Walking is unarguably an excellent way to get in some exercise, whether you’re casually strolling home from work or taking your regular “power-walks” with friends. It’s so handy no matter where your day takes you.
However, many people are averse to considering walking as a proper workout – but instead, treat it as an accompaniment to it – because of their perception that walking offers relatively low-calorie burn. As per Harvard Health, a 155-pound individual walking at a pace of 4 miles an hour can expect to torch just 175 calories over a thirty-minute walk.
Fortunately, there’s a trick to boost significantly—so-much-so even double—the calorie-burn during every walk, trainers say. Read on to learn how?
Trick To Increase Calorie-Burn During Every Walk
Danielle Gray, a NASM-certified personal trainer and founder of – Train Like A Gymnast- suggests: “Try interval training during your walk.” That is walk, at a casual pace for about a minute, then powerwalk as efficiently and fast as you can for thirty seconds. Repeat it throughout your entire walk.
To quote Gray further: “Interval training helps push your body outside its comfort zone to boost caloric burn even after you have finished exercising through an effect known as Excess Post-Exercise Oxygen Consumption.
A 2013 study published in Physiological Reports supports Gray’s claim that short bursts of high-intensity exercise can significantly increase calorie burn.
According to researchers from the American Physiological Society, exercisers can burn two hundred calories in just 2.5 minutes during periods of high-intensity exercise, provided they incorporate these demanding intervals with more prolonged periods of lower-intensity exercise.
[Related: Can You Get Lean By Walking]
However, if interval training isn’t your speed, there is another way to boost your calorie burn significantly – that is by adding resistance. Just a little extra resistance can do wonders. Following are some suggestions:
- Hold weights to increase resistance with arm swings on every step.
- Do curls or overhead presses with weight while you walk. That will also help strength train and stabilize your core at the same time.
The logic is when we use more energy to complete a task, we can burn more calories.
About Author: Renu Bakshi, AKA Fitness Buffhq, is ISSA Certified Elite Trainer. He passed 
Personal Fitness Trainer Course, Nutrition Health Coach course & Specialist Exercise Therapy course from ISSA, USA obtaining + 97% marks. He shares his experience and knowledge about nutrition and effective workouts to get you in the best shape of your life, no matter how old you may be. The author says: “For me, age is just a number!”
