In keeping with the season and the strong interests shown in some of the recent blog posts, there are a couple of additional issues and tips about walking and exercise during the winter months we ought to review.  As mentioned in a number of posts, slacking off in winter is not the best thing for your waistline, your stamina or your motivation.  You’ve spent all spring, summer and fall working hard to stay fit.  Suddenly because of bad weather and the holiday feasting and stress, you’ve found yourself back where you started 8 months ago with all the accrued walking benefits lost.  All that hard work and effort has been for naught.  Talk about demotivating.  Here is some info and additional tips to help you stay active and engaged during this rough patch. 

Winter walking is Great

On the plus side, walking outdoors during cold weather is highly effective in working off the excesses of the holiday season. When the temperature drops your body works hard just to say warm.  Add that to the effects of exercising outdoors and you get a significant boost in calorie burn during your outdoor walking routine.  In addition we all know that getting outdoors for a walk helps “clear the head” and reduces the stress generated the by all the holiday preparations.

Winter Walking Needs Extra Care

That’s great, but remember you do need to do a bit of preplanning before you hit the road.  Be sure to warm up before you head out.  Pop your walking clothes in the clothes dryer to warm them up.  It might help take a bit of the chill out of the air.  Be sure to layer your clothing with a shirt of wicking material (polyester or silk) next to your skin. Your main heat releasing body parts are your head, feet and hands.  Be sure to keep them well covered.

Keep in mind that walking is a low intensity exercise and its’ benefits tend to be accumulative.  This means that you can get close to the same benefits from two 30 minutes sessions as with one that’s an hour long.  If it’s too cold, break your walking session in two.  By simply increasing your speed a bit, the caloric burn/fitness outcomes will be close.

It’s Just Too Cold

If the elements outdoors are just too much to bear, check around the neighborhood.  See what other fitness opportunities or programs may be available. In keeping with our general exercise theme, mall walking or stair climbing would be two excellent alternatives.  But you may want to broaden your horizons a bit. There may be yoga, aerobics, pilates or dance programs that you can join on a month to month basis to help get you through the winter doldrums.  Schools, Park Districts, and Recreation Centers often sponsor winter exercise programs, usually at little or no costs. 

Ice skating is a great alternative to walking.  A thirty minute session on skates burns the same number of calories as thirty minutes of stair climbing or an hour of walking. It’s a low impact exercise so your joints will thank you as well.

Finally, you may want to consider buying a piece or two of inexpensive home exercise equipment.  A jump rope or stability ball would be two items to consider. 

Winter weather can be frustrating even to the most motivated walker.   But when the cold weather and dark nights set in, don’t put your walking/exercise routine on ice.  Take a look at other programs are available locally.  Find those that interest you and mix and match to your heart’s content.   Beat the winter blahs.  If walking outdoors is out of the question find a substitute or two.  The important thing is to keep going and preseve all the walking benefits you’ve earned. 

If anyone has any additonal thoughts or tips about winter exercise drop me a line or leave a comment and share with everyone.

Technorati Tags: cold weather walking, exercise, exercise equipment, fitness, ice skating, mall walking, winter walking

Well winter and the holidays are full force upon us. The weather is uninviting and we ate and drank way too much. Most certainly, the last thing on our mind is to get all bundled up and head out for our daily exercise walk. “I’ll do it tomorrow” the common refrain. The ultimate result of this calorie induced lethargy…REGRET. To avoid these post-holiday blues it’s important that we try and maintain some semblance of our normal exercise routines. But what can we do to generate the all the benefits of walking without having to face the prospect of frost bite and snow blindness? One option…get yourself to the nearest set of stairs.

Walking up and down a set of stairs is a very plausible and efficient alternative to your daily outdoor exercise routine. Like walking, you burn calories and tone your muscles, however, you’ll find it a bit more intense than your typical 3 mile, hour long exercise walk. In fact it’s twice as intense. 30 minutes on the stairs burns 300 calories, about as much as you would burn on your hour long walking excursion. It’s hard work, no question about it, but does have some advantages to recommend it.

