I already deleted it because i read it back and the way I worded it felt kind of douchey, but thats not what I meant. The problem I have is it often feels like the conversation around walking as an exercise only ever compares it to no exercise at all and neglects to mention that if you can do more strenuous exercise as well you really should. It could be swimming, running, biking, dancing, anything to elevate your heart rate. I know fairly healthy, relatively young people who think walking a couple of miles a day alone is everything you need to do for fitness when really its the bare minimum.
I thought your comment was fine, I kinda shared your opinion a bit for a while… lately walking has seemed “more useful than I thought” though. I guess you could also add cardio / strength with adding weight to carry (rucking) or going faster and up hills (military has “marches” carrying some weight over distances).
I think personally I’m sifting some extremes at the present of in the past having tried to do intense exercise and then be sedentary a lot of the day, to trying to walk more throughout the day currently but with less intense exercise (or also without being sedentary), and this will probably resolve to trying to do both the walking as a foundation as I think you correctly identified it as being, and then with some higher intensity stuff on top of it
Let’s say you go to the gym 3 days a week, as an example, what do you do on the other 4 days?
Many people think because they are active some of the time, they are therefore healthy. However the evidence with walking and 10k steps a day is that it’s important to be active every day and it confers big health benefits. Consistently hitting a level of exercise every day is important.
So walking is not “instead of nothing”. It’s also part of a whole package of fitness. For less active people, it’s achievable way to exercise every day. And for active people, it’s something that can be done on the less intense days of exercise rather than being inactive and doing nothing.
Let’s say you go to the gym 3 days a week, as an example, what do you do on the other 4 days?
I walk 3-5 miles the same as I do on the days I go to the gym. I also sometimes run, and sometimes cycle on top of that. I worded it pretty poorly in my op. When i say walking should be considered bare minimum exercise I mean it’s the baseline everyone should be doing no matter what. If you can do more, you definitely should. And not in lieu of walking, in addition to. If you’re under the age of ~60 and don’t have some kind of physical disability I just dont accept that walking 5 miles over the course of a day should be your only fitness goal. Its if course much better then nothing, but it should be considered foundational not aspirational.
deleted by creator
Wow, that was an very long-winded way of saying you don’t think walking is legitimate exercise because it doesn’t require paying for a gym membership
I already deleted it because i read it back and the way I worded it felt kind of douchey, but thats not what I meant. The problem I have is it often feels like the conversation around walking as an exercise only ever compares it to no exercise at all and neglects to mention that if you can do more strenuous exercise as well you really should. It could be swimming, running, biking, dancing, anything to elevate your heart rate. I know fairly healthy, relatively young people who think walking a couple of miles a day alone is everything you need to do for fitness when really its the bare minimum.
I thought your comment was fine, I kinda shared your opinion a bit for a while… lately walking has seemed “more useful than I thought” though. I guess you could also add cardio / strength with adding weight to carry (rucking) or going faster and up hills (military has “marches” carrying some weight over distances).
I think personally I’m sifting some extremes at the present of in the past having tried to do intense exercise and then be sedentary a lot of the day, to trying to walk more throughout the day currently but with less intense exercise (or also without being sedentary), and this will probably resolve to trying to do both the walking as a foundation as I think you correctly identified it as being, and then with some higher intensity stuff on top of it
Let’s say you go to the gym 3 days a week, as an example, what do you do on the other 4 days?
Many people think because they are active some of the time, they are therefore healthy. However the evidence with walking and 10k steps a day is that it’s important to be active every day and it confers big health benefits. Consistently hitting a level of exercise every day is important.
So walking is not “instead of nothing”. It’s also part of a whole package of fitness. For less active people, it’s achievable way to exercise every day. And for active people, it’s something that can be done on the less intense days of exercise rather than being inactive and doing nothing.
I walk 3-5 miles the same as I do on the days I go to the gym. I also sometimes run, and sometimes cycle on top of that. I worded it pretty poorly in my op. When i say walking should be considered bare minimum exercise I mean it’s the baseline everyone should be doing no matter what. If you can do more, you definitely should. And not in lieu of walking, in addition to. If you’re under the age of ~60 and don’t have some kind of physical disability I just dont accept that walking 5 miles over the course of a day should be your only fitness goal. Its if course much better then nothing, but it should be considered foundational not aspirational.