I don't drive. I walk everywhere (combined with public transport for longer distances). I don't think it's a super power as such, but it does keep me relatively fit with little intentional effort. Going from A to B just includes an incidental light workout. Gives me time to think, to unwind, sometimes to read. Can recommend it to pretty much everyone. Some things might take a little longer, but if you have to dick around on HN or watch Netflix, you have time to walk to places.
Same here. The only downside is people openly pitying you when you tell them you have to walk to X now. This still makes me feel a loser sometimes for not owning a car. It's stupid, I know.
It takes 30-40 minutes to walk 2 miles. If I have to go to the grocery store to pick up ingredients for dinner, do you really think I should spend an extra 60 minutes walking there and back vs. driving?
Would it be weird for you if I told you yes? My guess is that if you spent those 60 minutes a day walking back and forth to the grocery you would see tremendous benefit in your life in many areas.
If you have a headset for your phone. Call someone. You're interpersonal relationships get stronger.
If you're working through a issues, spend the time thinking about different alternative approaches.
If you're learning a new subject, review in your head what you've been learning.
If you're preparing a talk, dictate different ways of presenting it to a voice recorder.
If you're stressed out about the world, spend the walk finding things you are grateful for.
If you're in a relationship, compose a poem or two for your partner.
Sure, but does it “blow your mind” that I might choose not to do any of those things and prefer to just get to the grocery store as fast as possible so I can spend my free time on other things?
Not at all! Every minute of every day we all choose what we're going to do with that minute and perhaps many of the minutes that follow.
When I make those choices I balance off what I want to do against what I need to do and what I should do and what I could do. That is the essential choice of being an adult.
My experience with walking, before I started walking, regularly, which was forced on me by a requirement to get more physical exercise as part of a weight management program, was that I felt very strongly that I had much better uses for my time than getting slowly from point A to point B. That attitude was supported by my ignorance with regard to what else I could do while walking and so stack time usage.
What I learned by being forced to walk at least 30 minutes a day (its now up to 2.5hrs a day) was that there were things I did while sitting around. Those things included calling people, having meetings, and thinking about solutions to problems or the days events. What I experienced was, that I was no less productive during the day where I spent time walking, and there were tertiary effects that were completely unexpected.
For example, I have always been plagued with the issue that as soon as I lay my head on the pillow to go to sleep, my brain starts kicking up all the things I didn't have time to think about during the day. As a result, getting to sleep could take an hour to an hour and a half. Just laying there, in bed, trying to stop my brain long enough to go to sleep.
Walking massively mitigated that problem. I found, after I had been walking, that I had spent some, if not all, of that time thinking through things that had been pushed aside by the immediacy of email or social media or "honey do" projects. Not only had I thought about them on my walk, I started recording on my phone notes to myself of actions to take to move forward on things I was stuck on. This meant that when it was time to sleep, not only was it much easier to go to sleep, I already had a good idea of the things I needed to get to the next day or in the near future.
That blew my mind. That I had traded laying immobile in my bed for some moderate exercise that effectively took no additional time out of my day and has lead to better sleep and better fitness. It also blew my mind how much more effective 1:1 meetings with direct reports were while walking than they were sitting in an office.
I was pretty ignorant about both the time saving aspects of walking and the effect it would have on my mental acuity and well being. If someone reading this decides to try it out for themselves, it is my hope they will see the positive benefits I have experienced. I wouldn't go back to a non-walking lifestyle now, I have come to rely on those benefits.
Where does this come from? Your parent was asked if he thought one should walk an extra 60 minutes to get groceries, he replied yes and gave a lot of reasons why. Completely respectful and polite.
I'm in my 40s and have never (and will never) own a car. So I chose to live within reasonable walking distance of places I need to go. I walk everywhere, and carry groceries in a backpack. I do these things without even thinking about it. I'm the same weight I was when I was 19. I wear the same size clothes. I don't bother with gym membership. The way I see it, it's just a different way to live. Kinda like when people say "I'm not gonna have kids because that's not what my life is gonna be about".
