Lose 50 Lbs By Walking

Lose 50 lbs by Walking

(Plus, if you want to torch 3,000 calories a week, you need to join the NEW 30 Day Weight Loss Walking Challenge now! Click here to join.)

Whether you’re super fit, overweight, or somewhere in between, you can improve your health with the easiest, most natural exercise in the world…walking! Even if you have 50 lbs to lose, walking can help you reach your goals.

I know that the way to increase speed is to take more steps per minute, not by taking bigger steps. But moving your legs that quickly takes an enormous amount of effort. In fact, at 5 mph, it’s much more efficient to run — and cover more ground with each stride — than it is to walk. So you actually use more energy, and burn more calories walking a 12-minute mile than running a 12-minute mile.

Here are 4 tips to help you crank up your speed and increase your caloric burn:

1. Speed up the arm swing

You can really add to your forward momentum — and get some significant upper-body exercise — by pumping your arms more quickly. As you start to go a little faster, your arms will swing across your body slightly, and that’s okay.

2. Walk the line

To increase your walking speed, try to make your feet land one in front of another (rather than walking with them parallel), so you’re walking in a straight line. If you were walking on an actual line, just the inside of your foot (the instep) would touch the line: Your feet shouldn’t cross over. Check yourself by walking an actual line: a painted lane line on a track or a crack in teh pavement, for example.

“Walking the line” forces you to rotate your pelvis and extend your hips slightly, which lengthens your stride a little. At faster speeds, you’ll get some front-to-back rotation in your pelvis. Don’t consciously try to waggle your hips or exaggerate the motion: Just align your footsteps, leading with your heels, and stay loose in your pelvis as your hips follow where your legs lead.

A note to men: Since you have less hip swivel in your normal walking gait than women do, this technique can be more difficult for you. Make a conscious effort to stay loose in your hips and let your pelvis rotate.

3. Squeeze your glutes

Your gluteals are the muscles in your butt, just above your hamstrings. At the end of each stride, as you’re pushing off with your toes, squeeze the gluteals in the same leg. This helps draw the leg back, which increases your speed and conditions the muscles in the butt.

4. Interval training

The best way to learn to walk this fast is to practice for short stretches, with reset periods at a slower pace in-between. This is called “interval training.” By alternating intervals of high-intensity effort with recovery periods, your heart, lunges and muscles can work harder for shorter spurts than they could work continuously. Start with 30-second intervals of high-intensity effort with recovery periods, your heart, lungs, and muscles can work harder for short spurts than they could work continuously. Start with 30-second intervals of high-intensity walking, with 30 seconds of recovery in between. These high-intensity intervals can dramatically improve your fitness, but they’re very demanding. Eventually, you’ll be able to maintain that high-intensity pace for longer and longer periods of time. Here’s a sample fat-blasting interval walking workout:

30-Minute Fat-Burning Walk

5 minute Warm-Up Pace
3 minute Aerobic Interval – Push slightly more than your steady-state pace
3 minute Recovery Interval – Catch your breath and get ready for the next interval!
3 minute Aerobic Interval
3 minute Recovery Interval
1 minute Anaerobic Interval – For one minute, walk as fast as you possibly can! On a scale from 1-10, you should be pushing yourself from a 7-9.
3 minute Recovery Interval
1 minute Anaerobic Interval
3 minute Recovery Interval
1 minute Anaerobic Interval
3 minute Recovery Interval
5 minutes Cool-Down Pace