Start With a Walk In The Park

Midsummer Day Hike

Coming to the Realization

So you’ve come to the painful realization that you are dramatically out of shape and/or overweight. Maybe in front of the mirror or maybe when someone rather rudely draws your attention to it, but there it is. What to do? Diet? Run? Zumba? Walk?

First, recognize this concern is precisely what you need, a little fear. Hopefully you are thinking about your mortality, your liver, your heart, your lungs, debilitating dementia, or just how bad this could get. If so, you are likely motivated enough to want to do something about this situation. How you approach this will mean everything to your success. Diet matters profoundly, but today we discuss exercise….

I panicked. I got a gym membership and handful of books, joined a B-league volleyball team, bought barefoot running shoes, and I was literally off to the races. My terror arose from a picture that showed my gut photo-bombing the whole works. Not good.

Start Slow

I jumped in with both feet. Within a matter of weeks I had tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, and had reinjured my shoulder, resulting in damage that required surgical correction and will never be the same. Don’t be like me. Learn from my mistakes. By the way, a power-lifter friend of mine ruptured her Achilles tendon on the very first run in her new Vibram Five Toes! Even experienced athletes sometimes don’t think clearly.

Walking is the core exercise for the human body.

I know you want to hit it hard initially, but instead:

• The human body evolved to walk and to run. You have to walk before you can run, and no, it is not just like riding a bike. If you haven’t been running in years, start walking. Start by trying a 10 or 15 minute walk away from your start point, then return. This will result in your first planned 20 to 30 minute walk.
• Keep it enjoyable. Music and audiobooks can be nice, but also just taking a walk in a pretty place and enjoying the sights and sounds can be very relaxing. Walking is a great time to just let your brain run wild as well.
• If you decide to explore the wonders of barefoot walking, please take it slow. Unless you’ve been doing this your whole life, your feet have been deformed and weakened by shoes for umpteen years. Don’t expect them to unfurl in just a few intense sessions…this will take years.
• Work up to walks of at least 30 minutes in length. There should be no harm in you walking two hours per day every day of your life, once you work up to it without pain.
• Watch for bad signs such as soreness in your feet, especially within the center of your foot. Pain should be a strong warning sign that you are doing too much or have the wrong footwear. Back off a notch. Respect pain. Pain is telling your body to stop what it is doing.

Why Walk?

The human body evolved such that walking and running were a source of competitive advantage. In short, IT’S WHAT WE DO. IT’S WHAT WE WERE BORN TO DO. Walking provides your joints with lubrication, your muscles with exercise and strength, thickens and strengthens your connective tissues (tendons and ligaments), and causes your heart muscles and lungs to work and expand their capabilities. All of these benefit your overall health and well-being. Walking should form the foundation of your exercise program…yes, ahead of pilates, yoga, power lifting, strength training, bodybuilding, running, swimming, etc. etc. Walking is the foundation of your athletic body.

Retreat from our retreat. A beautiful day.

Don’t get me wrong, yoga, pilates, resistance training, running, swimming, biking etc. should form some part of your exercise program as you advance. All are very valuable, but each of these athletic undertakings should be additive to your core strength as a walking human, not in lieu of.

Resources

There are two books that I believe speak strongly to walking and running. The first is The Run-Walk-Run Method by Jeff Galloway, and the second is Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Both books are inspiring, and should help you to understand that you can both walk and run athletically all the way until the end of your (now lengthened) life, and can do this starting as a very overweight person or a skinny person.

McDougall explains that humans are a running species at our core. He illustrates some extreme cases of ultra-runners that are very inspiring, and tells a wonderful story of some of the greatest human runners in action. He discusses physiology and also introduces the reader to some of the pitfalls associated with running shoes. This is a very uplifting read that includes a well-written non-fiction story line that in my opinion rivals a well-written novel, exposing us to characters in a real-life adventure story. He discusses why older people and females not at a significant disadvantage when very long distances are covered and high endurance is required, contrary to popular beliefs.

Four-time Iron Man champion Chrissie Wellington regularly placing in the top 20 against men, and beating all but one man in one of her Iron Man competition should be proof enough, but how about Ann Trason taking 2^nd overall in the grueling Western States 100 ultra-marathon, beating all but one single man in the 1994 field over a distance of 100 miles high in the Rocky Mountains?!…you will read about her thrilling race in McDougall’s book. Unless you have a truly debilitating injury that prevents it, there is a runner, or at a bare minimum hopefully a walker locked inside of you. Be inspired. Be very inspired.

In The Run-Walk-Run Method, Jeff Galloway provides you with a nuts-and-bolts how-to linkage to your inner runner. He starts with a walk and listens to his body. He advocates regularly-spaced walking rest intervals whether you are running a 5k or a full marathon, and he does an excellent job of explaining why this is. As a bonus, your overall times will come down.

The idea is to start by walking until it is no longer that challenging. Then he suggests you sprinkle 10 or 15 seconds of running into 1 or 2 minutes of walking, all the time listening to your body to make sure you don’t overdo it or create injury. His method keeps adding time to the running interval, while subtracting from the walking portion as you get stronger, but the walking portion never really goes away. He can show you people who have beaten their own personal bests and also those who were able to qualify for the Boston Marathon, by meticulously placing walking back into their race at defined intervals. The point is to strategically rest your muscles to maximize your speed over a whole race, rather than to push yourself in a run until you have to slow or walk.

Concluding

Walking is the core exercise for the human body. Our health and well-being can be significantly improved by incorporating walking into our way of life. It is relaxing and can allow for meditation or active thinking. It is invigorating. The side benefit beyond the instantaneous gratification I get from walking is the improved athleticism and cardiovascular health I’m enjoying. We can’t live forever, but the years we are here in this reality can be better years, and maybe even more years, by taking care of our bodies…walking can form the core of this for each of us.