It's no secret that walking is good for you. It can improve joint health, strengthen your bones and boost your mood. It’s also very accessible, as you only need a good pair of walking shoes and a safe path to get started.
Ramping up the intensity of your walks will let you reap even more benefits from the activity. If you increase your pace or incline you can get a bigger boost to your cardio fitness and turn your stroll into a workout.
"A walking workout is any low-impact, structured walk—it can be as short as five minutes," says Peloton instructor Matty Maggiacomo. "They can be done using intervals at different paces or at a steady pace. But to make a walking workout more dynamic, you may want to incorporate periods of power walking or incline."
To help boost your fitness levels Maggiacomo has created a 10-minute walking workout exclusively for Fit&Well. You can do it outdoors or at home.
Matty Maggiacomo is a New York-based Peloton Tread and Strength instructor, covering everything from power walks to intense runs. The former television reporter turned fitness instructor loves walking because it’s safe on the joints and accessible. He also enjoys the fact you can do a walking workout with family and friends of all ages.
How to do the workout
This 10-minute walking workout is broken down into six intervals with a warm-up and cool-down on either side. Each interval contains a different level of exercise intensity ranging from an easy pace to a power walk. To measure the exercise intensity, Maggiacomo uses the rate of perceived exertion (RPE) scale.
Ranging from 0-10, this scale is used to depict how intensely someone feels they are working during exercise. 0 is used to describe when you are at rest, 1 is very light, 2-3 is light, 4-5 is moderate to somewhat hard, 6-7 is hard or vigorous, 8-9 is very hard and 10 is maximum effort.
10-minute walking workout intervals
- 2 minutes: Use the first two minutes as a warm-up. Your first minute should be completed at an easy pace just to get the blood flowing. Maggiacomo says your RPE should be around 1-3. In the second minute, complete 30 seconds of knee raises, followed by 30 seconds of heel kicks.
- 3 minutes: Now move into a brisk walk for the next three consecutive minutes keeping the heart rate up. Maggiacomo says your RPE should be around 4-5, so moderate to somewhat hard.
- 1 minute: At the sixth minute, move into a power walk. This should be a pace where you are moving at your fastest, around 6-9RPE Maggiacomo says.
- 1 minute: Move back to an easy pace at an RPE of 1-3 for the seventh minute.
- 2 minutes: Move into a final power walk for the final two minutes with an RPE of 5-9.
- 1 minute: It’s now time for a one-minute cooldown so move into a recovery pace. Your RPE should be at 1-3.
Depending on your fitness levels, this might feel short and easy. But as Maggiacomo says: "10 minutes is better than no minutes. I also believe that we've moved past the 'no pain, no gain' sensibility when it comes to fitness and movement. Not every workout has to be blisteringly hard to feel like one has succeeded."
It’s also low impact, so suitable for the masses, and it can easily be done from anywhere.
"You can do this workout to home, on your street, around a track, even at the airport," says Maggiacomo.
