[Walk] Tap Into Your Inner Action Hero: 15-Minute Boredom Buster | 53

A just under 15-minute brisk walk that inspires you to stop acting like an extra in your own life and start training for the lead role.

Walking on the “hamster wheel” gets dull fast. If you’re bored with your routine, let’s steal some tricks from Hollywood. In this world, you aren’t just “exercising”… you’re training for the action scenes of your real life (even if your biggest stunt is sprinting through an airport).

You can do this walk inside at home (treadmill, walking pad, marching in place) or outside. There’s a bell at the halfway point so you know when to turn around, and some background music to help you channel your inner John Wick.

This steady-paced, low-impact walking workout wakes up your brain, burns some calories, gives you around 1,300 steps, and proves that you don’t need a movie contract to train like a badass… because you already rock the free world.

I also wander off into stories about being a vegetarian who didn’t eat vegetables, climbing 300 temple steps in Chiang Mai, falling down the YouTube rabbit hole of John Wick, Jennifer Garner, and Brie Larson’s superhero training, and why hoisting your carry-on by yourself into the overhead bin is an underrated action-hero move.

Tap Follow so your next walk is already waiting for you when you need it.

P.S. Check out yourwalkingpodcast.com to grab my free guides that make walking and healthy habits easier to fit into real life.

Want a different way to start fresh? Listen to episode 50, and grab my totally FREE Kickstart Guide with printable sheets at https://yourwalkingpodcast.com

