The Case for Walking

Walking is one of the best activities humans can do for their overall health and wellness.  Perhaps surprisingly to some athletes, walking is really important for endurance athletes, too.

Read this Coach Tip Tuesday: 

www.fullcircleendurance.com/blog/coach-tip-tuesday-the-case-for-walking 

Sources:

Banach, Maciej, et al. “The association between daily step count and all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a meta-analysis”

Harai, Yuval Noah Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

I-Min Lee, et al. “Association of Step Volume and Intensity with All-Cause Mortality in Older Women”

Serwe, Katrina M., et al. “Effectiveness of Long and Short Bout Walking on Increasing Physical Activity in Women”

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Disclaimer: The information shared in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or health goals. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you heard on this podcast. Reliance on any information provided is solely at your own risk.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening
• 0:16 The Case for Walking
• 0:59 Exercise is a New Thing for Humans
• 3:42 Why Does Exercise’s Genesis Matter?
• 4:49 A Self-Experiment
• 8:36 What Are the Benefits of Walking?
• 10:43 How Much Walking Should We Do?
• 14:25 The Bottom Line
• 14:51 Closing

Transcript

(0:04 - 0:19)
Hello, and welcome to the Full Circle Podcast, your source for insights into the science and art of endurance sports training and racing. I'm your host, Coach Laura Henry. Today is Coach Tip Tuesday.

(0:20 - 0:26)
Walking. It is the simplest form of physical activity. It's how we move from place to place in our daily lives.

(0:26 - 0:40)
In so many ways, we take the ability to walk for granted. Walking has been shown to be one of the best activities humans can do for their overall health and wellness. And perhaps surprisingly, walking has an important place in the lives of endurance athletes, too.

(0:40 - 0:59)
It's probably one of the more common misconceptions that endurance athletes make. They think that they don't need to consider walking or how much they are moving throughout their activities of daily living because they're completing workouts as they're training for their goals. And while workouts are very important for athletes for obvious reasons, how they move through the rest of their lives matters, too.

(0:59 - 1:24)
Exercise as we know it is a relatively recent phenomenon when you consider the history of our species. While there are historical records going back thousands of years that indicate that humans did train for athletic events, the ancient Greeks are one such group who did this, it really wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that athletic competitions became more widespread and culturally significant. Specifically, we can trace this back to the reintroduction of the Olympic Games, which was in 1896.

(1:24 - 1:38)
As the century turned, athletics started to take on a form that we would recognize today. Sports, events, and teams shifted from being playful and recreational to becoming more organized. People trained specifically for events and competitions with performance outcomes in mind.

(1:39 - 1:58)
At the same time, the Second Industrial Revolution was happening around the world, which changed a lot of things culturally. While people were still doing physical jobs, more and more people were working in factories and in cities. This represented a shift away from the more rural and agricultural lifestyle that had preceded this time period for literally thousands of years.

(1:58 - 2:25)
World War I and World War II brought more changes and industrialization to the world, and more and more people flocked to cities to find education, jobs, and opportunities. Due to a lot of factors, including the rapid development of transportation and communications technologies, modern organizational methods for operating large businesses were developed, and that enabled larger groups of humans to work collectively for one business or employer in a way that they hadn't before. By the mid to late 20th century, so much had changed.

(2:26 - 2:43)
How we worked was completely different, and it wasn't nearly as strenuous or dangerous as it had been even just 100 years earlier. How we moved around our communities was completely different. We were using machines, automobiles, cars, and mass transit to get from place to place instead of moving under our own power.

(2:43 - 2:58)
Mass production of food and the rise of the supermarket meant that we didn't even really have to work for our food. We just go to a store, and it's there, and we buy it. For literally thousands of years, Homo sapiens had to move under their own power in their daily lives to find food, adequate shelter, and to keep themselves safe.