Now, this is only possible in a city that was built (at least) hundreds of years before cars. Having visited the US I can honestly say that some cities (not the ones like New York) are designed completely around the car. Trying to walk everywhere in a city like that is futile and you'll just hate life and everyone around you.
It may be implausible for most people, but there are probably some people for whom it is an option they haven't considered. I personally rent a car if I need to go out of the city, and walk or (rarely) bus at all other times. Very convenient for me.
I'm admittedly biased as I'm tall and have walked everywhere all my life. 2 miles only takes me 25 min.
In that case the whole journey is really 4 miles. I was thinking in terms of a continuous or largely continuous journey (such as walking to the shops and back) being 2 miles.
That said longer journeys can be treated as exercise. Why go to gym for an hour each day when instead you can spend that hour going to places you're going to go anyway.
Working out at the gym and walking to the grocery store are very different exercises considering heart rates involved etc.
Also in many cases the air will not be very good on the way to the grocery store vs. when you go for a run on a track that you specially chose for running.
That's true if you take the gym seriously. A lot of people would probably get more health benefits from putting that energy into walking more and doing some simple isometrics from time to time. Most people are just spending way too much time sitting on their butts, and a few sessions at the gym isn't really counteracting many of the effects of that.
I think it depends. 60 min fast evening walk with your spouse could count as a light workout. I wouldn't count as a wasted time because you're walking, having fresh air and working out at the same time.
If you take a car ride, that time may be considered as wasted.
1. This is a false dichotomy. Take the bus, or better still - take a bike, if you're in a hurry.
2. It might be better to not always be in a hurry.
3. Try to live in a place that's not so alienated as to have a grocery store that's 2 miles away (unless you're in a rural / countryside area in which case you're probably doing a lot of walking anyways).
I do not use smartphones. I do not remember the exact rationale of how it started. But, it generates a lot of free time for your life. Whenever people question it, I would reply, "Well, it is an experiment I am doing".
Based on how close the other one is you might get a confused nod to how-stupid-are-you as a reply.
The good thing about it is, by default, you do not get to fool around in your free time. The time is only free, if there is do not have other ways to pass it by.
P.S.: But, I am not claiming it is better. But, I find it convenient and quite a bit fun.
I love walking and hate driving (even though I've been a car owner for 13 years) and still get this when I choose not to drive. My car was in the shop a year ago and I wasn't working so I walked or took public transit to take my son to daycare (about 1 mile from my home). I had multiple parents offer to give me a ride in a slightly pittying way
I'm similarly a car owner that loves walking and hates driving. I've managed at least a few times to turn that pity on its head, "Seriously? It's like three blocks tops. So much better to just walk it." There's certainly pleasure any time walking directly to a destination is faster than the people taking the time to walk back to their cars, drive them through traffic, and find a parking spot at the destination.
Can you reframe their "pity" as an expression of sympathy? Or is it the way you're telling them "OH, well I HAVE to walk now." Instead, say "Well, I get to walk now, see ya!", show them you're happy with the decision.
It could be a combination of both. Usually it starts like: "I have to leave a bit earlier because I have to walk". From then there is pitying/sympathy.
Make a water-cooled undershirt like those for astronauts and get one of those fan attachments for baseball caps. (Slightly wacky suggestion but this is hacker news after all.)
Another silly option is wear multiple layered suits like it is the early 20th Century again. While all the layers will contribute to overheating and the sweating problem, a part of the reason for the layers in the first place (especially in the early 20th Century before modern air conditioning) was to keep sweat to less visible layers. Make sure you stay hydrated, of course. Maybe go Steampunk with it and have fun picking a weird style all your own.
Would you pity someone who was manipulating data by hand or an accountant calculating taxes all by hand without software or at least a calculator to help them?
What about someone manually trying to translate some text instead of using a translation service?
