Walking Is NOT Exercise beaufort personal trainer

“Hey! What’s going on? It’s Ian Hart here at EarthFIT blog and a few months back I was on WTOC in Savannah and I made a statement that people thought was controversial and that was that Walking is NOT Exercise. And I’m here again to say the same statement and frankly I am a little perturbed that we’ve come to a point where we consider and people consider walking as an exercise. Walking is an everyday part of our life. Now, I understand that if you have been sitting on a couch and haven’t been doing anything for years and you’re overweight and out of shape, walking could be an exercise to that person. Or someone who has been bedridden for months, then it could be an exercise but it should not be a standard for exercise.

So, we can see that walking has no effects on cardiovascular system, it has no effects on neuromuscular system, has no effects of skeletal muscle system, has no effects on your nervous system. This is again for someone in the general population (not one who is totally out of shape), unless you haven’t been walking at all, you’re not gonna see results from it. Now, to see results we need to adapt your neuromuscular system and generally that takes 4-6 weeks and that is through progressive program designed to stress the neuromuscular system. The body adapts very quickly. So if you walk one mile maybe two times in one week, first off you’re not going to see effects. Second, your body is going to adapt on that instantly. So right away, if you’re walking or if you walk in a daily basis from your car to your house upstairs your body is already adapted to walking, so then it’s not exercise if you’d go for walks.

OK. Again, progressive program designed to stress neuromuscular system and cardiovascular system; that is where your results are going to come from. So if you’re walking, you should either increase your speed into a jog – that is going to be a progressive part of activating your cardio system. But, you need to include weights that are going to stress your system – so heavier weights in a progressive manner. Like I said, it takes actually to 4-6 weeks to adapt your neuromuscular system so that just means the connection from your brain to the muscles in your body. Once you adapt your neuromuscular system, then you can go further progressing your exercise in success and results in your exercise program [be it weight management, weight loss, or simply a general health and fitness program]. So when we do assessments many times people would come in and say “oh I walk three days a week. I walk three days a week” and I tell them painfully that walking is not exercise and I was getting a lot of flack and I get sometimes an argument. But I just explained right here, if you want results,  if you want to see fat burn, you want to see toning, you want to see energy increase, you want to see your strength increases, you cannot get that though walking, you actually can’t even get that what I just explained through running. It’s gonna be done through strength training mixed with cardio – that will give you results that you’re looking for [like weight loss]. So again this is Ian Hart with the EarthFIT blog. If you have any comments or questions go ahead and leave them below. Thanks.”

Ian Hart is a Body-Mind Transformation expert, the creator of EarthFIT Training Systems, co-creator of BACK PAIN RELIEF4LIFE, and founder of BEAUFORTPERSONALTRAINING.COM and MYBACKPAINCOACH.COM. Ian and his team help people get into optimal shape in the safest, fastest and most effective way possible, using cutting edge science.