(2:59 - 3:21)
As we developed steady food supplies, long-term shelter, and were able to keep ourselves safe from other animals, we began moving less than our ancestors in every facet of our lives. As a result of all of this, we began spending more time indoors than we ever had as a species before. As the 20th century progressed on, our need to move throughout our activities of daily living decreased, and our time indoors increased.

(3:21 - 3:38)
And thus, the concept of exercise as we know it rose. Without movement as an integral part of our daily existence, we needed to find a way to move our bodies to keep them healthy, agile, and strong. Getting in movement in the form of a dedicated session daily, or a few times per week, became the way that we moved our bodies.

(3:38 - 3:57)
And thus, exercise as we know it was born. The origins of exercise as we know it are important to acknowledge and consider, because 120 years is not a sufficient amount of time to have evolved away from needing to move the way we did for thousands of years. In fact, I'd actually make the argument that we don't want to evolve away from this.

(3:57 - 4:13)
We very well could end up like the humans in Disney Pixar's WALL-E who are unable to stand or move on their own. The World Health Organization estimates that insufficient physical activity is the fourth leading cause of death in the entire world. It's related to 3.2 million deaths per year worldwide.

(4:14 - 4:24)
20% of all humans are physically inactive. That's 2 billion people. And 81% of adolescents have an insufficient amount of physical activity.

(4:24 - 4:46)
The decline in movement and the rise in sedentary lifestyles is literally killing us. While endurance athletes may be doing workouts, and therefore moving a bit more than other people, the hard truth is that even endurance athletes might be sedentary people if the only movement they get in their lives comes via their training workouts. I encourage all of the athletes that I work with to move more than just when they are doing their training workouts.

(4:46 - 5:07)
Specifically, I encourage athletes to walk on a daily basis. Anecdotally, while working with hundreds of athletes over the last 10 years, I have observed that the athletes who move more in their daily lives have better performance outcomes in endurance sports than the athletes whose only movement comes from their training workouts. As I learned more about physiology and how the body works, I realized that there really was something to this.

(5:08 - 5:24)
Athletes who aren't sedentary outside of their workouts get a lot of benefit from that beyond-workouts movement. In addition to observing the athletes that I work with, I conducted several self-experiments in my own life and in my own training. One year, I walked 10,000 steps per day.

(5:24 - 5:37)
If I'm being honest, I got a little compulsive about this. And honestly, it's one of the reasons I urge people to exercise caution with streaks. And my compulsiveness about getting in those 10,000 steps turned out to be an issue.

(5:37 - 5:58)
While I initially thought I was feeling good, I actually got bursitis in my left hip because of my compulsion to walk 10,000 steps every single day. I committed the all-too-easy and common mistake of doing too much too soon. In a different year, learning from my mistake with the 10,000 steps per day experiment, I made it a habit to walk 5,000 steps per day in addition to any workouts I did.

(5:58 - 6:12)
So this meant that the steps generated from workouts didn't quote-unquote count. So if I ran, those steps didn't count towards the 5,000. That year, I saw significant increases in fitness, remained injury-free, and had my best marathon performance in over six years.

(6:12 - 6:22)
Then, I stopped walking 5,000 steps per day in addition to my workouts. This was for a few reasons. Initially, it was because I got really sick and I needed to take a period of unplanned training cessation.

(6:23 - 6:44)
And then, it was because I was in a really busy season at work and I didn't make the time to walk 5,000 steps per day in addition to any workouts I was doing. And honestly, my workouts were a little bit lower during that time too. During this time, I was maybe walking 2,000 to 3,000 steps per day in addition to any workouts, and I was sitting a lot in the car, at my desk, on the couch.

(6:44 - 7:00)
I mean, I was just sitting a lot. Within three months, I had tendonitis in my left foot and my leg, and I had a subpar performance at a marathon goal race. After I rehabbed my tendonitis, I started building my volume and training again, and I still didn't reincorporate my 5,000 steps per day habit.