The other side of some manual work is that it exercises you in some way- but if there are things that'll speed up whatever it is you want to do and they are generally available, you will be pitied!
Walking everywhere is not really much of an individual decision though: It's a collective, city-wide decision, as the city's infrastructure and geography decides whether walking or driving are really alternatives.
I was raised in a small city in Spain, population of 180k or so. I walked everywhere, and I still do when I visit: The city has great population density, with an average height of about 6 stories, plenty of pedestrian-only streets, and almost no surface parking. The situation is such that driving would be slower than walking to get most things done, as time to and from the car will often be quite the nuisance.
Later I moved to Madrid. It's a very large city by European standards: Too big to just walk everywhere. However, it's also very dense, and it's also not all that well set up for driving in many routes. Driving might be useful at times, but the subway might be faster, and it's hard to find places that are more than 10 minutes away from a subway station. It's not quite as hostile as my hometown, but you at least might have to make choices.
Now, however, I am living in a mid-sized metro in the US midwest: far smaller than Madrid in population, but easily 4x the total size. The vast majority of the metro area is single family homes in half acre lots. Even downtown is full of surface parking lots, so even living there you'll mostly be walking past asphalt. One person could possibly move to be in walking distance of their job, but good luck doing that with two people. Public transportation is sparse, and, at the best of times, has buses every half an hour, so your typical trip penalty vs a car might be an hour each way. And on top, temperatures will hit 40C in the summer, and -20C in the winter: Not exactly good walking weather either way. Here, walking is not a mode of transportation, but a completely intentional hobby which, in some cases, might take you past a store or a restaurant, weather permitting.
So really, while I am a huge fan of walking, it's not something anyone in my metro area will willingly choose as their primary mode of transportation, and it's the same all over the US: Few of our cities are built for anything but cars, and it's a decisions that is really hard to undo without ripping apart most of the city's construction. Imagine one of our largest buildings: The headquarters of a company you probably know. well over 15 floors, but completely surrounded by surface level parking. Many thousands of spots, one for each worker. you have to walk over half a kilometer before you find any other building: otherwise it's just cars.
So no, around here, I couldn't recommend walking to pretty much anyone, and that's because the decision is made for us. It's the city's urban planning department, over many decades, that decides whether people walk or not.
> So no, around here, I couldn't recommend walking to pretty much anyone
I don't know about that. Things don't change overnight, and never by themselves. Advocating for a more walkable city is probably a good idea. Might require political action of some sort. Or maybe it just needs a critical mass of frequent walkers.
For the record, I live in a walkable city now, and grew up in a tiny, walkable villagle. Wouldn't even consider moving somewhere that wasn't walkable.
Addendum: a city that isn't designed for people probably shouldn't be considered a city. I'm trying to think of a better name, but I'm stuck on expletives.
>I don't know about that. ...Might require political action of some sort.
Wow, ok. I live in the raleigh-durham metro area. What is timeline for significant non-car travel for us of literally any kind outside of 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars? If your answer is "there is none", everyone here already knows that. We are chained to cars with no way out.
>Wouldn't even consider moving somewhere that wasn't walkable.
Not joking: I am really proud of your opinion. Never change. There's not even close to enough of you to intact real transportation change in the US. I wish I was wrong about that, but it's not been my lived experience living in the US.
While that is a pain, I get it. Extending bus services is a band aid on a systemic problem. People don’t want to take the bus unless they have to because buses take forever compared to cars. Buses take forever because they have to stop so often. They have to stop so often because 99% of the US is totally spread out with very low density. And that is the fundamental problem. You can’t just tweak the buses or trains or walk more in a city that has built $100 billion of infrastructure around driving cars. Walkability and public transit just aren’t viable alternatives in a country built around the suburb and the highway.
Buses also suffer from the problem that when road traffic is high and public transportation might be a great alternative to gridlock and sitting in traffic, the buses themselves suffer from the same traffic issues. Most people seem to prefer to sit in traffic in a car they control than public buses.
