We don't walk enough. It's a fact. And yet it's so easy to do. As I said, we have all the necessary equipment. Everyone does, unless they are injured or infirm. Secondly, it's the kind of exercise that is available to everyone and thirdly, it’s the foundation for good health and it makes life better!
Thousands of years ago, walking was an essential part of survival. Without it people wouldn't have been able to hunt and gather. People would have died from starvation and illness. These days, people hardly walk anywhere. We have planes, trains and automobiles for that. The furtherest we walk is to our car. Then, when we get to our destination, we park as CLOSE as we possibly can to the venue to avoid having to walk too far. We have an elevator or escalator to take us almost directly to the front door and, in some cases, even a travelator. With the internet, we often don't even need to leave our houses. Everything we need is delivered to our door. You're certainly not going to starve or die of thirst if you can't walk.
Walking is such an essential activity and we ignore it to our own detriment. Millions of people do and think nothing of it. It's all thanks to progress. But, in a way, progress has taken us a million steps backward. Just because it's not necessary to our own wants to walk, doesn't mean we don't need to. The problem is that, because it's not something we do often, a lot of us have forgotten how to walk. Our technique is bad, we have no comprehension of distance when it comes to walking, we don’t even think to make time for regular walking for walking’s sake. Walking is seen as a last resort. If we run out of petrol, or get a flat tyre, or the gautrain isn’t running, or the bus is late. We jump into the car to pop to the shop a few hundred metres away. Really?!
Let's go back a few thousand years or more: Humans have always walked. It's essentially our birthright. The way we walk is specific only to humans. No other animal walks the way we do. We stand upright keeping our hands free to work with tools or even use weapons. The sunlight comes at us from an angle instead of head on. We were given generous glutes to make it all work well. And they DID work well because, for hundreds of thousands of years our footsteps have blanketed the entire globe. And our feet aren’t exclusive to homo sapiens like us: In Kenya, a 1.5 million-years old footprint was found in some mud and it reveals that hominids have been using essentially the same feet and the same stride for hundreds of thousands of years. That means that before our complex brains came onto the scene, the same feet you use today were stomping mud and carrying our distant ancestors around. In short, your feet are millions of years in the making. I’d say that’s a pretty good track record for feet. It seems a shame not to use them!
If you go back to the caveman days, we know that they walked a lot. In fact, they walked EVERYWHERE. Riding animals didn’t appear until after the agricultural revolution which left them with walking for thousands of years. Based on that, it would make sense that we’re probably well-adapted to walking on a regular basis. Studies prove over and over again how beneficial it is for us. In fact, given our extensive history with walking, you might even say our genes actually EXPECT us to walk.
Here are the results of some studies done on walking:
- Children who walk to school are fitter than those who don't.
- Older, healthy adults who walk briskly and often, live longer than those who don’t.
- Healthy adult males who engage in short bouts of brisk walking experience lower resting blood pressure and postprandial triglycerides.
- Regular walking improves working memory in older adults.
- Walking improves longevity in women over 70 years of age.
- Walking programmes improve cognitive ability in people with Alzheimer’s.
Aside from the obvious health benefits based on studies, there are some really GOOD reasons to walk. It’s a really enjoyable way to get out, move, be active, and experience the world.
- Walking engages your glutes: Excessive sitting will cause your butt to atrophy (that means that the muscle will literally shrink and waste away). The problem is, standing isn't going to be enough to keep them strong. You have to walk, and walk A LOT. A good way to make sure that your walk is actually activating your glutes is to place your hands on each glute (yup, each butt cheek;). You should feel them tense up a bit with each footfall and that same glute should tense up even more when you push off to take another step so that your hand gets a little “pushback.” Walk yourself around your house making sure each glute is working (because doing this on the street might be misinterpreted;)
- It reduces body fat: Ok, granted, walking isn’t going to get you a body like Gwyneth Paltrow! It's not the most demanding form of exercise. BUT, anyone with two functioning legs, who walks frequently instead of being a couch potato WILL lose some body fat. Without too much effort too!
- It improves your blood sugar levels, especially after meals: Just 15 minutes of walking after eating improved the blood glucose control in older people with poor glucose tolerance. The sooner you walk after a meal, the better.
- It improves triglyceride levels and lowers blood pressure, especially after meals: This works whether you do short (For example: ten 3-minute bouts of brisk walking) or longer (one 30-minute bout of brisk walking) Briskly walking after a meal lowers postprandial blood pressure and triglyceride levels.
- It might help you live longer if you do it briskly: A recent study of over 7000 male and 31000 female recreational walkers found that, those who walked the fastest tended to live longer.
- It’s easy exercise for people with arthritis and even improves their condition: What's really hard for people with arthritis is that they won’t get any better avoiding exercise, but exercise tends to hurt! It's a conundrum. But the solution is to walk. Walking is gentle. And one study even found that walking (and weight lifting) improves balance in older adults with osteoarthritis.
- It’s good for your brain: Walking has huge cognitive benefits. It improves memory in seniors and academic performance in preadolescents. When it's done outdoors it boosts creativity in young people. The farther an older person can walk in six minutes, the better he or she performs on memory and logic tests. Those who perform badly on the same test tend to have reduced grey matter volume in certain sections of their brains.
- It reduces stress: There is nothing like a walk to calm you down, especially if it's in a beautiful setting. It literally DOES lower your stress levels.
- It boosts your immune system: Even walking for 30 minutes increases your T-cells.
- It prevents falls in the elderly: Walking on uneven, natural ground like hiking trails, improves balance and reduces falls in the elderly. We usually tell elderly people to avoid uneven surfaces but, if they don't train themselves to handle them, they risk falling, even on a smooth surface. Walking indoors or on treadmills as briskly as they can don't really work for the elderly. Even if it's a slow walk, unsteady, and meandering walks through the countryside are still so much better. The key is not to wait until you’re already at risk of falling, though. The earlier you start walking, the better your ability to walk without falling.
- It gives you a chance to think: When we walk, we think. And because walking is such an easy exercise, we are able to walk and think simultaneously. We can work through problems, come up with ideas, replay conversations and discover solutions. Or maybe we just think about what we're making for dinner. The point is, our brain is engaged and that's always a good thing.
Walking opens up your world and that's a very good thing!
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