(7:00 - 7:28)
I was still walking like 2,000 to 3,000 steps per day in addition to the workouts, and I was sitting a lot. I started feeling the whispers of Achilles tendonitis and plantar fasciitis in my left foot, and these are old related injuries of mine that have recurred intermittently over the last 10 or 12 years. Recognizing the common denominator in these two situations, which was my lack of daily walking, I gradually built back up to walking 5,000 steps per day in addition to the workouts I was doing.

(7:28 - 7:37)
So, this time, I did not commit the too-much-too-soon mistake. I started with where I was and gradually built it up. At first, if I'm being honest, I was feeling it in my legs.

(7:38 - 7:54)
I could literally feel little microspasms in my legs when I'd get back from walking for just 20 to 25 minutes continuously. It may seem ridiculous, especially given that I have a long history and a fairly high level of fitness, but it's true. I also felt the fatigue in my legs, and especially when I get up in the mornings.

(7:54 - 8:10)
But as I kept up the habit, and as I gradually built up my walking volume, those sensations subsided. In addition, the sensations in my Achilles tendon and my plantar fascia leveled off and stabilized. They didn't go away completely right away, but they also didn't get any worse from where they had been.

(8:11 - 8:19)
And there I had it. Conclusive evidence, yet again, that consistency is the key to everything. 3,000 steps per day wasn't enough.

(8:20 - 8:36)
10,000 steps per day was too much. 5,000 steps per day was my sweet spot. Over several years of self-experimentation, I learned that the times when I've ensured that I'm consistently walking 5,000 steps every day in addition to my workouts is when I felt my best and when I've performed my best.

(8:37 - 8:52)
Okay, okay, so I accumulated anecdotal evidence that walking is beneficial. So what? That's nice. What does walking actually do for us? One of the most significant and undervalued things that walking does for us is developing connective tissue strength.

(8:52 - 9:13)
Connective tissues in the body, such as tendons, ligaments, and fascia, do not have direct blood sources, and they take longer than other body systems, such as the muscular system, the cardiovascular system, and the respiratory system to adapt to stimulus that is imposed on them, such as in training. Connective tissues are incredibly important because they support and connect other tissues in the body. That's why they're named that.

(9:14 - 9:38)
And adequate connective tissue strength is necessary for all other strength and adaptations to be able to occur. Connective tissue strength isn't something that self-coached athletes often know about, and even if athletes have heard of it, it's honestly something that they don't value. However, connective tissue strength is really, really important because injuries to connective tissues are honestly the most common injuries I see among endurance athletes.

(9:38 - 9:52)
Just think about it. Tendonitis, plantar fasciitis, MCL-ACL tears, all of these are connective tissue injuries. My experience has been that these injuries can almost always be traced back to athletes doing too much too soon.

(9:53 - 10:07)
They progress their training at a faster rate, then their connective tissues can adapt, strengthen, and develop. And when connective tissues, like any other system in the body, is overloaded, overuse injuries occur. Walking strengthens connective tissues in an honestly very lovely way.

(10:07 - 10:35)
We are imposing just our body weight on them, versus up to seven times our body weight when we run, and that's what makes running more corrosive and more risky, and thus, with walking, we are gently imposing stimulus on connective tissues. In addition to this all-important connective tissue strength and development, walking also generates positive changes in the cardiovascular and the respiratory systems. It lowers blood pressure, helps stabilize and control blood sugar, and this is especially true if walking is done after a meal, and it helps develop our lung capacity.

(10:35 - 10:52)
Walking also protects our joints, especially the knees and the hips, by lubricating them. If you've ever heard the phrase, motion is lotion, this is why. A lot of people have heard the walking 10,000 steps per day advice, and a lot of people widely believe that this is sound advice, and that this number of steps is necessary for good health.

(10:52 - 11:12)
While I like the sentiment behind it, which is to encourage people to move throughout their lives, 10,000 steps isn't actually a magical number. The specific recommendation to walk 10,000 steps per day can be traced back to 1965, when a Japanese company started marketing a pedometer called Menpo-K. Menpo-K literally translates to 10,000 steps meter.