Buses are an incredibly bad public transportation option because they sit so well in a local maxima trap because they look like a viable public transportation and "share" the road infrastructure costs of cars leaving them "cheap investments", so much that cities don't think they need to invest in anything more expensive. But they also share all the detriments of investment in car infrastructure, and thus through self-fulfilling-prophecy expectedly never grow the ridership to encourage cities to push for more investment in public transportation over car transportation.
From that perspective bus services aren't even a band aid on the systemic problem, but a symptom/perpetuator of the systemic problem.
Yeah that's a fair point. For me walkability is a key factor in choosing where to live. Thankfully in the UK it's pretty easy to live in walkable places.
I don't care if someone reads while walking, but I wonder if you would have been as downvoted if you instead complained about people staring at their phones while walking.
Well, at least in NYC, I tend to narrowly avoid crashing into them on the sidewalk.
Perhaps it doesn't apply to you, but I don't think 90% of people who read books while walking are as good at navigating around obstacles as they think they are.
I do this regularly when I walk around our neighborhood or to a nearby park. I usually make sure to hold the book up to help my posture, and look around frequently. Haven't ran into anyone yet, and often saw them before they looked up from their phone and saw me (most people, I've learned, don't walk on the proper side of the road). Allows me to get a lot more reading in, really, and helps me focus and digest what I'm reading a bit more when I want to.
Sure. But please don't project your notion of "sidewalk" onto the rest of the world. You can't do this everywhere, for obvious reasons, but it's perfectly fine in most places. Takes a little bit of practice but it's lovely during a daily commute on a familiar route.
What's better is reading HN and walking. I have been walking around 11km each day the past week, reading HN or some articles for my work/side project on Medium. I usually walk in the early morning, before 7, or in the evening in a park, so being distracted isn't an issue.
2. As the gyms are closed down here, again, and indoor dining is shut down, again, I have been walking at least 6 miles a day with the dog, and it has been a sanity-preserving way to get away from working at home.
(Not looking forward to the first slushy/icy storm, though. Both the dog and I hate walking in boots.)
Dogs can handle it, except for rock salt. For you, get some good boots for walking - they exist (Saloman boots are super comfortable for me, but everyone is different!). Walking in the winter is the best (other than freezing rain), I find - quieter, less people, more calming. Then again, I have a lot of Scandinavian heritage ;)
I just hate clomping around in the boots. But I manage.
Now, do you have super-secret Scandinavian folk knowledge of good dog boots? Because I have tried, and he hates the damn things. And the rock salt irritates his feet quite a bit.
I'm not convinced that dog boots are ever necessary. Wild dogs can't afford shoes. Sled dogs run all day barefoot in sub-zero temperatures. I have four random little mutts between ten and twenty pounds, and even they rarely have trouble in the winter. I took one of them out for a run today at 15 deg. F, no problem.
Salt is a problem. If there's a lot of salt out, I'll rub a sealant into their pads before we go out. Lots of things will work -- lip balm or lanolin are my favorites, but petroleum jelly would probably do in a pinch. But whatever you use, the most important thing is to simply wash the salt out of their pads after they come back in. I've done this for almost a decade in Colorado and none of my dogs has ever had a cracked or frost-bitten pad.
I actually wear some waterproof trail running shoes for walking in icy weather. You have to be a bit careful what you step in obviously, since they're not high tops, but they're thick enough to walk on ice without it getting to you. Boots are overkill and walking in snow is just too slow to get exercise anyway, so you end up only walking on the cleared streets and sidewalks.
When some types of athletes need to drop weight, one of the strategies they do is to walk at a normal-brisk pace for hours until they hit a certain number of estimated calories burned. The reason they walk is that it has a much lower risk of injury and puts less stress on the body than most other forms of cardio exercise (perhaps excepting a stationary bike) and our bodies are good at naturally finding a pace we can sustain ~indefinitely.
