This is a simple 30 minutes a day 6 week walking challenge, based on 2 walking speeds. It’s suitable for complete beginners, all you need to do to start is be able to walk at a normal pace. As you progress through the challenge the time you spend walking at a faster speed will increase.

About the 6 week walking challenge

There are 2 walking speeds in this challenge – normal walking pace and fast walking. Normal walking speed is just how you would usually walk. For most people this is around 3mph. Fast walking is a speed that makes you feel warm and a little out of breath – for most people this will be around 4mph. If your walking speeds are slower than this, that’s not a problem, you’ll still lose weight and improve your fitness.

What you will need

• Shoes that you are comfortable to walk for 30 minutes in
• Comfortable clothing – ideally you should dress in layers as you will get warmer as you walk
• A water bottle
• Some way of timing your walks. This could be a fitness watch, a phone app or a stopwatch.

Planning your route

It’s tricky to get the route planning exactly right, because you’ll be covering more distance as the challenge progresses and you start to walk faster.

The most straightforward thing to do each day is to walk for 15 minutes in one direction and then turn around and walk back. This won’t be 100% accurate after the first week, because the warm up and cool down phases aren’t equal in length on most of the days. Sometimes your cool down will end up being a little longer and sometimes a little shorter than what is shown on the chart. But it won’t be a significant difference.

As far as the length of your route goes, taking the average walking speeds of 3mph for normal pace and 4mph for fast walking, the distance covered in the first week would be 1.5 miles and the distance covered in the last couple of days would be around 1.9 miles. So if you plan a 1 mile route, that should be long enough for the whole challenge. At the start you’ll only cover about 0.75 miles before you turn around, but as the challenge progresses you’ll be walking further along your route.

Of course, if you’re using a treadmill then that’s much easier. All you need to do is walk for the given times at each speed.

6 week walking challenge chart

The chart shows the number of minutes normal walking pace and fast walking pace that you should do each day.

The benefits of walking

#1 Burns calories

An obvious one. The more active you are, the more calories you burn.

#2 Makes your heart stronger

When we exercise, our heart has to work harder to get more blood to the working muscles. It adapts to this by growing bigger and stronger. This means we have more energy and a healthier heart.

#3 Improves your circulation

As well as improvements to heart function, the circulatory system also adapts to become more efficient at delivering the blood to the muscles.

#4 Reduces stress and anxiety

All exercise can be beneficial to mental health, but walking outdoors is particularly beneficial.

#5 Improves mood

As well as reducing stress and anxiety, exercise causes endorphins to be released, which give rise to feelings of wellbeing.

#6 Strengthens your muscles, ligaments and tendons

Although walking won’t strengthen the muscles and other tissues as much as strength training, it does have a strengthening effect.

#7 Improves your flexibility

Lack of movement makes muscles tight. Regular exercise maintains muscle length.

#8 Improves your balance and coordination

All exercise is good for balance and coordination. If you walk on different surfaces, in different weather conditions and on different gradients, all these factors help to improve balance and coordination.

#9 Helps build or maintain bone mineral density (meaning reduced risk of osteoporosis)

Loss of bone mineral density is a problem for women as we get older, especially after menopause. It makes our bones more prone to fracture and can become a serious health problem, known as osteoporosis. The best protection against loss of bone density is weight bearing exercise. After middle age, the potential to build bone density is limited, but weight bearing exercise will still help to maintain existing density. Weight bearing exercise means exercise in which we are on our feet, supporting our body weight and moving around. Obviously, walking is a good example of this.

#10 Improves joint mobility

There are two factors to being able to move all our joints freely through a wide range of movement. One is flexibility and the other is having healthy well-lubricated joints. Exercise strengthens the ligaments which keep our joints strong and stimulates the joint lining to produce lubricating fluid.

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