These Shoes Were Made For Walking

One of the most common statements we get all the time is I could never run like you do, or you ran how far, are you crazy? We would be the first to tell you that we might be a little crazy, and have asked that many times during our longer training runs! But what we want you to now is that we also didn't get up one day and decide to go out and run a half marathon. In fact Tegan was one of those and said those exact words to Andrea, pretty sure she even threw in "my knees would NEVER allow me to run like you do." It took months, lets us say that again, it took us MONTHS from the time we made the decision to get health to actually running. If we are keeping track about six months for Tegan and four months for Andrea. In all seriousness though, it's so important to realize how much a little bit of walking can improve overall health. Physical activity of any type is not only important for your physical health but your mental health as well. We just found that walking was the easiest place for us to start. In several of our earlier blogs we have mentioned that we started with a Fitbit. Again, we would recommend some type of pedometer to hold yourself accountable to a goal. 

When we first started we had a goal of hitting 10,000 steps a day. If you really want to put a friendship to a test take two highly competitive people and have them be friends on the Fitbit app. Tegan use to joke that if the friendship ended it would be because of Fitbit and trying to out do the other ones steps. There would be a day that one of us outranked the other one and then the following day the other one would be ahead. Let's not even discuss when one of us would get sick and it would take a week for us to get our steps back up to where we were competitive again. On more than one occasion we would be walking beside our beds trying to get those last 1,000 steps in, or to pad the little lead we did have just in case the other one hadn't updated their app yet. We would be lying if a year into this we told you that we still don't do this a time or two... or four!

As great and fun as the above things were, the actual best thing about the pedometer is it made us more aware of our overall activity level. It was no longer a pain to park further away from the store, we were going to get some steps in. The bosses office was no longer a phone call away, have a question, walk down there and ask it, more steps! For us one of the greatest benefits was we started scheduling walks together, not only were we getting a little exercise in but we were getting to spend quality time together.

The nice thing about walking is that you can do this at any level of intensity you want to. Your goal needs to be something you can attain, maybe it's a minute a day that you will walk or certain amount of steps you want to get like we did. Whatever your goal is, just make sure you have a goal! The American Heart Association and The Mayo Clinic provides valuable information on the benefits of just walking a few times a week if you are interested in more information. Your doctor is always a good resource as well. But for now to sum up what we have learned: Research indicates taking regular brisk walks can reduce your risk for heart disease, decrease your chance for dementia, improves joint and muscle tone, helps maintain weight or helps with weight loss, helps tighter your tough areas (bottom, legs, and even arms depending on how you swing those darlings!), and HONESTLY it just makes you happier! Exercise gives you endorphins, and endorphins make you happy. Anyone else just quote Legally Blonde along with us?

One of the most important things is to not jump into anything too quickly and we encourage you to listen to your body; especially if it has been a while since you've done any type of physical activity. Don't get in a hurry once you are ready to start walking or running. A great place to start is three times a week for thirty minutes. Walking always needs to come steadily before trying to run. Include a warming up, cool down and stretching even when walking. If you plan on a brisk walk, a 5-10 minute warm up and cool down is needed to help your body recover from your workout. Stretching can be simple but very important, we will go over some easy stretching exercises in a upcoming post.

Lastly, we learned the benefit of having really good shoes early on. When we both started we were wearing the wrong shoes which was keeping us from enjoying our walks.  It's amazing the wear and tear the wrong shoes can have on your body; from shin splints to lower back, hip, knee and ankle issues. If you aren't sure what type of shoes you should be wearing we recommend checking out some of your local running stores for assistance. They are trained to look at how you walk and how your current shoes are wearing to help you get the best fitting shoe for the type of feet you have. We will warn you they can be a bit expensive but well worth the investment!

Remember you got this take it one step at a time! Grab a girlfriend and take a walk this week. 

The Fitster Sisters