It feels like a bit of a hack when you go for a 2hr walk and end up burning almost 800kcal listening to music, talking to people on the phone, maybe taking care of chores like paying bills.
Just curious, do you know of any ones that tout walking?
I realized this during stay-at-home orders back in March. When I stopped bike commuting I started walking for 1-2 hours a day on days I didn’t go on runs, and realized I was burning a significant amount of calories according to my Apple Watch.
You mean any individual athletes? Not that I can think of off the type of my head, but by "classes" earlier I was referring mostly to strength-based athletes or any sort of sport where there are weight classes/a need to be lean. So wrestling, weightlifting/powerlifting/etc., probably most fighting disciplines, bodybuilding.
A possibly related phenomenon I read recently about: profound isolation, especially in Antarctica, seems to interfere with the hippocampus, which relates to spatial navigation and memory. So regions in the brain associated with walking are also related to important cognitive functions.
The article discusses whether long-term isolation due to Covid will have similar effects: [1]
I've been walking 2-5 miles every day for the last 7 or so years. This is walking outside with no set destination and no electronics.
I wouldn't describe it as being a superpower, but I do find it to be relaxing.
My sense of direction is pretty bad tho, especially in unfamiliar places. I recently discovered a new trail system and while I didn't get "lost lost", there were times where I thought for sure I was going back to where I wanted to but I ended up going in the opposite direction.
But at the same time, when I walk around areas I've been to I can pick out very specific details, almost like recreating a map in my head but I think this has more to do with repetition and practice that would apply to everyone. If you've walked around a place literally 1,000 times you're bound to pick this stuff up. I'm sure it will happen for me in those trails with enough practice too.
With that said I know someone who doesn't walk at all and is one of those people who can drive to somewhere in an unfamiliar place once and then know exactly how to get there months or even years later. I'm not convinced walking by itself improves your internal GPS.
Six years ago I weighed in at 265 pounds with a 44-inch waist. To make a change I decided to start walking nightly. Began taking my dogs with me for encouragement (perhaps the thing dogs are best at), and eventually settled on a route that covered almost exactly two miles with some good hills to get the heart rate up. Today the dogs no longer come with me because they have grown too old to keep up. My weight is down to 215 and my waist to 36" and the nightly walk is such an ingrained habit that I feel like a complete slug if I can't take it for some reason.
Walking makes me anxious. It's just too slow and makes me feel stuck in a place. Cycling, however, has the opposite effect. It allows me to move around quickly and effortlessly, it gives a a sense of freedom and just melts any anxiety away.
It's good that you can find freedom in cycling, tho the coach in me wants to challenge you to see whether you can find peace and freedom in a very leisurely stroll.
After all, if you're not going anywhere, what is the rush?
Maybe people's brains are (metaphorically) on a hertz cycle that is perfectly calm/in sync when the outside stimulation as at the same "frequency".
It's like when you try to fall asleep watching/listening to something. Too boring and your mind wanders and you dont fall asleep. Too exciting and you're thinking about things while keeping up with the original thing.
> After all, if you're not going anywhere, what is the rush?
I have IBS, so getting to a bathroom. When I have an attack, walking makes things much worse, combined with the fact that it takes forever to get anywhere on foot it’s a recipe for disaster.
> Walking makes me anxious. It's just too slow and makes me feel stuck in a place.
Funnily enough, this is my experience while jogging at a pace sustainable for more than 30 minutes. It feels much better to power-walk the same distance. Potentially the amount of movement forward vs. up/down makes a psychological difference.
My running style was once described as "a lot of up and down, not much forward". Geoffrey Verity Schofeld's cue "Everything FORWARD" (https://youtu.be/x7SAQsmBm5M?t=368) might help you feel like you're making forward progress. It won't be sustainable for 30 minutes at first, but that will be a nice challenge to work up to.
My natural way is very similar to that, going forward all the time.