What are the benefits of stair walking?

• As just mentioned , it’s something one can do during inclement weather, when it’s just too cold or too wet to handle you regular routine.

• Or it can be a fill-in regiment to help alleviate boredom that eventually affects most every exercise walker.

• You can do it anywhere and at any time; at home, office or store.

• Like walking, you don’t need any special training or equipment beyond what you use during your regular walking activities.

• The activity places stress on muscle groups different from those involved in a standard walking gait. The quadriceps (front of you thigh) and buttock are the primary beneficiary of stair walking. Note: It’s always a good idea to give a workout to muscle groups that aren’t heavily involved in your normal exercise routine. Doing this helps prevent injury, promotes better balance and improves overall performance.

• It can be done at work and throughout the day by simply taking the stairs rather than the elevator or exchanging your 15 minute coffee break for a quick exercise break.

• You only have to spend half as much time to get the same caloric reduction and other walking benefits as your typical walking routine.

There are however a couple of added issues that come into play.

• If walking in a public building make sure that the stairs are clean, safe, well lit and ventilated.

• Start slow. Because stair walking is more a more intense activity and works different muscle groups, even the most fit exercise walker will find the going rough at the start.

• Use the railing to help you maintain your balance

• Make sure that the doors to the stairs don’t automatically lock. In some building only doors on certain floors lock and others remain open. Know the pattern and save yourself some time and perhaps a touch of panic.

• Your knees take a real pounding when your going down stairs. So if you have knee problems walk up but take an elevator down.

Stair Walking Technique

Proper, safe stair climbing posture means leaning forward slightly from the hips with the back straight. At no time, should you be rounded in the lower back area. Look forward, glancing at the stairs from time to time but without looking down with your neck bent. Avoid over-straightening your knees as you climb up. Place your whole foot on the step. Avoid climbing with your heels hanging off the edge because you can injure your Achilles tendon.

Motivation

As you can imagine, boredom is much more of a issue with stair walking that outdoor walking. One way to alleviate it is by changing the pattern of you climb. Take two stairs a time for a short burst. Hop up the stairs. Use the hand rail to pull yourself up. Climb sideways or do leg crossovers. For many, keeping a log and setting goals helps keep them motivated. You can also fall back on my favorite piece of walking equipment, my MP3 player, to help wile away the time.

The winter months will soon be behind us and the outdoors will become more accessible for our walking routines but we need to get there without sacrificing our stamina and without carrying extra holiday pounds. Stair walking, when the weather is daunting, is an alternative that we can help us get through this difficult time and accrue all the typical walking benefits. Keep in mind, to burn the same amount of calories takes half the time with stair walking and, as we all know, time is another thing that is in short supply during the holidays. Resist the impulse to “sit the winter out”. Stay active and engaged with you exercise program. Give stair walking a try and you may find your stairway to heaven.

Technorati Tags: exercise, fitness, posture, safety, stair walking, walking, winter

If your a solo walker like I am, you need something to help wile away the hours during your time on the road. You can employ various mind games like counting cars? But they soon grow old. My favorite walking equipment companion is my trusty MP3 player. I load it to the brim with podcasts and music and head for the streets. The hours seem to melt away listing to Dan Carlin rant about the latest political disaster or to Eric Clapton playing Tulsa Time at 134 beats per minute (this, when I need to pick up my walking pace a bit). Unfortunately due to normal wear and tear my players undergo, weathering (no pun intended) the outdoors and the knocking about they receive during my walks, I have to replace them periodically. When my player has finally given up the ghost, what are some of the issues I should consider when looking for a replacement? What features are important in a player that’s used primarily during a workout? Answer: durability, capacity, music formats, user reviews, size/configuration/ease of operation and the trade-offs involved are the things I should consider.