(11:12 - 11:29)
Thus, the recommendation to walk 10,000 steps per day didn't arise from scientific research or study. It was a marketing campaign designed to sell pedometers. That being said, just because this 10,000 step recommendation isn't one rooted in science or facts, doesn't mean that the sentiment of walking every day isn't valid.

(11:30 - 11:48)
A large study conducted with 225,000 participants over a seven-year period concluded that people reap significant health benefits when they walk 4,000 steps per day. They did find that increases in daily steps beyond 4,000 yielded progressive health benefits, but only to a point. The benefits leveled off at around 7,500 steps per day.

(11:48 - 11:54)
This is yet another example of more is not necessarily better. Better is better. There's always an effective dose.

(11:55 - 12:17)
Ironically enough, this aligns pretty closely with my anecdotal observation that 5,000 steps per day was my sweet spot. And I'll admit it, I really like it when research backs up anecdotal observations. And so between the research and my anecdotal observations of athletes and my self-experimentation, I recommend that athletes consider walking 4,000 to 5,000 steps per day in addition to any workouts that they do.

(12:17 - 12:36)
For most people, walking 4,000 to 5,000 steps per day takes approximately 45 minutes. For my part, I don't care if the steps are all completed at once or if they are the sum of several different bouts of walking sprinkled throughout the day. Though it's worth noting that there is research that shows that longer bouts of walking do have more health benefits than little microbursts of walking.

(12:37 - 12:57)
Some people have told me over the years that they don't have that much time. And I can definitely acknowledge and I see that this is true for some people. But what I've also observed, and this is going to be hard to hear folks, so just bear with me, what's probably more true is that most people, especially Americans, probably don't want to make the time for this.

(12:58 - 13:19)
Think about it. Are you really so busy that you don't have 4 to 5 times per day that you can walk for 8 to 10 minutes at a time? That would be all it would take to get to 4,000 to 5,000 steps per day. You get up and take a little microwalk in the middle of your workday every couple of hours, which not only is good for physical benefits, but it actually helps cognitively too with your work.

(13:20 - 13:29)
You could do a walking commute before your work and at the end of your work. You could go for a walk after dinner with the family. You could go for a morning walk when you first get up.

(13:29 - 13:47)
There's so many different creative ways to incorporate these little microbursts of walking throughout the day. And I do believe that a lot of people probably have time for at least part of this, if not all of it, if they make the time. Because for my part, I found that taking an honest look at how I was actually spending my time on a daily basis yielded some really valuable insights.

(13:47 - 14:03)
I realized that I was spending my time on things that really did not actually matter to me. Some examples include time on social media and screen time, which is watching TV or watching YouTube or other media. My mental and physical health matter more to me than most things.

(14:03 - 14:18)
It's evident in what I do for recreation and it's evident in what I do for my job. And if that really is true, I need to demonstrate that via my behaviors, not just my words. So I cut back on the things that didn't actually matter to me as much, so I could spend time on the things that do.

(14:18 - 14:35)
And you know what? It turns out that when I wasn't spending my time doing things I didn't actually care about, I had time for the things that did. Walking may very well be undervalued and underrated by endurance athletes. Sure, it doesn't generate endorphins or a runner's high the same way that other types of higher intensity workouts do.

(14:36 - 14:56)
But walking has a valuable and important place in the world of endurance sports, and athletes would be wise to consider its place in their daily lives. Consider evaluating how much you are walking in addition to your workouts and see if a consistent walking habit helps you feel stronger in your workouts and more healthy overall. That was another episode of the Full Circle Podcast.

(14:57 - 15:13)
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(15:13 - 15:37)
As always, we love to hear from you and we value your feedback. Please send us an email at podcast at fullcircleendurance.com or visit us at fullcircleendurance.com backslash podcast. To find training plans, see what other coaching services we offer, or to join our community, please visit fullcircleendurance.com. I'm Coach Laura Henry. 

Thanks for listening.