For many people starting out on an exercise program, the idea of an intenseive workout is very off-putting.

It’s a good idea to start out gently, particularly for older people.

A low intensity exercise regime, which is where your heart rate is around 60% of its maximum potential, is inefficient for anything other than gradual weight loss,

You won’t boost your metabolisim, or see any significant increase in muscle mass, and there’ll be little improvement in strength and endurance

By working out more intensely, and pushing your haeart rate upto 75%, you’ll find a better increase in your health

Heart rate is determined by subtracting your currentage away from 220. So a 50 year old should have a maximum heart rate of around 170 beats per minute

Gentle exercise, or low intensity workouts are great for warming up and cooling down. They’re beneficial for elderly people, or anyone recovering from injury or illness.

There’s many healthy people that go along to the gym and sticking to low intensity workouts, missing out on the chance to increase the intensity and increase the effectiveness of the workout

Generally a higher inensity work out will burn a higher number of calories. For instance, walking is low intensity. If in 20 minutes walking you burn off 100 calories, then 50% of those calories are fat, so you’ve burned off 50 fat calories.

In ten minutes of a high intensity workout suppose you burn 160 calories. Of those , 40% are fat , so your ten minutes has burned 64 calories.

Burning 14 more calories in half the time could mean in the same 20 minutes you burn 28 more calories and so on

People that are really serious in losing weight should make the bulk of their session high intensity

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How many people have a plan for fitness and health? Health and fitness are important topics in the world these days.

Everywhere you look it seems there’s fitness and exercise tips being promoted. With obesity becoming such a widespread problem, governments all over are promoting that people try to stay healthy in our fast-food society and they need good information to do that.

Everyone wants to know if popular diets are viable ways to lose weight and if the latest workout craze will help or hurt their quest for good health. That’s probably because as a society we’re more sedentary than we used to be. All that time spent watching TV has resulted in a generally lower standard of fitness. It also means that we’re not as connected to what is goodfor our bodies.

Reading about health and fitness is not a substitute for intuition but at least these days there are health articles that people can learn from. The widespread availability of these articles has helped a lot of people learn more about a wide variety of health topics. And when people use them to learn more about fitness and its relationship to vitamins, that’s a pretty good thing.

The trend in the last 100 years has been to move away from physical activity in our jobs, so we need to look to other methods to stay fit. Just on the surface, people look better and have higher self-esteem if they’re in good shape.

When you delve deeper, you’ll discover there are many other reasons to keep the body in tip-top shape. For one thing, people who live healthy lifestyles enjoy more of their lives and stay vibrant and disease-free so much longer.

Fitness allows them to achieve a quality of life they wouldn’t otherwise have. These are great motivation to work on your health and fitness. If you need even more incentive, consider your friends and family. I’m sure they’d like you to stay healthy so they can have you around for as long as possible!

Three universal goals nearly all of us share are: (1) to live longer, (2) to live free of illness and (3) to control our weight.

Amazingly, walking lets us achieve all three.

In fact, walking may be your best medicine for slowing the aging process, reducing your chances of illness and slashing your body fat. For anyone out of shape or not athletically- inclined, walking is the no-stress, no-sweat answer to lifelong conditioning. All you need is a good pair of shoes, a little time, a few guidelines from a fitness professional and you’re ready to go.

Unfortunately, there’s more misinformation floating around today about fitness walking and weight loss than ever before. Some experts even say walking is not effective for weight loss at all and they insist that only higher intensity forms of cardio will do anything to improve your body composition. Others fitness experts believe that you should not do cardiovascular exercise every day – even walking.

There may be a little truth in each of those statements, however, walking always was and still is one of the best exercises for strengthening your bones, controlling your weight, toning the muscles in your lower body, maintaining good posture and improving your self image.

Walking uses almost every muscle in the body, it improves circulation of blood to the joints and massages the blood vessels, keeping them more elastic. Walking also helps you maintain muscle and an efficient metabolism as you get older (not to mention keeping you young “in spirit.”)