DURABILITY

Since your player is going to receive quite a bit of abuse during it’s lifetime durability is an issue that needs to be of primary concern. There are essentially two types of players: those that employ a hard drive and those that use flash drives. The hard drive used in an MP3 player is similar to the hard drive found in your desktop or portable computer, only much, much smaller. Hard drives have moving parts. With moving parts comes the increased probability of damage, no matter what the products durability claims happen to be. Unlike its’ cousin the hard drive, the flash drive has no moving parts. This primarily translates into fewer things to go wrong plus a flash drive will withstand the moisture, temperature fluctuations and knocking about better than a hard drive version. So, from a durability perspective, look to flash drive models. Also, many manufactures have units designed for and targeted to the exercise market. They incorporate additional features that improve the units durability and longevity. Be sure to take a look at those as well.

CAPACITY

The capacity (how much audio the unit will hold) greatly depends on how you feel about reloading. An MP3 players capacity is measured in terms of mega (MB) or giga (GB) bytes. As a general rule one megabyte is the equivalent of one minute of CD-quality music. Therefore, a typical song will consume about 2.5 to 3 MB of storage on your player. The lowest capacity flash drive is 64MB which is roughly an hour’s worth of music. If you really love the songs you loaded and/or you don’t mind frequently reloading your player with new songs, then this memory size would be sufficient for your needs. Me, I crave a bit of variety and I’ve generally got better things to do that to spend time reloading my player. While hard drive MP3 models have historically held the capacity advantage, flash drives have begun to catch up. The largest capacity flash drive player I was able to find was a whopping 32GB enough for every song I own or even thought of owning. If you primarily listen to podcast while exercising, you’ll be able to push your reloading schedule back significantly. On average 1 GB of podcast audio equates to 16 hours worth of podcasts. I load both music and podcasts and find that 4GB gives me all the variety and convenience I need. If cost is an issue, some flash players come with expansion slots that allow you to increase the amount of storage by adding a memory card. If you already use a memory card in you digital camera or PDA, you may want to look for a player that uses the same type and/or brand and get some double duty our of you purchase.

FORMATS

Music files come in different formats and MP3 players support many of them. There are three major formats. Most players, including IPods, support the “MP3” format – the most common type and source of the MP3 name. “AAC” is an exclusive format used by Apple’s iTunes. “AAC” music files will play only in IPods. The other major format is WMA, which is supported by non- iPod players and used by online music stores such as Napster.com and Rhapsody.com. IPods do not support the WMA format. If you’re buying a non-IPod MP3 player, get one that is compatible with as many music formats as possible – MP3 and WMA being the most important.

SIZE/CONFIGURATION

Size matters with MP3 players. As with most walking equipment the smaller, the lighter the better. If you don’t plan on using an arm band or exercise pouch, it needs to be fitted with a belt clip or able to be fit in a shirt or pants pocket or in your fanny pack. Another question to ask yourself is, can the unit be operated with one hand? Can you change playlists or podcasts easily? For some reason I find that Ipods are a bit awkward on that score. Forget about the video and wireless hook up options. Obviously unnecessary and are just more that can go wrong. You may want to consider a unit that incorporates a radio tuner. A newer Ipod model has a built-in pedometer but would have some questions about how reliable that feature would be.

ADDITIONAL TIPS

Establish the specifications you need before you begin to shop. Search Google and look for models that meet your specifications. Search out user reports and recommendations or check out reviews at C-net or Epinions. After you’ve selected a brand and model go to the manufactures web site and double check the specifications to make sure it fits your needs. Finally, shop around for the best deal.

With the proliferation of MP3 players the selection process can be a daunting one. Give a bit of thought to where your going to be using the unit and for how long. How often do you need/want to change the player’s contents? Answering these questions will enable you to narrow the field considerably and make your selection process that much easier. My MP3 player has become an important addition to my assortment of walking equipment. It keeps me engaged and helps alleviate the boredom that assails me during long walks. So selecting one that lasts and configured properly is well worth the time, money and effort.

Technorati Tags: AAC, C-net, Dan Carlin, Epinions, Eric Clapton, exercise, fitness, Ipod, memory, motivation, MP3 player, music formats, napster, Rhapsody, walking music, WMA