Since I've been struggling for years to go from "running in my style for 15min" to 30min, I've instead switched to the goal of "running for 30min in any style", then working my own style back into that :).
I'll attest to cycling being a great reliever of stress and anxiety, I don't know what I'd do without my daily commute.
But while cycling is good for thinking, when I really want to get some thinking done and sort out my problems, going for a long walk in nature is my preference.
What’s with the walking vs owning a car? They are in no way mutually exclusive. I walked about three hours yesterday and it was easy (and I own a car too). I download things from YouTube I don’t need to watch and just start walking/hiking.
You will burn anywhere from 75-200 calories/mile walking/hiking. I did like 14 miles yesterday. I will take weight off of you or allow you to eat whatever you want the easiest vs perceived exertion.
Side benefit, the world is strange and people are weird and you get a good dose of that. Saw a ground squirrel running down a trail carrying a severed rabbits head the other day, fun!
Would be nice if there was any concrete evidence backing up this "superpower" since this article is more or less just an interview.
I would love to compare the benefits of walking to HIT exercises, or perhaps even a rowing machine..
I've found that in general almost all popular health journalism/news coverage is awful. You're much better reading primary sources (particular, recent reviews in peer-reviewed medical literature) to get much more readable and information-dense, and useful resource (as well as a list of citations for followup and verification). I'd recommend anyone interested in any health topic to simply search for "pubmed [topic] [keyword]" to get any substantive information.
For example, a search for "pubmed walking versus hiit" actually turns up the answer to exactly what you were looking for.
To save everyone interested a few clicks: "In conclusion, in this population of relatively untrained but healthy young adults, our results suggest no particular advantage for very high intensity training models" [0]
One of the things to keep in mind is that any one study is part of a larger picture and part of why I recommend people do their own searches so they can see what kind of studies are out there (or to start with reviews). For any individual study you have to at the minimum pay attention to sample size/population, what kind of study it was, and often looking at the methods/study design as well. There will often be caveats or additional wrinkles. For example:
Shiroma, Eric J., Howard D. Sesso, M. V. Moorthy, Julie E. Buring, and I‐Min Lee. “Do Moderate‐Intensity and Vigorous‐Intensity Physical Activities Reduce Mortality Rates to the Same Extent?” Journal of the American Heart Association 3, no. 5 (September 16, 2014). https://doi.org/10.1161/JAHA.114.000802.
"Among men, but not women, additional modest reductions in all-cause mortality rates are associated with a greater proportion of moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity performed at a vigorous intensity."
Fisher, Gordon, Andrew W. Brown, Michelle M. Bohan Brown, Amy Alcorn, Corey Noles, Leah Winwood, Holly Resuehr, Brandon George, Madeline M. Jeansonne, and David B. Allison. “High Intensity Interval- vs Moderate Intensity- Training for Improving Cardiometabolic Health in Overweight or Obese Males: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” PLoS ONE 10, no. 10 (October 21, 2015). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138853.
"While both exercise groups led to similar improvements for most cardiometabolic risk factors assessed, MIT led to a greater improvement in overall cardiovascular fitness."
I'd also say that while it's tempting to just skim through the abstract and the conclusion, oftentimes, the Discussion is where the real meat is, and in cases of controversy, careful attention needs to be paid to the authors, the raw data (sadly, especially in the nutrition space, there is often discordance between the observations published, statistical massaging, and the conclusions drawn...) and followup commentary.
For the HIIT study you referenced, I did find this commentary, which was pretty interesting (it's worth noting that I don't consider this topic area to be particularly controversial/heated - differences seem modest, and honestly, the biggest thing seems to actually be getting any physical activity, vs none for most people...):
Coswig, Victor S., Paulo Gentil, João P. A. Naves, Ricardo B. Viana, Charles Bartel, and Fabrício B. Del Vecchio. “Commentary: The Effects of High Intensity Interval Training vs Steady State Training on Aerobic and Anaerobic Capacity.” Frontiers in Physiology 7 (October 25, 2016). https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2016.00495.