Walking is incredibly convenient too. Since you don’t need a gym or any special equipment, you can walk any place, at any time and that allows you to lose weight and get fit with little or no interruption to your busy schedule.

People who diet without exercising often get fatter with time. Although your weight may initially drop while dieting, weight loss from low calorie and especially low carb diets consists mostly of water and
muscle. When the weight returns, it comes back as fat. To avoid getting fatter over time, you must increase your metabolism by exercising daily.

To get the maximum benefits of a walking program, you need make it more challenging than a leisurely “walk in the park.” Walking at a steady and brisk pace burns more fat simply because it burns more calories. Just remember to begin slowly to avoid muscle soreness, and increase your pace over time as you become more fit.

To lose weight, it’s ideal to alternate your walking sessions between high intensity and lower intensity days. For example, on one day walk for 30- 45 minutes as a steady and moderate pace. On the next day, walk at a faster pace.

You could even do “road work” like the boxers do, where you break up your walk along the route with some sets of squats, lunges, bench push ups or other body weight or calisthenic exercises to make it a real cardiovascular and muscle blaster of a workout! It doesn’t have to be boring or the same thing every day.

Make it fun and keep it up consistently, leading an active life-style 365 days a year.

Slow and casual walking has benefits, but you will not get as much out of walking at a very slow pace because we all have a built-in mechanical advantage for walking long distances at normal speeds.

Our bodies, via the spinal column, muscle attachments and bony structures, reserve energy in the musculoskeletal system and release it back to us without asking for additional energy output. In other words, as you walk, your spinal column keeps energy in reserve because of the way you straighten and extend your spine during normal walking.

As you step, your spine is stretched, and as you take another step, the energy reserved in the spine is used in propulsion. The spine acts very much like rubber band as your walk, harnessing this reserve energy.

To get substantial cardiovascular, muscular and weight loss benefits, this is why you must walk briskly or create extra movement patterns beyond casual, slow walking in order to optimize your walking program for weight loss and cardiovascular fitness.

Walking the right way will also improve your posture and tends to help keep you upright (because you must see where you are going). Just hold your chin up and shoulder slightly back.. Walk with your heels hitting the ground first and your feet pointed forward. Swing your arms fully and make lengthy strides.

To lose weight and achieve optimum health, exercise and diet are both necessary and interrelated. Exercising without maintaining a balanced diet is no more beneficial than dieting while remaining a couch potato.

Carbohydrates are high-octane fuel. They provide energy for movement and help raise internal body metabolism. They’re also satisfying. The key is to avoid adding high-fat and high calorie toppings to your carbohydrates. Also be sure to focus on fruits and vegetables and do not eat the majority of your carbohydrates from the starch category such as bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes. These type of carbs can create an insulin spike, which in turn feeds your fat storing system.

Fruits and vegetables are the ideal health, diet and fat loss foods for many reasons. They’re relatively low in fat and calories, high in fiber and rich in essential vitamins and minerals. The National Research
Council recommends eating five or more servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

Your everyday habits will determine your long term body weight and body composition. Make sure you get enough sleep, drink enough water to expel toxins, avoid processed food as much as you can, eat your fruits and veggies, eat organic when ever possible and work hard.

Just one last thought: taking a three-minute walk after each meal is worth a four pound reduction in body fat in a year’s time. Climbing two flights of stairs a day burns off half a pound of body fat in a year. On the other hand, one candy bar eaten daily will cost you 20 pounds annually.

www.FlattenYourAbs.net

If you enjoyed the information in this article, you will also enjoy the David Grisaffi Walking Guide, which is a complete walking exercise plan that comes FREE with the Firm And Flatten Your Abs program

About the author: David Grisaffi, CHEK Corrective Exercise Kinesiologist Golf Biomechanic Certified Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach

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