Git Ta Walking

The Fitness Case for the Lowliest Exercise Format

Walking, done right, becomes exercise. The heart rate monitor provides the intensity report card on aerobic effort. Walking can be purposefully disadvantaged to increase intensity. Walking, and swimming, are among the least impactful non-machine cardio formats.

One of our foundational resistance training strategies is to make light weights heavy. We make lifts and exercises purposefully difficult in a variety of ways: insisting on full range of motion, using pauses at the rep turnarounds, slowing down the rep speed, accelerating the rep speed, invoking subtle technical changes, shortening rest periods between sets. There are a myriad of ways to purposefully disadvantage a lift or exercise, thereby making light weights heavy.

Why go to the time and trouble? Making light weights heavy amplifies the difficulty and, ergo, amplifies results.

Make Walking Hard Enough to Matter

To improve cardio results, amplify cardio difficulty. Our approach is purposefully primitive. What is the most elemental form of cardiovascular exercise? Walking. Can we disadvantage walking to such a degree that it becomes a viable cardiovascular exercise? Absolutely. Gear-and-armor-laden soldiers have used disadvantaged walking for centuries.

Roman soldiers carried heavy loads in armor, weapons and campaign gear with every step they took. Modern American special-operations fighters routinely lug heavy gear and weaponry and are expected to traverse mountains and hump gear in every type of weather and climate.

Walking can become effective exercise, assuming you can walk with enough velocity and body motion to elevate the heart rate, the fundamental goal of aerobic exercise. Is it possible to make walking an effective aerobic exercise? Yes.

Most find walking insufficiently intense to elevate the heart rate to any significant degree. One way to make walking more effective as an exercise format is to revamp walking technique; another is to purposefully disadvantage walking via payload or gradient.

Power Walking Technique

Power walking: Power walking is walking with a definitive technique. Definitive technique is combined with concentrated effort. Power walking drives the arms, rotates the torso, extends the stride and seeks to quicken the rate of turnover.

Power walking requires the walker to stay mentally engaged. Space out, start mentally daydreaming about unrelated subjects and the walking technique immediately collapses. As long as the distracted walker stays distracted, walking ceases to be exercise.

Power walking optimizes propulsion via concentration. Power walking is the most basic of all locomotive exercise forms. Only after mastering power walking should the trainee graduate to jogging, then running.

The serious aerobic trainer, especially the walker, should wear a heart rate monitor. The heart rate monitor provides the report card on walking efforts: is our technique correct? Are our efforts sufficiently intense? Without a heart rate monitor, it is all guesswork. The heart rate monitor provides the trainee the cold data needed to plot the next move.

Strap Up: Use a Heart Rate Monitor

Strap up: The heart rate monitor is an essential piece of fitness equipment for anyone serious about aerobic training. The expense is minimal: purchase an inexpensive chest strap and pair it with one of the many excellent free online apps that monitor heart rate and offer an amazing number of options.

My app, Polar Beat, provides real-time heart rate, session duration, calories oxidized, changes in elevation and blended-session heart rate averages. It provides zone-training durations, which I ignore. A heart rate monitor allows the user to see how hard the heart is working in real time in relation to the work being done. Why would you ignore this critical piece of data?

The heart rate monitor allows the user to assess aerobic intensity, something impossible without a heart rate monitor. Would you lift weights without knowing the poundage? The heart rate monitor enables the athlete to assess cardio intensity. By being able to quantify how hard the trainee is working, classical resistance training periodization tactics can be applied to aerobic exercise.

A 10-Week Periodized Walking Cycle

The following is an example of a 10-week periodized walking cycle, morphing from out-of-shape to in-shape. The heart-rate percentages are illustrative, not medical targets. The calorie numbers are app estimates. The bodyweight column is an example log, not a universal promise or prescription.

Two quick points: try to avoid walking with shoes that have massive marshmallow heels. Find flat-soled shoes and walk on grass or dirt trails when possible. Secondly, temperature has an impact: elevating the heart rate is far easier on a 90-degree day than a 32-degree day.

Walking Technique: Use the Arms

Most walkers carry their hands. Pump your arms. The hands should never float along, maintaining neutral, non-moving hands. Hands that float along as the walker carries them add nothing to propulsion.

For maximum propulsion and pace, consciously drive the arms with each stride-stroke. Obviously, the more the walker incorporates the arms into the walking effort, the greater the intensity generated.

Pull the elbows back to launch the stride forward with an explosive forward movement of the hands. Rotate the torso to accentuate the power of the stride. Turnover refers to how many strides a walker can take within a specific duration. The faster the turnover, the quicker the pace. Seek to increase stride turnover without allowing form to degrade.

The Zen of Walking

Walking should not be done on autopilot. Walking should be done with focus and concentration. Concentrate on technique. The instant you start daydreaming, your pace will slacken, you will stop thinking about the mechanics of power walking, and walking as exercise loses its intensity and its value.

