Is “Walking” exercise?

I realize this might sound ridiculous at first sight, because you are probably thinking well “duh walking is exercise” and to be honest, this is true, it is a form of exercise BUT there is a BIG BUT involved because walking varies and depending the kind of walking and the length of time, it can be less effective as a form of exercise.

 

For starters, I am not knocking those that walk – I walk. I am not knocking those that choose to walk on the treadmill the whole entire gym period long, or that say they walked to the fridge and back to their bedroom and that was their exercise. LOL. — seriously though ( I know people like this) My concern isn’t that you walk because there are people missing limbs that can’t walk and would love to, my concern is “is your walking effective”? think about this for a minute or two and think about what it means to be effective and you would obviously know what walking is… so think about how often you walk and how far, do you think that your walking can be considered effective?

 

Just like any other exercise, walking has to be “challenged” , otherwise it no longer becomes an effective method of weight loss, it will either get to a point where you plateau fairly quickly or get to a point that it bores you or it will get to a point where it is no longer as effective. Everyone has their own fitness level and their own level of what they can do and I don’t expect anyone to run marathons or 5ks ( I surely don’t) so walking is a good thing to get started, to get yourself moving and to stay productive, not to mention it allows you to explore (if you are outside) or if you go to a gym and walk, it allows you to get to know the treadmill and the functions. The key with walking is “Type, time (duration), frequency, and distance” – All of these play an important role with walking and making it effective for you. Now before I go over these fun words, I want to let everyone know who is reading this, NOT EVERYONE IS THE SAME, so don’t expect your results to be the same as someone else’s and all of this information will vary person to person.. depending on your lifestyle choices.

 

Type and/or mode: What kind of walking are you doing? 

 
  • Brisk walking
  • speed walking
  • leisure walking
  • walking backwards
  • walking uphill
  • walking downhill
  • walking stairs
  • walking on grass, concrete,
  • treadmill
  • elliptical
  • resisted walking
  • slow walking
  • moon walking LOL
 

Time (Duration): How long are you walking for? 

  • 10 minutes
  • 1 hour
  • 2 days straight

You get the point, someone who is hiking and walking for days at a time vs someone who walks to their car from their front door.

 

Frequency: How often are you walking?

  • everyday
  • once a month
  • once a year
  • three times a week

again you get the point, this also will make a difference down the road when you hit a plateau.. just like the amount of time. 

 

Distance: How far do you walk?

  • 1 mile
  • 15 km
  • 10 steps
  • 10,000 steps

ALL of these things play an important role with fitness as a whole but since I am talking about walking specifically.. I made this post so that you can see your own flaws and have an idea as to how to “fix” it or better deal with them; whether that means you change the type of walking you do, or change the amount of time you stay on the treadmill – there is different variations, so use it at your disposal if you have to. Maybe some of you are just beginning your journey and can only walk .5 miles once a week at a slow pace – that is fine because if you keep doing that you will see results, however, it will get to the point where results stop or happen rarely and that means you will decide to try to walk 1 mile once a week or .5 miles every 2 days.. or whatever it maybe in order to progress in your workout. Then there may be others of you who are fitness advanced, and walk 10,000 steps easy in a day and decide you want to walk 20,000 steps daily and again that will progress your workout and give you results. 

 

Everything is a trial and error, what works for you may not work for the neighbor, so as long as you progress and overload in your walking – you have a higher chance of results and cardiovascular fitness increasing. Got it? 🙂 good. 

 

Feel free to leave comments, share and like. Thank you for reading.

 

Your Fitness Blogger,

Shay-lon xxxooo 

 

P.S keep in mind eating habits play a part in this as well. 

I am an Instagram Winner – first time , hopefully not last time.

I won a free custom made planner!

 

I entered into a giveaway for a free planner that a fellow blogger created, and won! I don’t know if many of you are aware of the giveaways that people do on #instagram but I try to always participate to win free items that would benefit me or my life in some way (clothes, planners, supplements, etc). I have entered into maybe 3 giveways and never end up winning but this particular one I did win and I am very joyful about it because it is very amazing looking, she did a really good job of it and secondly because I use planners – they keep my life in order (without one, I am not sure how I would survive.. metaphorically speaking and my whole world would be lost). This particular planner I am going to be using starting in March will be used as my #blogplanner so it will help to keep organized with my blog and fitness challenges and basically will be the key to all my upcoming goals and priorities that have to do with my blog, youtube, and social media. 

