Walking 101 Overview

Walking 101 Overview

I am not a health professional so use your own judgement or ask your health professionals before following any of my suggestions. Maybe, this article will provide you background information so that you can ask good questions of others.

I recommend walking everyday to help you remain healthy. Most of us have no problem walking, so why not walk. Some people recommend walking 5,000 steps or more, but I try to reach 10,000 steps everyday. Walking provides necessary daily exercise of many of the body's muscles and other organs such as the lungs. A regular walking hobby or habit will strengthen some of one's muscles but also possibly increase endurance and lung capacity. Walking burns calories and can increase one's metabolism rate. Walking can strengthen one's heart. Walking may help you go to sleep at night.

I scouted local malls, downtown areas, and parks for ideal walking areas. I needed to find locations that were available whether or not the weather was nice or not. I wanted to find benches available to sit down on that were pretty close to each other and that they were available for me to sit down on all of the time. I wanted daylight or lights at night.

There are quite a few mall walkers all over the United States. Mall walkers walk around malls to obtain some exercise. Many were enlightened by their cardiologists to mall walk for some sort of real or threatened heart problem improvement. You can readily identify mall walkers because they usually wear comfortable clothes and walking shoes, carry nothing except sometimes a water bottle, and will usually walk right by you at a steady pace. Sometimes you can find them in the park, downtown, or even in the neighborhood where you live.

I'll go to the mall a couple of times each week usually after 7 p.m. throughout the year. The malls are comfortable whether it is hot, cold, rainy, snowy, or windy outside. I have 5 malls that I travel to frequently in New Jersey: Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth, Short Hills Mall, Livingston Mall, Menlo Park Mall, and Woodbridge Mall. I'll usually walk until my legs feel tired and then I'll find a place to sit for a few minutes. Then I'll walk some more. I usually spend some money each time I go to the mall. Jersey Gardens and Menlo Park have movie theatres that I attend and purchase refreshment. I also shop Sears, Bambergers, and other department stores which are located in the malls mentioned. Once every couple of months I'll also walk Bridgewater Mall in Bridgewater.

My favorite downtown is Millburn, New Jersey. It is a pretty community close to my home with dozens of places to eat a meal or snack, imaginative storefronts to window shop and purchase items, a movie theatre, and best of all the most benches closely spaced from my personal observation of all the other towns in the area. The Gobbler is probably the town sandwich prepared at one of the local deli's.

Town and county parks are a challenge in my area of New Jersey because either there are not plenty of benches to sit down on or the parking is horrendous. Mindowaskin Park in downtown Westfield is ideal with a walkway surrounding a nice lake with great scenery and an abundance of benches but the parking can be horrendous. There are not enough benches in the county parks. Warinanco Park in Roselle and Meisel Park in Union have nice running or walking tracks where sometimes the only nearby place to sit is on the grass when it is nice out, but not a good choice when it is wet, snowy, or icy.

I try to walk a moderate pace and I usually stop several times during each walk to sit, rest, and sometimes drink some water. I have been walking at least once each day for several months now. I found that originally, I had to stop standing up at the biggest supermarkets or department stores such as Home Depot for a minute or two but now I usually do not have to stop to rest at the biggest stores anymore. Maybe the biggest stores should provide rest stop seating areas for the customers in their stores. I am also resting less frequently at the malls.

The Aviation Mall in Linden is huge but there is almost no sit down rest areas there at all. To be fair all of the stores have entrances to the parking lot directly, so they are not an enclosed mall like the others mentioned. And most of the sidewalk areas are uncovered. But I know enough to avoid that mall for exercise. Blue Star Shopping Center in Watchung is another to avoid to walk because the one exterior bench is outside the supermarket and usually is unavailable, but the sidewalk there is mostly covered.

I bought three pedometers to count my steps during the past year. Only the first one seemed to work properly but was lost. The others cost more than the first, but were so inaccurate as to be useless. I haven't used a pedometer in a while. I try to walk an hour or more each morning and another hour or more in the evening. I believe I reach 10,000 steps more often than not. Maybe, I'll purchase another pedometer and hopefully it works accurately.

I am also targeting half day and all day events to stay on my feet and move around such as flea markets, fairs, museums, Atlantic City, Meadowlands and Monmouth Park racetracks, and other places and doing well. I try to challenge myself weekly.

If you can walk (and with your doctor's permission) then you should start slowly and increase you distance over time as long as you fell comfortable doing it. Your health professional may be telling you to start a walking program anyway. I can walk longer distances now than when I started and I believe my breathing has also improved. I do not have to sit down as often and rest as when I started. I also lost a few undesirable pounds of weight. I fit into more of my clothes better now. My lab results have improved. My doctor is pleased. I am looking forward if possible to more vigorous exercise in the future but for now, I am on the walking program.