I always listen to music when I power walk. Music enables me to concentrate more fully, to focus better, to walk faster and stay engaged. I walk outside. I walk in Nature, in the woods. Sucking in super-clean woods air while performing concentrated exercise is, in my world, vastly superior to walking on a treadmill in a public gym, surrounded, inhaling stale recycled building air.

Go outside when conditions allow, put on some motivating music, get your head in the game, have a concentrated walking session, strap up, and log results.

Disadvantaging Walking with Load or Grade

How can we make walking purposefully harder? It is quite easy to disadvantage walking. There are two obvious choices: increase the walker’s payload or walk up steep grades.

How can you make walking harder, more intense? One old-school way is to secure a 25-pound weight plate in a backpack before taking a power walk. The load needs to be stable, centered and secure. Over time either walk faster or walk farther with the same load. Or maintain the pace and distance while adding additional poundage gradually.

The second way to disadvantage walking is to power walk up hills. The steeper the grade, the more intense the effort. The ultimate in walking intensity? Walk up a steep grade wearing a weighted backpack. That is an advanced progression, not a starting point.

Bottom line: Walking can become efficient, appropriate and, in many cases, all the aerobic exercise a serious fitness devotee would ever need, assuming the walker is able to generate enough exercise intensity to elicit meaningful cardio results. There is no way to know if you are walking fast enough, hard enough, steep enough or heavy enough unless you are strapped up and wearing a heart rate monitor. Walking without wearing a heart rate monitor is flying blind.

Those who purposefully eschew accessing the heart rate in relation to the exercise being done ignore a critical piece of physiological data. Would you lift weights without knowing the poundage? Walking, done right, becomes a superb form of cardio exercise, particularly for those new to the transformative fitness process.

Safety Note for Power Walking, Heat, Cold, and Weighted Packs

This article preserves Marty Gallagher’s RAW walking-cardio perspective. It is not individualized medical, rehabilitation, cardiovascular, weight-loss, or programming advice.

Heart-rate monitors provide useful data, but they do not replace medical guidance. Target heart-rate ranges vary by age, health, medication status, fitness level, heat, altitude, dehydration, fatigue and stress. Stop or scale back for chest pain, dizziness, faintness, unusual shortness of breath, confusion, numbness, severe joint pain, irregular heartbeat symptoms, or any symptom that feels different from normal effort.

Weighted walking, rucking, steep grades and daily walking progressions should be built gradually. Added load can stress the feet, ankles, knees, hips, spine, and shoulders. Use a secure load, appropriate footwear, safe terrain and conservative progressions. Beginners, older adults, pregnant trainees, deconditioned walkers, and anyone with cardiovascular disease, blood-pressure concerns, balance issues, neuropathy, joint disease, back pain, heat intolerance, cold intolerance, medication concerns, or significant medical conditions should seek qualified guidance when needed.

Heat and cold matter. Hot weather can elevate heart rate and perceived effort. Cold weather can alter performance, footing, comfort, and injury risk. Respect the day. Adjust the walk.

Equipment Notes for Indoor and Rehab Walking

Walking outside is the primal default. Still, treadmills can be useful when heat, cold, darkness, unsafe terrain, traffic, poor air quality, rehabilitation needs, or facility requirements make indoor walking the smarter option.

Readers and facilities can compare treadmills for controlled walking, incline work, and indoor cardio. Specific options include the Spirit Fitness CT800 commercial treadmill, the Star Trac 6 Series 6TR treadmill, and the SportsArt T655MS bi-directional rehabilitation treadmill, when the product, user, facility, and intended use match.

The treadmill does not create the cardio result. Focus, pace, incline, duration, heart-rate feedback, and progressive effort create the result.

Related Cardio Reading

For broader cardio equipment context, read Cardio Equipment for Home, Commercial and Rehab Use. For Marty Gallagher’s related discussion of cardio timing and fat-loss discipline, read Fasted Cardio Training.

RAW with Marty Gallagher, J.P. Brice, and Jim Steel Podcast.

About the Author: Marty Gallagher

As an athlete Marty Gallagher is a national and world champion in Olympic lifting and powerlifting. He was a world champion team coach in 1991 and coached Black's Gym to five national team titles. He's also coached some of the strongest men on the planet including Kirk Karwoski when he completed his world record 1,003 lb. squat. Today he teaches the US Secret Service and Tier 1 Spec Ops on how to maximize their strength in minimal time. As a writer since 1978 he’s written for Powerlifting USA, Milo, Flex Magazine, Muscle & Fitness, Prime Fitness, Washington Post, Dragon Door and now IRON COMPANY. He’s also the author of multiple books including Purposeful Primitive, Strong Medicine, Ed Coan’s book Coan, The Man, the Myth, the Method and numerous others. Read the Marty Gallagher biography here.