Getting too Greedy!!!!

[azharalkindi]

A million thanks to you all guys. I just can’t express enough how much I appreciate your help encouragements and information shared in this forum throughout my exercise program. I may not have posted anything for the past two months but have been following up most of your posts and have benefited a lot. During the past few months I have been enjoying running for 30 minutes 3 times a week and as I was getting used to the program have also been experimenting various patterns 5k+ ( speed, stamina and stepping stone ) and between running, brisk walking and strength and flexibility, some hiking and swimming. A very little of everything so that I don’t get bored.

I do read a lot and do a lot of research before starting anything new. There is so much information out there. What I would like to share with you all is what I have discovered in the past four weeks or so. We all know the great benefits of brisk walking ( I mean very first walking ) as well as running. I was also thinking of a way to elevate my exercise days as I started feeling three days a week were not enough. I also didn’t want to overdo it, so I thought of it this way. I run 30 minutes and brisk walk 10 minutes a day 3 times a week thus 90 minutes of running and 30 minutes of brisk walking a week.

Therefore, I started to gradually increase the time in brisk walking and reducing the running time until I got to 15 minutes warm up ( brisk walking ) 20 minutes running and another 15 minutes cool down ( brisk walking ) for four days a week. This gave me a total running time of 80 minutes and 120 minutes of brisk walking.

This way I feel I got the benefits and advantages of both brisk walking and running. After four weeks I feel the results are amazing. I would love to hear from any of you who have done it this way or anything different and share their experiences please.

[Bazza1234 Graduate]

You may indeed have hit upon something. It is said in many places on the Internet that long slow running with medium heart rate ( maybe around 65% of max) is good to develop an aerobic base - and time spent in the low/medium HR zone mostly burns fat. BUT -- many can't bear to run so slowly for a long time - try it and give up. However, a very brisk walk (especially up hills) will push you into that zone and you don't look/feel like an idiot walking obviously fast as you do when running very slowly.

On Tuesday, I was planning a long slow 10K run using my heart rate monitor. I may just walk the first few Klms and see what I can build my HR up to while walking "briskly" - maybe alternate running with walking - not for minutes at a time - but for reasonable stretches - say 20 minutes of each following one another.

Can you say in what way you have felt this to be good for you -- what kind of "results" are you talking about?

[azharalkindi Graduate in reply to Bazza1234]

Thank you Bazza,, Brisk walking, jogging and running are all aerobic exercises. These are activities that raise the heart rate but walking is a low-impact activity, injuries risk are low. That means you can walk as often as you like without running the risk of missing days (or weeks) due to injury. I have observed that the HR difference between brisk walking and light running is not very big therefore I can prolong the HR for longer period without the risk of impact on the knees. The idea is to get more out of the exercise. It made me lose a bit of weight as well as my HR has improved. I feel much better after the program. My idea was to reduce a bit of running and increase brisk walking time and it worked very well for me. Mind you, I will always go back to 30 minutes running every now and then.

One can always choose whichever activity that suits them best. The important thing is to get your body moving; just how you move it along is a matter of personal preference.