Transcript

Helen M. Ryan: 0:18

We're going to start at a warmup pace. You can do this walk inside on a treadmill, walking pad, or just marching in place. You can walk outside and there'll be a bell at the halfway point just in case you want to turn around. And you don't even have to walk to listen. You want your workouts to feel like something exciting and not just one more chore that you have to do. You want to feel like the main character in your own life again, and not some bit player. And right now it feels like you're just exercising. Same thing, different day. Hamster wheel. If you're bored, your brain just wants a better story and a reason to move your body. I've started over so many more times than I can count and what finally helped me wasn't burning calories. It was pretending I was training for something specific, like a new role in my life. I was about 200 pounds. I started really small, walking more, adding some protein and some veggies. I was a vegetarian who didn't eat vegetables . I secretly started to dream that maybe one day I'll teach again. That little dream became my training goal. Every walk, or every workout was me training for the version of me who would be in front of a class again, who would be teaching again. So today you're going to borrow that idea. Our brains are so powerful and we're going to convince your brain that you're training for a role and it's your mini Action Hero training session. I know this sounds weird, but kind of stay with me, bear with me. We're going to use our brains to fake ourselves out, and by the end, you'll have a role to train for and hopefully some ideas on how to make your walks and workouts more enticing, more motivating, and not just one more chore that you have to do. Stay with that warmup pace. I'm Helen and this is the Walking and Talking with Helen podcast. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Shoulders are down and relaxed. It's a comfortable pace, like you're walking and talking with a friend. And as you know, when you say I should exercise more, your brain goes dull and it shuts down. If you say I'm training to walk all over a new city or I'm training to feel good on those long days, it feels more specific and it feels more hopeful. Maybe your goal is to stand and dance at longer concerts or festivals. Or maybe just get through a day with a ton of errands or maybe go on a really fun sightseeing trip. When I was in Chiang Mai, Thailand quite a few years ago, we went up to the temple high above the city and it's got a really, really long staircase. It's about 300 plus steps or maybe even more, goes straight up. And I was actually excited to climb them. Because the "training" I'd been doing was all the walking and all the swimming I'd been doing, and it meant I could enjoy this instead of dreading climbing that staircase. My reward was up at the top. It was the view, the temple, the whole experience. You want to keep your goal and your role focused on the future and fun and not just functional, because functional can feel boring. When I was teaching spin at the gym, we had these big glass windows and I would look out and I would see people doing the same thing day in and day out, and they were just going through the motions. They weren't seeing results and there was no passion behind their workouts. If someone was training for something specific, you can see the light in their eyes and you can see the determination, and you could see that they were excited to work out and excited to train, and that's a whole different mentality. You're going to go a little bit faster now. It's strong, but comfortable. If you notice your shoulders creeping up, just let 'em drop and keep your feet moving. As much as I want to be John Wick, you know, I really can't be John Wick. When you think about how Keanu Reeves trained. He spent months and months on fight choreography and judo and on tactical ranges. There's actually some videos on YouTube you could watch. He wanted to do that so the action would look real. And then Jennifer Gardner has played quite a few action roles and when she was training for, I think it was maybe Electra, she was training with swords and all different kinds of things to increase her stamina, but also to increase her upper body strength and agility. Becuase she had to flip out those swords. And do you remember the movie Charlie's Angels? They had to do martial arts, wire work and balance drills so they could flip and kick and land without falling on their faces. So they weren't just training to be in a bikini. They were specifically training for balance and strength and power so that they could look realistic in their roles. When Brie Larson was training for her role, she did really intense workouts, but they included things like hip thrusts and pull-ups because she had to build superhero strength and mindset. It's not just about the strength and about training the actual movements that you're going to do for a role, it's training your mind in order to become that person, to become that character, become the person playing the role. As mere humans without a movie offer and millions of dollars and a trainer or a training team, we can't duplicate their schedules or intensity, and we don't want to. But we can borrow that idea of having something more interesting than exercise in your head. Make it more fun. Make it a challenge. Make it goal specific. We're going to go a little bit faster now. Quicker pace. Arms are helping. Keep your eyes up. It's nice and strong. Going to wake ourselves up, as I like to say. Shake out your shoulders, keep 'em down. Loosen up your hands. You want to be a little uncomfortable here. You're going to push it through. Steady and strong. It's not a sprint, but it's quick. It's going to get that blood pumping. And while you're doing that, think about what would you actually like to be training for right now? Big travel day, where you're walking all over a new city? Or is it standing for three hours at a Springsteen show and actually dancing? Or do you want to spend a long to enjoy it instead of dragging? Or of course, hoisting your own, carry-on bag into the overhead bin with one arm, smooth, strong, independent. And that is a total action hero move if you can do it before everybody else comes, and wants those overhead bins. Stay with that pace. You get to pick a role and change it as often as you want. Like one season you can be training for those travel days, if you have a trip coming up. Another season, you can be training for your version of an action movie day. Your pace right now, that is your training pace for today. If you need to dial it down, everything counts. Stay nice and strong. It's uncomfortable, not a sprint. Shifting your focus away from just exercise and making it more interesting and training for a specific goal makes all the difference. You're training for your inner superhero because what would your inner superhero do? We're so much stronger than we think and we can physically do so much more than we think. You know how good you feel after you see an action move and you think, Hey, I could do that. I want to be like that person. You want to channel that, feel it in your body, feel it in your bones. You can go back and feel how that emotion made you feel inside and tap into that when you don't want to walk or you don't want to exercise. That's why I call it our superhero mentality. Borrowing some superhero "recharging-ness." t's really about just reprogramming your brain and the way you think. And becoming more of an active role in your fitness and more of an active participant in your life, so you can do the things that you want to do. You can do the traveling, you can do the playing, you can go to the concerts, you can do the things that bring you joy. Not feel like you're holding yourself back, and sure, not all of us want to walk up hills, but if you're planning on walking up hills on a vacation, start practicing for that now. If you're going to be windsurfing, practice your balance, practice your core. Get that leg strength in there. Because life is short. We really want to start making things fun in our lives. Put on your favorite song and walk or dance. Have a good time. Become someone else in the moment, become the superhero. Become the actor. Become the person who does all the things that you want to do. Slow your pace. Let it soften. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Roll the shoulders backwards. Big rolls. Creek clunk. Roll it forward. Big, big, big rolls all the way up, all the way around. Oh, today, both shoulders are cracking. Usually it's only one shoulder. Usually it's my right shoulder. It's a slower pace. We're slowly going to bring our heart rate back down. If you were able to get in your head for a moment and to walk with a role in mind instead of just getting your steps in, notice how that felt. Connect with that feeling inside you that got you excited about doing this walk, or got you excited about planning a future workout. You're not training for a movie, but you're training for all the future scenes that are coming up in your life. We have to play games with our own minds because, you know, none of us want to really work out. When we're nice and warm and toasty in bed with our cats or our dogs, we don't want to get up and go for a walk. This is a way that you can, in a nice way, force yourself to do that and change your brain, which then will change your health and your body and really everything else about your life. Feel for any tense spots in your body. You want to release whatever spots are tight.. I t's really about just reprogramming the way you think and like I get to work out today. slow it down a little bit more. So before you forget, because if you're like me, you will, pick one role that you want to train for this week. Think about what's coming up. A travel day, festival day, busy errand day, playing with your grandkids day, whatever feels fun. And the next time you're going to go for a walk or you're going to do a workout, remind yourself I am training for that. That's what I'm doing today. I see a few curbs. I'm going to step up and down on that because I want to bump up my heart rate or make my legs stronger. You pass a playground, you can do some exercises on the swing set. Always think in your mind, I am training for that specific fun thing that's coming up. Another deep breath in through your nose and exhale, blow all that stale air out. Make sure we hit follow, so any new walks I have will show right up on your app. You can also save this episode, if you kind of lose your motivation, which all of us do. I'll go to a movie, I'll feel really energized and powerful, and the next day, all that excitement is gone. So you can re-listen to this episode to help power you back up again. Make sure you take some time to stretch, especially the front of your thighs and your calves. And I'll see you next time.