Chapter 10: Exercising Outdoors ................................................................................
against your hip. Keep your hips loose and relaxed. Your feet should land
firmly, heel first. Roll through your heel to your arch, then to the ball of your
foot, and then to your toes. Push off from your toes and the ball of your foot.
Run through a mental head-to-toe checklist every so often to see how you’re
doing. To find out more about fitness walking (yep, there’s plenty more to
tell), read Liz’s book Fitness Walking For Dummies(published by Wiley).
Walking tips for rookies ....................................................................
Although walking is the most basic of all fitness activities, novice fitness
walkers can still benefit from the following pointers:
Increase your workout time gradually.Most people can start off with
five 10- to 20-minute walking sessions a week; after about a month, they
can increase each workout by 2 or 3 minutes per week until walking 30
to 45 minutes is comfortable. (Five days a week may sound like a lot, but
an almost-daily walk makes it easier to get in the habit.)
Walk as fast as you comfortably can.If you walk very fast — at a
12-minute-mile to 15-minute-mile pace — you can burn twice as many
calories as when you walk at a 20-minute-mile pace. You may not be able
to move at such supersonic speeds in the beginning, but as you get fit,
you can mix in some fast-paced intervals. (For details about interval
training, see Chapter 8.)
If you’re walking on the shoulder of a road, walk against traffic so
you can watch cars approach.On sidewalks or trails, walk any old
way you want.
Add some hills. Walking over hilly terrain shapes your butt and thighs
and burns extra calories (about 30 percent more calories than walking
on flat terrain, depending, of course, on the grade of the hills).
Sneak in a walk whenever you can. Leave your car at home and hoof
it to the train station. Take a 15-minute walk during your lunch break.
Traverse the airport on foot rather than on that automatic walking belt.
It all adds up.
Running ........................................................................................................
Like walking, running is a workout that you can take with you anywhere. You
don’t need a rack on your car or a suitcase full of equipment; you just open
the door and go. Plus, as any pathological runner will tell you, nothing is
quite as satisfying as getting a good run under your belt. You work up a great
sweat, you burn lots of calories, and your muscles feel pleasantly invigorated
after you finish.
