Super Charge Your Walks - A Walking Only Interval Workout





Interval training workouts involves alternating "work" periods (sometimes also referred to as "sprint" intervals) of higher intensity exercise with low intensity "recovery" periods. Each group of a work interval plus a recovery interval is commonly called a round, plus your total workout is based on a warmup, a desired number of rounds, followed by a cool-down.

Walking

Intense Interval training (HIIT) is a very demanding design of workout, and the phrase "high intensity" often scares many trainees, so do not be afraid to start out too simple and slowly increase the level of difficulty. When I was reading Turbulence Training, Craig Ballantyne were built with a great explanation for interval intensity. If on a scale of 0 - 10, 0 is just not moving at all and 10 is running for the life.. then the ideal work interval is about an 8. A crucial thing to remember though is that even 'running for your life' changes speeds for different people.



Understand that if you have not trained in a very long time... or have never tried HIIT before, then obviously any good work interval of 8 might be too much for you. For you personally, a good work interval may well be a fast walk pace. It really depends on you and you should definitely not afraid to start out too easy and progress to increased difficulty. You can make it harder on the next workout, in case you go to hard prior to being ready you could set yourself back with injuries or perhaps get discouraged.

Walking Routes

An example Beginniner's Workout



3-5 minutes easy walking

Walk at the leisurely pace. Just get the blood moving and have loosened up. Spend the past minute walking a little bit faster to get you ready on your first interval.



Half a minute of fast Walking

Remember fondly the 0-10 intensity scale? In case you are just getting started with some walking intervals than have a 6. This needs to be a fast/brisk walk. Imagine you are late for a big interview and really need to hurry. If you can't maintain this for 30 seconds, shoot for 20.



90 seconds of slow walking

Immediately drop your speed to what you may need to catch your breath, but keep moving. A complete standstill is simply too taxing on the heart. When you recover you can bring the rate up again somewhat. If you need more than 90 seconds at the start than go ahead and take it. Target 6 rounds of this and then follow it up with another 3-5 minutes of easy walking as a cool down.



Do this 3 x per week, being sure to look at a day off among each workout. Once you get a handle on the 30:90 intervals, add an additional round in. When you are able do 8 rounds of 30:90, then first concentrate on cutting down the amount of recovery time. Go to 30 seconds of fast walking followed by 75 seconds of slow recovery. Again drop down to 6 rounds. When you can handle 8 rounds again, cut another Just a few seconds off of your time to recover and drop to 6 rounds. This way you aren't following a strict schedule that says you should be at this level doing X amount of reps by day X, but are steadily progressing at the own rate. Make sure you log everything down in the journal so that you can call at your progress.



When you are to 8 rounds of 30:60 second intervals, then try upping the work intervals by Just a few seconds while keeping the recovery period fixed at One minute. Drop to 6 total rounds and work your way back to 8, then add 15 more seconds of work until your rounds are One minute of brisk walking (apt to be almost a jog chances are) and 60 seconds of slow recovery. At this point, I promise that you'll be transformed for a bump on a log and ready (and hopefully energetic and eager) to begin pursuing more intense varieties of training.

Walks