Every day people walk certain distances on foot. This happens all the time, even during everyday trips to shops, schools, to work. People often use walking, interpreting it as a sport. It is important to consider the distances that the person plans to travel.
The optimal distances will be 1-3 kilometers daily at an average pace. Depending on the desired result, the pace can be increased or decreased. The benefits of such walks will consist not only in weight loss, but also in the complex enrichment of the body with oxygen. Also, walking will have a beneficial effect on the general condition of the body.
How many calories are spent walking?
Here there is a direct relationship and distance. When a person plans to burn more than 1000 calories, then they will have to walk for at least 5 hours, and at an average pace. By combining exercise with adequate nutrition, good results can be achieved after the first week.
Calorie consumption is often calculated using special tables. But you don't have to resort to them. To correctly calculate the amount of energy burned, you just need to have an idea of your weight and the distances covered. Tables often mislead people with incorrect data.
To correctly calculate calorie consumption, you need to know your exact weight. And not the weight without clothes, but the one that you have while walking, with backpacks and other auxiliary weights. Half of this weight will be spent for each kilometer.
Thus, to calculate calories, you need to calculate half the weight and multiply it by the distance traveled.
How much to walk to lose weight?
You should start from 1 kilometer. If a person has not been involved in any sports for a long time and any physical activity was alien to him, then this distance will be the most optimal. Otherwise, problems with the cardiovascular system, as well as muscle pain, may arise.
Such entertainment will be torture for you and most likely you will be able to withstand no more than a week. For harmless weight loss, the pace must be increased gradually, and added by a kilometer every two days. It is worth noting that race walking will take away much more energy reserves of 5 kilometers per hour, a person will spend about 400 calories.
The average walking speed is 5 km / h. In this case, the step frequency can vary and the amount of energy consumed changes with it. But at the same time, the consumption per kilometer remains unchanged.
This is especially noticeable when walking at high speed. It would seem that such walking is more reasonable to replace with light jogging. But it is worth knowing that when running, calorie consumption is more economical, and even more economical when cycling.
How to walk correctly?
It would seem that we all know how to walk and know how to do it. You need to bring your leg forward, shift the center of gravity, step, while lowering the height of the center of gravity, which is at the level of the second sacral vertebra.
These movements can be described using an isosceles triangle, which everyone remembers from the school geometry course. The lengths of the sides are much greater than the height. The step width is the base of the triangle, and the legs themselves are the sides.
When the center of gravity is lowered, no energy is expended. At the moment of pulling up the legs, the height of the center of gravity increases, as does the energy that reaches its peak.
With a constant stride length, the center of gravity performs the same repetitions. The leg moves up and down. When downward movement occurs, no energy is expended and no energy is expended. Moving up, the opposite happens.
How to increase your calorie expenditure while walking?
Sometimes you want to get the result quickly, and there is absolutely no time for slow weight loss. Instead of exhausting themselves with diets, many decide to get more active in sports.
As you know, walking allows you to lose weight quite well, especially if you use additional loads or special devices. Calorie consumption will help increase:
Swing your hands
- When walking, you can do a special set of hand exercises.
- It consists in simple body movements, namely, raising the hands up, jerking with the hands, bringing the hands together from behind.
- With active swings forward, impulses are given to the body, it is they that intuitively make you move forward, while spending more calories.
Additional weight
- If a person has played sports before and has a fairly strong muscle corset, then additional loads can be an excellent addition to walking.
- Weight should be increased gradually.
- At the initial stage, put on weights of several kilograms of legs, then add arms and increase the weight.
- The procedure is done gradually to eliminate vascular overload and unnecessary pain in the legs.
Walking with sticks
- Otherwise, such walking is called Scandinavian.
- This walking uses the main muscles in the human body and allows you to spend 50% more energy than normal walking.
- Due to the fact that Scandinavian walking allows you to use all muscle groups, the body not only quickly breaks down fat, but also receives additional toning and complex muscle tone.
- This walking is much more effective than running, since it does not put a lot of stress on the heart and does not cause displacement of the vertebrae in the back and loosening of the joints in the legs.
Uneven relief
Walking on rough terrain, that is, ravines, mountains, can increase muscle activity, while increasing calorie expenditure. This type of walking should not be practiced by beginners or elderly people, as it does not exclude the risk of injury.
The benefits of walking
You can talk about the benefits of walking for a long time. The main benefits are health safety compared to other sports.
Walking is great for burning fat by saturating cells with oxygen and further breaking down fat. With dietary restrictions and daily exercise, you can lose a few extra pounds.
There are a lot of different variations of walking. Everyone should choose their own program and train competently. If you want to lose weight, you need to walk a lot. It is optimal to practice avoiding public transport and elevators.
