21 Benefits of Walking 30 minutes
by Meghan Griech, PT, DPT, cert MDT, CKTP
This article takes 6 minutes to read
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A daily walk is one of the most powerful ways to maintain a healthy weight, stay strong, and live longer. Whether you decide to lace up your sneakers and walk to work, pair up with a friend or walk during your kids’ sports practices research shows that walking can do everything from lower your blood pressure and reduce your risk of chronic diseases to making your brain sharper and your heart healthier.
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A regular walking routine can have lasting benefits on our musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, pulmonary, and neuromuscular systems.
Walking is considered a low-impact activity, causing minimal joint stress, and the pace can be self-selected allowing most people to participate despite a chronic illness or autoimmune diseases.
According to the CDC, walking for 30 minutes a day or more on most days of the week is a great way to improve or maintain your overall health.
If you can’t manage 30 minutes a day, remember ‘even a little is good, but more is better’, so break it up into 3 10minute walks.
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Benefits of 30 Minutes of Walking
- Helps to strengthen your bones, reducing your risk of Osteoporosis.
- Helps to prevent or manage various conditions, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer and type 2 diabetes
- Will improve your mood.
- Will help you burn calories and maintain a healthy weight.
- Can reduce your risk of chronic diseases.
- Makes joints move – reducing joint stiffness, tension
- Moving the joints, causes self-lubrication to the joint spaces and tissues between the joint, thus improving joint mobility and keeping cartilage healthy.
- It can even help you live longer.
- Boosts brainpower.
- Can help alleviate joint pain.
- Can even delay the onset of varicose veins.
- Can stimulate your digestive system.
- Enhances creativity.
- Helps to improve attention span.
- Helps to alleviate joint pain, not only in the legs but the low back and neck.
- Helps strengthen the lungs.
- Can improve your sleep.
- Supports the production of collagen
- Increases your body’s immunity response. Ramping up our immune system increases the number of immune cells that attack pathogens in our body, which lowers our risk of becoming seriously ill from infectious diseases.
- Walking also helps reduce pain and stress, which can cause sleep disturbances.
- Improve muscle endurance, reducing the stress through the joints
- Improve balance and reduces the risk of falls
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Best Walking Technique Tips
Turning your normal walk into a fitness stride requires good posture and purposeful movements.
- Your head is up. You’re looking forward to obstacles in front of you, not straight at the ground.
- Keep your neck, shoulders and back are relaxed, not stiffly upright.
- You’re swinging your arms freely with a slight bend in your elbows. A little pumping with your arms is OK.
- Your stomach muscles are slightly tightened and your back is straight, not arched forward or backward.
- Roll your foot from heel to toe.
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While walking is an easy exercise to begin, you will want to avoid common mistakes to avoid injury and unnecessary stress on joints.
Walking has many benefits to your joints, muscles, heart length, and overall maintenance of your function. Walking for exercises is one of the best activities we can do to help ourselves stay strong and mobile. Proper technique is important to maintain proper technique, posture, and joint health. When the joints feel good and your muscles feel strong you will continue to walk for exercise.
As with any new exercise routine, if you have any questions or concerns talk to your health care provider.
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*Disclaimer: All information in this article is intended for instruction and informational purposes. The author(s) are not responsible for any harm or injury that may result. This information is used to supplement not replace any advice you were provided from your doctor or another medical health professional. No guarantees of specific results are expressly made or implied with this article.
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