Who said that to have the sculpted body we’ve always dreamed of we need to spend our life in the gym? Here is the “ad hoc” walking method.
Summer, time to get back into shape. With the arrival of the heat and the beautiful season, the usual appointment with the fateful “swimsuit test” also begins. And there’s an immediate alarm about your waistline and extra pounds. The excesses in food and sedentarism of the winter months are taking their toll right now. But the good news is that it’s never too late to get the body we want. And there’s no need to pour liters and liters of sweat on gym equipment.
Often we underestimate the simplest and most basic physical activities such as the classic walk in the open air: in reality, the latter – if performed in certain particular conditions – can be a much more effective and profitable exercise than many others. And not only for physical well-being, but also for mental well-being. All you need to do is apply some rules seriously and consistently to exploit its enormous potential. Here they are one by one.
The secret to training by just walking
In fact, there are many good techniques for turning walking into powerful physical exercise. The first “rule” to make it a healthy activity naturally consists in increasing the duration and speed of the walk itself (technically, the number of steps per minute). But what certainly makes the difference is the use of supports such as a dumbbell or a kettlebell, or the option of a “hybrid” workout that combines cardio with muscular work.
The objective is to “work” the area that includes the abdominal, lumbar, pelvic, buttock muscles and the deep muscles of the spine, to reduce the risk of suffering injuries, improve posture, flexibility, coordination and balance , as well as better protecting the internal organs and preventing very frequent pain such as neck and back pain.
As? Walking trying to avoid any “inclination” of the body to strengthen the so-called “core”. Experts talk about the “farmer’s walk”, an exercise that consists of walking while holding two weights, one in each hand.
By carrying the weight with both hands, you are forced to constantly stabilize yourself, thus strengthening your core muscles. It can also be done with a weight in one hand: in this case, we will have a more localized effort on the opposite side.
If we then want to go to a higher level, we can opt for the “waiter’s walk”, which consists of carrying the weight with only one hand above the head, increasing the stress on the stabilizers of the upper limbs. Of course, in this case there is no need to work long distances: a short walk several times a week is enough to start seeing the first fruits. Seeing is believing.
