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Home: Walking Fitness for StrengthWalking isn't an expensive exercise to do and we all can benefit no matter age we might be. Bring down your high blood pressure, lower your cholesterol, lose weight, or just maintain you health walking will help it all. If you're depressed, or have anxiety attacks, low self-esteem walking can do a world of good for this too. The only thing you need to consider is make sure that you have a good pair of walking shoes to help prevent injuries and make your experience a happy one. Building up strength with a walking program is a good way to increase flexibility too. As your limbs become stronger and more flexible, you'll feel better and have more energy to have fun. When a person feels weak and their joints are sore, they don't feel like having fun with the family or friends. Just walking up and down the steps in or out of the house is a chore but that gets easier and you'll look forward to getting out and doing something. Because your legs are weak from not moving around much you need to slowly build that strength up. By pushing yourself to walk a little bit further each time will begin to make them stronger and you'll be able to see how much easier it is just to get in and out of the house. When starting your strengthening walking exercises do a few warm ups first. This will help warm up the muscles and joints to keep the soreness and cramps from setting in while walking. Twist your ankles around in circles; swing your legs in circles using the hips. Bend and kneel down to move those knees a little. It is not a good idea to stretch your muscles before warming up because it could cause you to tear them. Start walking out slowly as part of warming up and than pick up, the pace a little bit. Don't start out walking for a long distance all at once the pace isn't important unless you're in training for a marathon or to lose weight. Just a normal walk at a steady pace is fine. Don't over work yourself until your sore just walking normal for maybe 10 or 15 minutes at first is enough. After a few days at this pace and length of time than increase it going a little further until you've reached your goal. Be sure that you take time after walking to cooling down. You want to walk a few minutes at a slower pace to lower your heart rate and blood pressure back to the normal rate it is use too. At what time you have cooled down to a slower pace, you want to start stretches to relax the muscles. They need to be stretched while still warm and flexible in order to keep from tearing your muscles. By stretching, it will also help to prevent injuries the next walk you take. Add to your plans about 10-15 minutes before and after your walk to include you warm ups and cooling down time. So by the time you reach the normal goal of 30 minutes walking time you'll need to set aside about 1 hour for your new exercise plan. Remember start out slow and work your way up to meet your goals. Don't stop when you reach it just look back and see the progress. You'll be happy with yourself and want to keep going.
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