Get Started - Walking Challenge Day 1

Are you ready to turn your daily walks into a personalized journey of fitness, motivation, and fun?

Welcome to the Coached Walk Workout Challenge—a unique, 7-day engaging, and entirely FREE way to get you moving, motivated, and sticking to new and healthy habits.

Why Take the Challenge?

Elevate your daily walks from routine and mundane. The Coached Walking Challenge is not just about steps; it's a transformative adventure. The topics we’ll cover include: 

• The joy of movement
• Hidden well-being and mental health benefits
• Tips for getting your family and pets walking with you
• How to walk mindfully
• Are evening walks or morning walks better?
• How walking unblocks creativity and helps you stay focused
• And much more

The challenge is part of the walking podcast series, Walking and Talking with Helen.

A Challenge for Everyone and Every Level:

No matter your fitness level, this walking challenge meets you where you are. Whether you're just starting or a seasoned walker, I’ve got your back. It's not about big leaps; it's about small, sustainable steps that fit seamlessly into your life.

Slip on your walking shoes and let’s get started. Day 1 is here.

PS. You can start whenever you want. The day 1 episode is released on January 1, 2024 with a new challenge episode every day.
 
Community:

This challenge is designed for you to just jump in. For accountability, you can post photos or images of you walks, along with comments or questions, to your fave social media accounts using the hashtag #walktalkwithhelen. It's a way for us to all stay connected and be accountable. 

Check out:
Day 2 - Mindful Walking

Transcript

We're going to take a deep breath in through the nose. We're going to exhale through the mouth, and we're just going to start walking. Give yourself a warm up. Start not too fast, not too slow. Shake out your hands, shake out your feet a little bit. 

We're going to warm up your joints. So just swing your arms gently. You can go front to back, around out to the side, flap your wings like a birdie. It’s up to you. 

We're just going to get going because none of us have time for that. We do not. So we're just going to start with a bang. Going to get our blood flowing. We are going to prime our bodies for the walking. Another deep breath in through the nose, and exhale through your mouth.

If you've never walked with me before, I'll explain as we go along what we're doing. If you have walked with me, then you already know that I'm a giant fan of oxygen. It's important, and I talk about it all the time, almost as much as I talk about chocolate, or even cats. You're going to hold a warm up speed here, and you're going to shake out your toes a little bit, and maybe do some torso twists, so you just move your upper body a little bit side to side while you're walking, stretch out that torso.

 You can even lift your knees. You can do toe taps. If you're not walking outside, if the weather's bad or you just don't have the opportunity, there's a lot of things you can do inside. I'm going to say like go faster or go harder when we do a little bit more work, so you can just go harder.  If you're on the elliptical machine, let's say, going as fast as you comfortably can, you can just add a little more incline, or whatever they call it. I haven't been elliptical for a really long time. 

Stay with that warmup speed. Keep your breathing going, roll those shoulders backwards, roll those shoulders forwards, nice, deep breath in through the nose. I always say nice. I mean, we're not going to say mean deep breath. Exhale through your mouth.

You can dance walk. You can just dance walk around your house. You can use a treadmill, and you can adjust the incline. Or if you have an indoor bike or a rowing machine. If you're marching in place you could actually just go up and down some stairs.

You know, and just get a little harder work out. If you're at a gym, and you have an indoor walking track, you could walk there. Or, of course, one of my favorites is mall walking. You can go early. Like before there are a lot of people there and you can just do your challenge in the mall because there's lots and lots of room to walk around.

Now go a little faster. Nothing too crazy yet. You can also create a mini circuit in your home. So you can go from room to room to room to room. And if you want to walk around you can also pick things up and move things around and clean because then it's like a double whammy.

Each day we're going to talk about something that hopefully you'll find helpful and we're going to go on a coach walk at the same time. With my usual podcast episodes, I make two versions: one with background walking music, one without. I'm not sure yet if that is what I'm going to do or not here because it takes a long time and I don't know if I have the time to put the music on.

And if not, you can just walk to the rhythm in your head. Hold on to that pace a little bit more than a warmup speed. And if you want to do more - for example, if you want to work a little bit harder and maybe you can't go faster wherever you're walking - you could try to do some walking lunges or a curb.

You can step up and down on a curb. You can step up and down on a bench or on someone's pavers as long as you don't break them. (I'm a champion of breaking people's things when I go visit so for me I probably wouldn't do that.) But if you're not a big breaker like I am then you could step up and down on pavers. There's a lot of things outside too that you can find to give you a little bit more of a push.

