Walking Workout with Family or Dog - Walking Challenge Day 6

In Day 6 of our walking challenge, we’re ditching solo walks and turning our strolls into calorie-blasting walking workouts for the whole family (furry family members and friends, too). Keeping things fun and ever-changing is how you create a consistent walking  habit.

Highlights:

Groups walks:

• Strengthen bonds with family and friends: Share laughter, stories, and fresh air. Walking conversations go deeper than phone chats.
• Built-in accountability: Committing to each other keeps you moving towards your fitness goals. 
• Pet health: Unleash your furbaby's playfulness, reduce boredom, and keep your pet in tip-top shape. 

And yes, Helen used to walk her cats on a leash as a teen in Norway...

Stay motivated:

• Include scavenger hunts on your walks: Keep everyone interested with nature-themed treasure hunts, perfect for all ages.
• Turn up the fitness factor: Add quick bursts of jumping jacks, squats, push-ups, monkey bars for a mini workout on the go.
• Create your own fantasy land: Take turns making up a ridiculous continuous tale inspired by your surroundings.

Build healthy habits together:

• Set a consistent time: Find a schedule that works for all.
• Everyone has a voice: Take turns choosing the route and activities.
• Spend quality time: Ditch the interruptions and focus on the fun.
• Capture the fun: Take pictures and videos, and use the hashtag 

Share your walks using the hashtag #walktalkwithhelen, and invite your friends and family.

There is a bell at the halfway point if you want to turn around. Grab your walking shoes and let's go.

Transcript

Here's a dramatic reading of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day.
I walk a lonely road, the only one that I have ever known. Don't know where it goes, but it's home to me, and I walk alone. My shadow's the only one who walks beside me. My shadow's heart's the only thing that's beating.

Boom! But you don't have to walk alone if you involve your friends, family, or your pets, especially dogs. I mean, I've walked cats before when I was a kid growing up in Norway. I actually trained all my cats to walk on a leash. Yes, I did. And so I never walked alone. Oh, sometimes I wish I could have walked alone.

If you've been doing this consistently, this will be day six. So that means that you've learned how to walk more mindfully and when is the best time of day to walk for you. We're going to talk about walking with pets or with family or friends.

One of the benefits of walking with someone else or your pet is that it strengthens your bonds. Normally, I would say that walking together provides dedicated time to talk about your day or what's going to happen, or just bonding and conversation. But I do talk to pets. So I think that also applies to pets, not just humans. When I was walking the kids to school, it was nice because we got to spend that dedicated time together. We were walking; they couldn't really be on their phones as much because we were walking, and we had that time. It was a consistent time where we could hang out together.

Walking with friends, like if we go to that coffee shop like we talked about yesterday, how about you walk with your friend or with your neighbor, and they can share personal stories, and you can bond with your friend or your spouse. With your kids, you could share your plans for the day. You can just hang out or enjoy each other's company. You don't even have to talk to each other. You can just put on music and walk, just being next to somebody and feeling someone else's energy also does wonders for you.
And everybody who walks together gets a workout. It could be your cats, your dogs—although it's hard to walk with cats, but I've done it—your kids, your family members, because we all tend to just go home and sit down, go home and get our computers, go home and be on our phones. But when we do something together like walking, it's so great for everybody involved because you get that time together, and everybody works out, everybody gets that fresh oxygen that I harp on every single day. Everybody feels refreshed and bonded. And kids really can benefit just to get away from their computers and get away from the TV. And a lot of times, especially bigger dogs, high-energy dogs, they need to get out and they need to move. And so you can really get them out there consistently.

When you make walking a part of your life and their lives, if you walk in the mornings together, it really helps bond but also helps get a good positive and uplifting start to the day because you can talk about uplifting things. It's easy for us to fall into the trap of just complaining about things, but think in advance. If you're walking with your kids, for example, ask them what's going on today at school? What's going on today at sports? What could you do to move that conversation into a positive way? So when they get to school, they have a positive mindset, and they're ready to take on the day. 

And with pets, if you're going to work and leave them all day, they get that time with you in the morning, and they can play, and then they feel happy and they feel good, and they got to work out and they got fresh air too. And you can just really share the stories and create positivity, and you can share moments of joy. You can share fun stories. You can share things that are difficult to talk about, which sometimes are really good to do during a walk when you're moving. 

Walking with friends, family, pets helps create healthy habits for everybody. If you walk with your kids, you're setting a good example. So if you're consistently walking and you're walking with them, they will learn that at an early age. So for them, it seems perfectly normal that everybody should be walking instead of driving their cars everywhere. And again with your pets, you're creating healthy habits for your pets. All of your pets need exercise. They get bored. That's when they get destructive. Give them something to do. Give them some fun, stimulate them. They get a change in their environment, especially dogs. They see new things, they have new smells, and you don't always get a super good workout if your dog's stopping to sniff, but you know what? It really will stimulate their minds and just give them an overall better day. And for dogs especially, they can run off steam, and those high-energy dogs, you know who I'm talking about. If you're a fur parent of a high-energy dog, you know they need this. And doing it in the morning can really set their day off on a better path.

