SPORT WALK

When you first make a commitment to get fit through Sport Walking, one of the most impactful and valuable things you can do is to adopt the mindset of walking everywhere.

This is not a literal pledge however, we understand it’s not practical or realistic to literally walk everywhere but it is a mindset change and an approach that can steer you to increasing your walking time overall and that can really help in reaching your goals for time spent walking or distance covered.

You see, when you adopt Sport Walking as your means of getting or staying fit, it obviously means that you need to go walking in order to do that but if you only view specific dedicated workout sessions as the way by which you’ll do it, you’re forcing yourself to make time for exercise and that can be difficult if you lead a busy life.

But in order to get the most out of Sport Walking, you only need to be walking fast. You don’t need to be doing it at a specific time in a specific place. As long as you’re walking at a good pace and you’re walking strongly in the way you need to for your goals, it really doesn’t matter whether you’re out on a specific planned walk or are walking home from the station after a hard day at work.

It’s all about what you put into it, how you focus your effort in that moment and in that respect, you can cover off your basic Sport Walking needs in a whole range of scenarios. You might walk your kids to school, so you can Sport Walk home and maybe even take a detour or two to add distance.

Maybe you need to post a package or go and buy a few small supplies for dinner – well this is a perfect opportunity to take on our ‘Hunter Gatherer’ Everyday Challenge! All you do is grab a backpack, walk to the shops at a good strong pace, then, when you’ve filled your backpack, walk back trying to hold the same pace, despite the additional weight from the food you’ve bought.

You don’t have to take on a ‘Hunter Gatherer’ though, you can just simply start to replace as many of the local car, bus or tube/metro journeys you can with walks. These short walks add to your training totals and can be a great way of spreading out your daily distance target to make it more achievable.

For instance, if you can walk a couple of kilometres to get some supplies, you then only need to maybe do another three in a dedicated training walk to hit your daily target.

But integrating walks to get supplies or to visit your mum (basically cutting out car journeys) into your Sport Walking schedule is only part of it. When you adopt the ‘walk everywhere’ mindset, you change so much more than just your habits. You change your outlook. Distances you felt needed a car or bus suddenly become food for your legs.

You start to value the things you see along the way, the people you pass, the fresh air you breathe (if you can be walking in less densely populated areas). Before long, walking just feels like the simplest, easiest way.

If you need to go to the shops in your car, you’ll have to find somewhere to park, you’ll get stressed with the traffic and then there’s the petrol you’ll use (unless you’re an EV driver). If it’s possible to walk the same trip, you’ll be de-stressing as you go, getting exercise, taking in your surroundings, maybe getting the chance to finish that podcast because it’ll take you a little longer to get there and you’ll arrive feeling better about yourself.

Once you start, you’ll be amazed how many trips can be walked. OK, it will take you longer but it’s a trade worth making if you can and all the while every extra walk of this kind you make is contributing to your walking fitness.

In terms of the extra time it takes to walk places you maybe would have driven in the past, it might seem like a major sacrifice to start with but you’d be amazed how much time we can all waste in other ways – how much free time we really do have – and walking places instead of driving is such a positive thing we can all do to benefit our health.

So, on one level it’s a time investment worth making because it’s bringing you health benefits but it’s not all just one way. It’s not just about investing time by walking instead of driving. By doing some walking during non-exercise time, you’re saving time that you would have spent in a dedicated walk for fitness later on.

So the actual time investment isn’t really what it might seem like in the beginning. Let’s assume a trip would take you five minutes to drive but maybe 30 minutes to walk. You might think walking has cost you 25 minutes but in reality it’s 30 minutes of walking time you might have spent later on a dedicated fitness workout walk. So, really and truly, you’ve lost nothing. Invested nothing.

You’ve either avoided needing to do a dedicated workout completely or reduced the duration you need to do later – you’ve in effect just done part of the workout at a different time.

Now, obviously, if you make multiple trips on foot, then you will begin to clock up time that potentially you could save by driving but the thing with walking everywhere is, as we mentioned earlier, it’s a mindset change. It’s not just a practical choice, it’s a decision to prioritise your health over convenience.

When you feel the benefits of walking instead of driving, when you can, you don’t mind spending a little more time overall travelling around on foot. The pay off is the improvement to your health and wellbeing and you quite quickly settle on the idea that it’s really positive and beneficial use of your time.

Walking everywhere does require a willingness to change your approach and to dedicate more time to getting around but the benefits far outweigh the costs. If you can build a habit of walking everywhere it’ll become your default and that’s when the world opens up to you.

You may think you don’t have the time right now but perhaps that’s an indication in itself, that making this change is what you really need to do!