Now a little faster. Also normally during my regular episodes I tend to do more intervals but during the walking challenge we're just going to go progressively faster or work progressively harder so it'll be a little bit easier for you to follow if you've never done this kind of walking before.

Another deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. I'm always going to remind you about the breathing. When I used to teach spin for, what, 15 years, I always used to remind everybody to breathe, and also to relax their shoulders. And I'm going to do the same for you because it helps me remember, by reminding you to do it.

We get so focused and we get tense and our shoulders go up, and then our hands get tight, and then we don't fill our lungs all the way. Now hold on to that pace. 

That way you know pretty much where that halfway marker is. Another deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. You're going to relax your stomach when you breathe in. And don't worry, no one's looking. You're going to relax your stomach. And then when you exhale, you're going to use your stomach a little bit to just pull your stomach in to expel all that air.

I like to think about it as like we're bringing in fresh air and then we're expelling stale air. Go a little faster.

Another deep breath in. Now if any point you feel like slowing down and you feel like you don't want to hold your speed, you don't have to. Or maybe you can't. Maybe you're in a city with lots of crosswalks and people. Then you just do what you can. This is for you and this is all about what you need and what you want to do.

Be in touch with your body and feel exactly like what's going on in your body. And then you just take it from there because we want to be gentler with ourselves. We're not always the gentlest with ourselves. We're great with other people, but we're not always a gentlest with ourselves.

If there's no music with this episode, you're just going to find your natural rhythm. Kind of like, “let's groove tonight. Boom, boom, boom, boom.” You know, think of your favorite songs. Like, what would be a good warmup? What would be a good song for faster? Would be good song for your cool down.

Roll those shoulders back and then roll them forward. Now do a little bit of an intensity boost here now. You're going to take lots of deep breaths in. And as we walk, just kind of pay attention to how your body feels. Pay attention to your surroundings, to the breeze. If there's any sun, if there's birds chirping and just kind of like take this moment for you, if possible, put your phone on do not disturb.

And that way you can have just some time. You know, where you can just take a moment and focus on you feel, how good it feels just to actually be more positive and get fresh air that precious oxygen flowing. Hold on to that little intensity boost there. Keep breathing.

Relax your hands too, because a lot of times we squeeze them a little too tight. And as you're holding on to that intensity boost, we're going to talk about the lesser-known benefits of walking. Now, most of us are familiar with the more standard benefits: making you happier, burning some calories, getting fresh air, getting some vitamin D.

But there are some that we don't really think about. And one of the ones is it really helps your joints; all of your joints. Now, any kind of movement, you know, be cause we all sit too much. And I am, yes, I am guilty of that as well. Any kind of movement helps lubricate those joints. But walking is so great for that because it lubricates the joints and it strengthens the joints.

Walking can also prevent arthritis and you get that fresh blood circulating. I'm all about the fresh blood, the fresh oxygen. Hold onto that boost. It also helps with your digestion, so it stimulates your digestive system and it reduces some common issues like bloating, constipation, gas. It really helps get everything going, as you already have heard, I'm sure, in the past on that.

Roll those shoulders. Also it improves your posture. So, walking helps strengthen your core muscles and it helps promote better posture that way. Also, when you roll your shoulders forward, roll your shoulders back, you're going to get naturally into a better posture.

And another benefit is it helps boost your immunity. Now, most exercises are really good for boosting your immunity, but walking helps enhance your immune system, you know, which will help protect you against illnesses. So those are like some of the lesser-known benefits of walking. Deep breath in. Now, in case you don't know, this is an unscripted show.

I have some notes to remember that I wanted to share with you and that's about it. So we just go off of the conversation, wherever it takes us.

You want to be a little uncomfortable with this boost. It's not super hard. It's just faster than the warmup and it get everything going and wake everything up.

Another deep breath in through your nose, exhale through your mouth. And you feel the power in your legs when you walk. So feel like you're getting a burst of power with every step. You want to engage your muscles, engage the muscles in the legs, engage the muscles in your glutes. Squeeze your butt when you're walking, and just kind of like let the momentum build by connecting with these parts of your body, the parts in your lower body.

Everything is strong and everything is steady, but you're relaxing your core when you breathe, relaxing your stomach. You're breathing in through the nose. You're exhaling through the mouth and you're just really keeping nice powerful lower body with powerful steps.

You can back off on the burst a little bit if you want. It's totally up to you. Take another deep breath in.

