Although just making an effort to walk more will benefit your health in many ways, having a walk schedule will help you to be more organised and focused with your walking. This daily walk plan uses intervals at two different speeds to help you get the most out of your walking. It’s a 4 week plan and each week the number of steps at the faster speed increases and the number of steps at the slower speed decreases. As a result, your fitness will be improving each week without you having to spend more time walking. The walks should take around 20 minutes and ideally you should aim to walk 5-7 days per week.
Safety and wellbeing
Walking is a safe and natural activity, but please read these general exercise guidelines before starting the program.
You should wear flat, comfortable shoes for your walking. You will probably get warmer as your walking speed increases, so it’s a good idea to wear a jacket or jumper that you can easily take off and carry.
Make sure you stay well hydrated. You should take a bottle of water on your walks and sip frequently.
The 4 week daily walk plan
The walks can be done outdoors or on a treadmill. If you’re using a treadmill, then the schedule is very easy to follow. You just set the right speed (see below) for the level and then walk for the time at that level. If you’re walking outside, you need a route that is the right distance. The easiest way to achieve this is to walk for half the walk time given and then turn around and go back.
The walks are split up into 5 intervals, which alternate between walking at level 1 and level 2:
Level 1: this is normal walking pace. For the average person, this would be about 3mph.
Level 2: a little faster. At this speed, you start to feel warm and become more aware of your breathing. This would be around 3.5mph.
After a warm up at level 1 for the given number of steps, you speed up and do your level 2 steps. Then you have a recovery interval at level 1, before speeding up again for the 4th interval. The last interval is a cool-down at level 1.
Week 1
The program starts of with a simple 4 minutes for each interval:
Week 2
This week, you lose 2 of the minutes walking at level 1 and gain 2 minutes walking at level 2.
Week 3
The same increase happens again in week 3: there are 2 more minutes at level 2 and 2 minutes less at level 1.
Week 4
For the final week, all level 1 intervals are 2 minutes and the level 2 intervals are 7 minutes.
So by week 4, the distance you cover in the 20 minutes will have increased and you will be spending 14 minutes walking at level 2.
More ideas for a daily walk