That's true. When reading the Discussion of the article I quoted from, it struck me how much they talked about the aspect of enjoyment. But when you think of it, this aspect is huge, because it basically determines whether people will actually follow through or not. A few percent increase in VO₂max is useless if people will hate the regime and will simply not do it.
Not sure why you are being downvoted. This article provides credentials then as the interviewer asks questions O'Mara makes unbacked claims (that he would like to test). Would need to read his book "In Praise of Walking" to determine the sourcing of his research.
I agree with a caveat: walking posture. If walking feels tiring or
unpleasant it’s likely that one doesn’t have a good walking posture. I’ve been walking wrong a big chunk of my life until I re-learned the right way, in my 40s! It’s wonderful to walk now and don’t get tired and achy like i used to. Bad habits get so ingrained in us that it becomes extremely tricky to correct them but it is very possible to fix these and the reward very high, I have a better posture, more energy and am better in a shape than when i was younger and any back issues i had nearly vanished.
No physiotherapist could really help me as I wasn’t injured and my walk was’t obviously wrong, they all sortof dismissed me. What helped was ballance exercises, learning how to use skeletal muscles and paying attention to the whole aspect of walking: in the end it should feel effortless. I was also stepping on the foot wrong, was applying too much pressure on the front of the foot and leaning the trunk forward a few degrees more than now. The rest was trial and error and it took a while to fine tune it but as soon as I found the sweet spot - and you know it, it feels just right and you’re relaxed - the rest is making this a habit so you don’t really have to consciously think about it and it happens naturally. I also fixed a lot of static postures such as sitting on a chair, etc I sometimes fall into the old postures but now can adjust accordingly
What I forgot to mention was stretches which do help but if the motion isn’t fixed the tense muscles tense back as they try to compensate for the incorrect movement.
There are multiple paths to this and yoga could be one of them. Im just a stubborn self lerner and went through a lot of trial and error. At the beginning i studied muscular imballances and did a lot of strenghtening and stretching but that didn’t help too much as my bad habits were reverting all the progress and certain muscles would tense up and others wouldnt fire. Once i figured out the correct posture it all fell into place
1. Slow jogs with the only goal being getting my footstrike under the hips. This fixed the rolling/lurching I had developed in adolescence.
2. Runner's supplements. This did a lot to reduce pain and stiffness. Magnesium in particular really made a difference.
3. Strength and mobility training. Yoga or calisthenics both work for this: the main limitation in both walking and running postures is in being able to swing the hips, shoulders and knees fluidly.
Well walking gives you time to think, reflect and it's excercise all in one. The problem I have is that it takes a lot of time if you want to walk to somewhere useful to combine things..
This has been the worst thing for me about suddenly working from home, the sudden loss of my daily commute and lunchtime walks that had a purpose and couldn't be skipped. It took me far too long to realise the damage this sudden reduction had on my body, not just my fitness, but also things like circulation. I've been trying to factor in more intentional walking into my day, but somehow it's not the same as walking with a purpose.
I'm getting there, but forming new habits can be surprisingly hard, especially when family commitments get in the way.
I am not sure there are any super powers from walking. But it makes me feel better I am certain of that. And it gets me away from the keyboard for a bit. That cannot be bad.
I have a total of 45 mins walk for my commute. When I started, I had my wife pick me up by car in the evening because I was exausted after a long day. After a few months, I was enjoying my walks and being able to unwind with no effort. It definitely improves your fitness.
in NYC i would try to walk everywhere. just a great time in the morning and back home to contemplate diff things or work through solutions. now w/ covid i'm out of the city and in the burbs temporarily, but thankfully there's a park nearby that i can stroll too.
one thing that was interesting was that i had traveled to another country a few months after NYC went to lockdown (so i was basically inside all day). after 2 weeks in quarantine i walked around the new city for the whole day and was suuper sore the next day, which surprised me. i think we take for granted the benefits of it.