So we already know that walking is really good for your mental health. It's really good with increasing your mood, but it also reduces stress. So it releases endorphins, which is my favorite hormone. When I used to teach spin, I used to call it chasing endorphins. Beause I would get my heart rate up and I'd be really happy after.

I never wanted to go, but because I was teaching, I had to show up. And once class was over, I felt so good. It releases endorphins, it lowers your cortisol levels and it just makes you feel calmer overall and helps with your mood. It works is it increases your serotonin. If you're familiar with some antidepressants, they can help increase your serotonin, but you can do this naturally with your walking.

And then of course that reduces depression and also reduces anxiety. Sometimes when I'm really anxious, I just go for a walk and I listen to - snot a serial killer books  because that does not help with anxiety - but I listen to something a little bit more relaxing, maybe some good music or maybe something more positive or even an affirmation-type YouTube video.

Another deep breath in through your nose. And exhale through your mouth again. Check in with your body. Check in for any tense spots. You want to be strong and centered, but you don't want to be overly tight, except you can always squeeze those glutes.

Because that really gives you some power. It makes it a lot easier to get some power behind your steps.

And speaking of boost, we boost our creativity with walking. I don't know if you've ever noticed this or not, but a lot of times when I'm stuck on something - I can run my own business. I do graphic design and I have a marketing agency -sometimes I'll just look at the screen and I'll be just completely stuck.

And no matter what I do, I just can't get out of that. Like I'm looking at the screen and nothing's happening and I cannot come up with a design or the words. And so what I do is I'll just get out and go for a walk and put on a really good song, something that pumps me up. But it has been shown to really help foster different kinds of thinking and unlocks your creativity.

Do a little bit of a speed increase.

Society is not really designed for yet for this, but if you were working on a problem at work and you could walk with a coworker or a team member or several team members and you brainstorm while you're walking, that would be amazing. Because you when you're doing rhythmic things like that it really helps free your mind.

So that's why I used to also love spinning because once you get on the bike, you close your eyes, you get in the groove of things. It's amazing just how your mind just starts to roam and come up with all these amazing solutions. Hold on to that little bit uncomfortable pace.

 It's not going to be too hard. Inhale through your nose, fill up that stomach area, even though we know we don't have lungs in the stomach, it gives you a visual. And then when you exhale, you're going to just try to squeeze that tummy to empty all that air out.

Roll those shoulders backwards, roll those shoulders forward, one foot in front of the other. You just going to think about the present where you are. You're going to think about how your body's feeling and nothing else right now. 

But all of us can use this, you know, centering and grounding ourselves. So use these moments, these sessions of walking to help ground you.

Find your rhythm, find your zone and breathe. Just feel how good it feels for your body to move. Walking in particular also helps with your sleep quality because it really helps get your calming effect in. And in some of these later episodes, we're actually going to talk about walking morning versus evening. I've done some research on it, so I wanted to share that information with you and how it can help you sleep, and how it can also help you get started with your day.

So it really depends if you're a night person or morning person . But walking really helps your sleep quality, especially if you get out first thing in the morning - even if it's short and you get that sun in your eyes - really helps reset your body clock.

Now deep breath in. Go just a little bit faster.

We are going to awaken all those senses. Check in with your body. Breathe. If you feel industrious right now, you could do some walking lunges. You could do some step ups on a curb. You could do some step ups on those… what are those things? I just said them earlier. The things in the ground, planter things. I tell you, being 57 is no fun because that word is now permanently gone.

Deep breath in again. You can push it up a little bit as we go and you can find things like a hill. Go charge up the hill. You'll feel that power.

It's so empowering when your body just syncs up and connects and you can just do something you didn't think that you could do. And that's also part of the point of this walking challenge. To kind of get you into walking, get you into moving, relaxing your feet, relaxing your hands. And taking this time for you. 

Some of you are probably too young, but do you remember that song by John Denver? I think it's just called Sunshine. Sunshine on your shoulders makes you happy. Makes me happy, but we're going to say sunshine on your shoulders makes you happy. Air filling your lungs makes you naturally high. See, I just made a new lyric. 

It's true. You feel so much more awake when you get that oxygen through your system and when you fill up those lungs. And also here's something that, I needed to tell you and I almost forgot.  According to Harvard Health, if you walk 30 minutes a day, it reduces your risk of heart disease by about 30%.

