The surprising benefit of walking slow. Welcome to walking as fitness. This is a podcast of

action providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made to

yourself. Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013, averaging about 21,000 steps a day.

I'm walking right now and I would love to have you join me for the next 10 minutes.

One of the recurring topics for this podcast is how important pace is as we're walking.

And if you're a new listener to walking is fitness, just a real

quick recap, all walking is beneficial, but not all walking has equal benefits. The pace at which we

walk, the intensity at which we walk can add even more benefits, can supersize those health

benefits, both long-term and short-term. And this is backed up by research. And this is also a good

place for me to jump in and say, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a licensed personal trainer. This

podcast should be used for entertainment and educational purposes only.

Recently, a listener in response to multiple episodes talking about the benefits of walking a little bit faster, of an increased pace,

this listener asked, so how do I do that? What is an intentional,

systematic way to increase the pace at which I walk? And of course, with that disclaimer, I said,

well, here's how I would do it. Here's how I do it. And then laid out a plan that I would

use if I wanted to increase the pace of my walking.

So all kinds of research indicating that when we are more intense with our walking,

that we have the potential of increasing the benefits, the health benefits from this form of exercise.

So that's on the table. All right.

Lately, I've discovered that both unintentionally and intentionally, I have been walking at a slow pace.

Not all the time, but occasionally I'll be going out on my walk and at some point

I become aware of what I'm doing. I get out of my head, whatever I'm thinking about and realize,

...