So walking with your pets also helps keep them at a healthier weight. Everybody needs exercise. We need exercise. They need exercise. But a big problem with pets is that they have a lot of obesity-related issues. So if we can keep their weight down in a healthy way, it's a win-win for everybody, you and your fur baby. And then they need joint health just like we do. They need their joints lubricated. And if it's an older dog, for example, you could just go for a little walk, a slower walk. Get them out there, get them moving because they're so happy, and it will help lubricate those joints. If you consistently do it, maybe they won't have so many problems as they continue to age.
Also, when you walk, it gives you a chance for social opportunities, interactions. If you're walking your dog, you can meet other pet owners. You can talk, you can stop, take a break, make a new friend, talk about your pets. You can meet your neighbors. You can talk more to your neighbors. You can see neighbors that are two streets over, and you can build that sense of community. So getting out there, especially if you live alone, getting out there walking when other people are walking really helps build you a network of people that you know. They may not be your besties, but there are people out there that you may want to get to know. You never know how great it would be to have them in your life. 

Of course, the best benefit is it's time together with your pets, with your humans, with the humans, with all of our humans. Everybody needs that time together. And pets especially look forward to the walks. They don't complain as much as kids do. They're like, yes. Well, dogs, I mean, cats complain. Dogs are like, yes, I can't believe it. We're going to walk. We're going to have so much fun because every day is the best day of my life. So if you take them out there and you take them walking, you get that quality time together when you're not looking at your phone or distracted, they get that one-on-one time with you.

I'm going to give you some ideas for things that you can do to make walks more fun, both for you, your friends, family, and your pets. You can create a scavenger hunt, something really easy. You can make a list for your kids, maybe not your friends, unless you scavenge from Starbucks to Starbucks, which I could do very easily. You can tell your kids, "Okay, today we're going to look for five of these items." Like how many white cars do you see? Make a little scavenger hunt to help them find different things, to help them get engaged so they want to walk. You want to motivate them to walk. 

Find things that you know are on the route but they may not know and have them find them. You'll be surprised at how many bunny rabbit decor things there are, and you haven't noticed them. Well, your kids will find them, and they'll be looking and they'll be active and they won't be on their phones. And they won't be complaining because they'll be looking for something. It can be a special flower. It could be a weird-shaped leaf. They could be looking for a certain bird. If you have different kinds of birds, there are so many things that you could see on the route that you can tell them in advance. And this is what we're going to look for today. This is our scavenger hunt, and you can do the same thing with your dog. You could distract them, hide the treat or the toy, then they can have their own scavenger hunt.

You can include short intervals like this one with jumping jacks, squats. Your kids can go up a ladder to a slide and then slide down. You can have them go across the monkey bars. You can set up little challenges for your kids, your friends. You and your spouse, with your dog. You could throw Frisbee, you could throw a ball. So you would have like certain challenges. "Okay. So we're going to catch this ball five times." No, not that your dog can count, but maybe. You set up little fitness challenges. So they get a little interval workout too, and it's actually really fun. You could do push-ups on a park bench. You could do dips. There's a lot of things that you can do. Create those little fitness challenges. You can also do storytelling walks. So everybody can take a turn creating a continuous story. You've seen this before, probably; you might have done it. I've never done it, but it seems like it'd be so much fun. 

Where you start, and then each family member or your friends continue the sentence. So you can start with "once upon a time." And then they grab the story from there, and then someone else grabs the story, and someone else grabs the story. And you can also incorporate things that you are seeing in your environment. And you can make a story out of it. You create an environment that makes you look forward to your walks. Pet-friendly parks are great. And they even have trails that are pet-friendly. Can go to a dog park, just let them smell the new scents and the sights and just have some fun. Everybody gets to get out. Everybody gets to get exercise. Everybody gets to walk. And it gets us away from our electronics, from our TVs, from our sofas, and lets us do something good for ourselves that can also be really fun.

The best way to incorporate this for your family, friends, and pets is to set a consistent time. So find a time that works for everybody because that's how you're going to stick with it. Is it in the mornings? Is it in the afternoons? Is it in the evenings? You know, what works best for everybody? You want to try to encourage people to make it as much as they can. Maybe you walk to school. Or maybe after you drop the kids off at school, you go for a walk with your friend. Or maybe in the evening, you walk with your significant other. Or you walk with your dog. Or you can still walk with a friend in the evening. It's nice to get that wind-down time together. Take a deep breath in now through your nose. Exhale through your mouth, make it fun. Make it enjoyable. Tailor it to their interests. Because you're not gonna do things you don't want to do in the long run. None of us are. And then rotate the responsibility. You can each take turns deciding where are we going to go? What are we going to do and come up with ideas and come up with activities. Everybody has a turn at doing that. And then everybody has that buy-in, that skin in the game. I forgot if I mentioned about the hashtag. 

So when you're out doing these fun activities with your family, pets, or friends, take a picture, take a video of your environment, the birds, the water, your shoes, your dog. #walkandtalkwithhelen is the hashtag that way we can keep each other accountable. I would love if you would share this challenge with your family and friends they can jump in any time. The challenge is completely free.  And I will see you tomorrow.