It doesn't seem like a lot, but 30 percent is a big decrease and all you have to do is get out and walk. You can also break it up. We're also going to talk about that in some of the other challenge days. Another deep breath in. Okay, I lied. We're just going to go a little bit faster right now. Let's do a little intensity boost right here.

Just a little push. It's okay. I lie all the time to myself, to you, to my students. I used to say, okay, the interval is almost done, and then the interval would not be done. But then, you know, at the end, they would be happy and they'd forget that I directly lied to them about how much work was left. 

There was another study I think at Stanford, where they found that walking can boost your creative thinking by 60%. So, when we do get stuck, get out there for a walk. You'll boost that creativity by 60%. 

Another deep breath in through your nose and hold on to that push. Relax those shoulders. I want you to roll them forward and roll them back. Take another deep breath in and exhale. So these walks will be all different lengths

You don't have to start on any specific day, although it would be good to start with day one just so you can kind of get the introduction to it. You don't have to do them in order. You don't have to start on January 1st. You don't have to start on a Monday. You can start anytime you want. Slow it down just a little.

That's one thing I wrote in my book (I wrote a book in 2012 and then I wrote a followup book after that). But I talk about just doing what's right for you to get fitter and healthier and not doing what everybody else says, but just finding what works for you Because we can't go 100 percent - or 200 percent as I like to say or 400 percent - we can't go all out because it's not sustainable.

We can't keep up the five days a week at the gym. We can't keep that up, usually. We can't keep up, you know, the no carbs, usually. We can't keep up no sugar, usually. I refuse to give up sugar and caffeine and gluten because that's just who I am. My shoulders, when I was talking just now, went up because I started to get stressed. So I'm going to bring my shoulders back down. You too. 

Slow it down just a little more. Ffind what works for you, something that makes your life feel like it has quality, something that makes you happy, something that you can sustain because that's how you keep going. 

Small habits, small changes, small things we do for our health are certainly doable. You can walk 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes during your break at work. 

Slow it down just a little bit more. Feel the surroundings around you. Become aware of everything, how your body feels.Another deep breath in.

So we're going to wind it down. You're going to go back into a little more relaxed pace. You're going to feel any tension in your body just melting away. You've been out there moving your body. And now we're just going to slow everything down a little.

If you want to do more than one episode once we get a few episodes under our belts, you can do more than if want to walk longer. You can put on some music after this. When I used to be a personal trainer I used to tell clients, “Okay, we're going to do 15 bicep curls, bit if you’re not tired by the 15th rep, keep going. It doesn’t matter what I say. If your muscle is not tired, you don't stop at 15.” And the same thing with you, when you're doing this walking challenge. You're doing this for you and you're  learning how your body works.

If you want to go longer, put on some music and go longer.

We're going to finish strong with just a few deep breaths. One of my favorite things to say is inhale energy or positivity, and exhale any remaining tension. You did a great job, and I would love for you to share this walking challenge with others. It's totally free. Share with anybody you think who would love to get out there and give it a try.

I do this as a labor of love. There are no advertisers. I'm not selling you anything. If you would like to donate to the walking challenge, you can do that at https://ko-fi.com/walkandtalk. I have donation options of three dollars, five dollars, whatever you want. One time or monthly. If you don’t want to that is absolutely OK and not what this is about. Donations do help me make all these episodes for you.

Okay, take another deep breath in in through your nose, relax your stomach and exhale. Oh yes, one last thing, as you know, me and my memory… is that I would love for us to use a hashtag so we can keep each other accountable and we're going to talk about accountability in future episodes.

So let’s do #walktalkwithhelen.  If you want to take a picture of your shoes, your feet, or what you're seeing around you, hat would be so cool. And you use that hashtag on any of your social media. You can take a video of your surroundings. And that way we know that you're part of the challenge and we'll create a little community so that we can help each other stay accountable and help each other do this. And that way I can also communicate with you. Feel free to message me. I am on Instagram, I believe it's yourwalkingpodcast, and same thing with Facebook - I have a page yourwalkingpodcast.

And the podcast website, which I need to update with the other latest episodes, is walkingandtalking.show. 

When you get back or when you're done, just do a little bit of stretching. Stretch out your calves. Stretch out the front of your thighs. Oh, I love to stretch out my hips.

On the podcast page itself, I will put some suggested stretches so you can see maybe what you can do afterwards.

So that will be walkingandtalking.show but I'm a little slow getting episodes up there. Like my eyes are bigger than my stomach. My ambition is always bigger than my available time. Isn't that the same with all of us?

And let's keep walking and I will see you tomorrow.