I told you in previous post I am always looking to enhance my blog page and content for all the readers and I always try to do what I can and so by winning this planner it will lead me in the right direction and enhance what I already have planned for all of you 🙂 

 

I will be sure to share photos of me and the planner next month 🙂 so everyone will get the chance to have a look at it before I start using it! 

 

#Cheers

 

Your Fitness Blogger,

Shay-lon xxxoo 

My Gym Workout – Feb. 16th

Some of you may remember my post from yesterday…

 

Well like yesterday, I did another VERY light workout today (upper body) for the same reasons as I did yesterdays light workout for the legs. I figured, I might as well and it ended up going fairly well.

 

Workout Session:

 
  • Bench press (close grip): 3 x 6, 2 x 65 lb, 1 x 75 lb
  • Smith machine overhead press: 4 x 12. 35 lb
  • smith machine drag curls: 4 x 12, 35 lb
  • smith machine bentover rows: 4 x 12, 2 x 35 lb, 2 x 65 lb
  • smith machine shoulder shrugs: 3 x 15, 65 lb
  • straight arm hangs: 1 x 60 seconds, 2 x 30 seconds
  • push ups: 24 reps

The straight arm hangs really killed me, especially the one for 60 seconds, oh man, that was a drag and seemed to go by very slowly. I felt the soreness – no doubt about that one. The 30 second hangs weren’t too too bad, but still hurt like hell afterwards, talk about a workout. Not to mention I did those before doing my push ups, so imagine my agony. If you are someone who needs to work on pull ups, I would highly recommend the hangs, there are different kinds – I will make a post about this soon enough, and for starters, 10 seconds is good enough..no need to be superman and go 60 seconds unless you know you can do it. I honestly didn’t know if I could or not, but aimed for it and did it (but as you noticed only did it once because the 2 other times weren’t going to happen) LOL. Anyways. I have some neat ways to work on getting your pull up ready for action, and will hopefully be creating that post in the near future because I know how important it is to be able to do a pull up these days. 

 

Your Fitness Blogger,

 

Shay-lon xxxxo

Push Up Challenge – Day 16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-yD5435wno

I wanted to also say thank you to all those that have been very supportive and rooting me on during this challenge. It hasn’t been easy for me, push ups are not my strongest suit by any means but I have seen progress in myself that others wouldn’t notice unless you were me or I brought it to your attention. It seems like my efforts have been paying off on screen and off screen as well and I am dedicated to finishing this challenge one sore arm to another. 

Make sure if you are interested in doing this same challenge next month, to send me an email @ Shay.moss19@gmail.com and follow my social media and subscribe to my YouTube channel 🙂 

My Gym Workout – VERY light leg day

Good day bloggers,

 

Today’s workout was a very light leg day workout, I didn’t want to overtrain my body and it needed somewhat of a rest without resting inactively, so I did a light workout for my legs (didn’t lift as heavy) so hopefully that will help with my legs so they don’t get to the point of injury. If there is one thing I have learned about training, it is don’t overwork yourself ALL the time, know when to lighten shit up and do less, because it is better to lift little weights than to get injured and not lift at all. I know we have to workout hard and strong most days (the majority of us) but it is okay to lighten up the weights or the amount of reps if you need to. I do this more often than some of you may think.  We don’t have to “go hard or go home” all the time.

 

Workout Session:

 
  • Smith machine squats: 3 x 6, 105 lb, 125 lb , 155 lb
  • Leg extension machine: 4 x 12, 70 lb 
  • leg curl machine: 4 x 12, 2 x 50 lb, 2 x 70 lb
  • leg press: 4 x 12, 180 lb
  • hip abduction machine: 3 x 15, 110 lb
  • DB swings: 4 x 12, 20 lb
  • Push ups: 20 reps