Yoga Articles Walking Exercise

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...prevent monotony and achieve greater fitness levels by varying your speed, distance and incline. There are also certain walking exercises that could be incorporated.

Benefits: Walking lowers blood pressure and reduces risk of, or helps you manage type 2 diabetes. Walking exercises lowers your "bad" cholesterol (LDL) and raises your "good" cholesterol (HDL). It helps you manage your weight, stay fit and strong and also improves your mood.

Variations of walking: You can add various walking exercises and stretching routines to your walking program, and also use trackers, logs or calculators to help you monitor the changes.

You can do the fat burning walk, which would mean fast walking for almost 50 to 60 minutes every day. Alternating walking with other workouts will also help to burn fat.

The distance walk is used by those who are training for long distance events and wish to build up their endurance levels.

If you wish to build up strength and endurance, try the dumb-bell walk. These walking exercises are done by alternating workouts with dumb-bells, or by carrying a dumb-bell with you as you walk. Swing your arms vigorously while walking. A variation of this is done by wearing weight vests.

You can make your walking exercises even more challenging by adding some interval training. In this, you increase your speed for a couple of minutes, several times during your walk. You could use arm movements and alternate with a walk-run.

Walking exercises would also include some deep breathing while walking. This helps to relieve stress, burn more fat and increase your lung power.

If you are recovering from a surgery or have cardio-vascular problems, the heart health walk would aid recovery. This is an easy and slower walk, which could be done almost every day.

Walking backwards is another variation since it helps different sets of muscles.

Caution: Before you start any exercise, it would be advisable to check with your doctor. Always start slow and easy and gradually increase your speed and distance. Warm up by walking slowly for a few minutes until you feel warm. Include some stretches like the quadriceps stretch, calf stretch or hamstring stretch. Take care to wear proper walking shoes and comfortable clothing.

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