercising in a different location because I can only walk so far, but if you have that choice, choosing a different path might help increase the intensity of your walk. We get so used to walking the same path every time, which is hard at first, but over time it does get easier and becomes less challenging. Find a different path if you can, because new environments provide new ways to challenge your body.
Walking is a great form of exercise, and don’t let anyone tell you that it’s not exercise because there are tons of ways you can make walking harder. Running will burn more calories, but that does not mean walking is not effective, because there are so many benefits to walking every day, and it can help improve your cardiovascular health, just like high-impact workouts can. Walking counts as exercise because all movement counts, and you don’t have to walk ten thousand steps a day to improve your health, and that is an unrealistic goal for many disabled people. A sedentary lifestyle is what increases your risk of certain health issues, and just a little bit of walking can help slightly lower your risk. I love going on my walks because it allows me to put on my favorite music or podcast and completely unplug for twenty minutes, which feels great. How do you increase the intensity of your walk? If you liked this post, please leave a comment below and share it with your friends.
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