Stick with Walking | 10-Minute Walk 3 of 4 | 71

This is the third walk in my walking series, a guided 10 minute walk to help you stay consistent, even on your busiest days.

Today we’re chatting about one of the biggest secrets to exercise success:

Not motivation. 

Not willpower.

Making it easy enough that you’ll actually do it. 

This is a 10 minute guided walking workout with music and a moderate, refreshing speed. It’s a beginner-friendly, low-impact cardio walk you can do outside, or as an indoor walking workout on your treadmill or walking pad.

Get moving, clear your head, and build a daily walking routine that actually works… for your life (not some fitness influencer's).

If you’ve ever told yourself you’ll start walking when life calms down, when the house is clean, when work slows down, or when everyone stops needing things from you… well, lace up your sneakers. This 10 minute walk gets you started right now.

You get…

• A beginner-friendly, low-impact walking workout
• About 10 minutes of movement and around 1200–1300 steps
• Simple ways to make a daily walking habit easier to stick with
• A low-pressure cardio walk… no pace targets, no perfection

And because sometimes I drift, I also talk about…

• The cozy morning routine that somehow got me exercising at 5:30 a.m. in my pajamas
• Why the famous 10,000-step goal started as a marketing campaign
• Breaking up with my heart rate monitor because it was stressing me out
• Tricking myself into exercising by committing to just five minutes
• How lost earbuds, missing socks, and social media scrolling can derail your awesomely good intentions

This walking podcast includes background music, breathing reminders, and a bell at the halfway point.

If you’re walking for weight loss, stress relief, or just trying to get more daily steps, this 10 minute walk is an easy way to get started. 

Tap Follow so Week 4 is waiting for you in your feed. 

Transcript

0:03

Today's the third walk in a short series to get you moving. This is a moderate steady walking pace, not a power walk. Start walking at a warm-up speed. You can do this walk outside or inside on a treadmill or walking pad or marching or dancing. And as always, there'll be a bell at the halfway point in case you want to turn around. So one fall, I got into a little routine. I got up at 5.30 a. m., and if you know me, I'm not a morning person. It's like hell when my alarm goes off. I would have some green tea. I would turn on the fireplace, and I would exercise my pajamas. I didn't have to drive anywhere. Certainly didn't have to change into real clothes. But I did that almost every single morning. And the weird part is, I didn't dread it. I think the green tea helped. And the fireplace helped. Pajamas helped. It made it more cozy instead of brutal. And sometimes I felt it was a special time for me. The world was sleeping. The kids were sleeping. And I had this little time for me to do something for myself before the day started. Because you know what? Sometimes we just never take time for ourselves. And it wasn't like rise and grind and hustle. It was me half awake, just doing something, doing enough. So today we're making walking easy enough to keep doing. Like your little cozy moment in front of the fireplace. Okay, pick up your pace a little bit. It's steady. Your arms are swinging. Shoulders are down. Jaws loose. Find that slightly faster beat. So this is something I learned recently. I did not know this. The 10,000 step thing. Well, that's not some magical science number. That came from a Japanese pedometer company. They thought it was a good round number. And it looked great in marketing. And somehow we all inherited that. It's kind of like what happened with target heart rates and heart rate zones. I'll cover that in another episode. There's nothing wrong with counting steps, but we don't always have to reach for the maximal amount, like 10,000. Counting your steps can be helpful, and they show you what you're actually doing. And especially if you sit a lot, or you work from home, it's good to know that you can get up and move and add some more steps throughout your day. But sometimes you move more than you think you did. And then you can be impressed with yourself. But counting steps can turn into like an all or nothing thing."I only got 500 steps in today..." So I'm not going to do any more exercise. But it's when you start counting calories and exact targets, and things can get weird and stressful. And that's why I stopped using a heart rate monitor in spin. Stay with that same pace. It started out really helpful. And then I started to obsess a little bit. Was I working hard enough? Was I in the right zone? Why is my heart rate not doing what I think it should be doing? And then sometimes it would take me out of my body and take me out of the music and take me out of the ride. And one of the reasons I did spin is because I wanted to be present in the moment because so few things would help ground me and clear my mind like spin. And if I was looking at my watch all the time, I would get out of that whole rhythm and the whole freedom I felt when I was riding. So sometimes the number helps, but sometimes it becomes like the whole thing and your focus shifts to only metrics. And that's when I backed away from wearing a heart rate monitor and I felt so much happier and so much freer. And walking doesn't need to become another test. You don't have to count your calories burned. You don't have to have a 10,000 step a day count. Okay, a little bit faster. Steady. Your arms are swinging. Shoulders are relaxed. Since our goal is to keep walking and keep moving, sometimes we have to kind of fake ourselves out into doing it. Like when I would teach spin and I was finished with class, I was already at the gym and I thought, hey, I should lift some weights and use some machines. But I was tired. My brain is like, nope, we're done. Take us home. But then I told myself, let's do five minutes, just five minutes of weight training. That's all you have to do. And then you can leave. And then I was serious about it. I could leave after five minutes. I wasn't going to punish myself and beat myself up. So I tried some of the machines. I did about five minutes and then I felt pretty good. So I'm like, okay, let's do five more."You can still leave if you want to, Helen, just five more minutes". And by doing that, adding those five minutes and five minutes, sometimes I got to 20 minutes or even 15 minutes. But I didn't do it by becoming super disciplined and I never felt trapped. So I just got started five minutes with the permission to leave. Same steady pace. If you accidentally slow down a little bit, pick it back up. And the same thing works for walking. Just put your shoes on and do five minutes. You can go out the door, jump on a treadmill or walking pad. Just a few minutes. That's all you need. You're going to make a little deal with yourself. And then sometimes that five minutes becomes more. Sometimes it doesn't, but at least you did the five minutes. You want to make things easy for yourself in order to stay consistent with something like walking and exercise. Put your shoes where you can see them. Keep your water handy Earbuds charged or know where the corded ones are because I can never find mine. They're always in a different drawer than where I thought they were. If you have special walk-in clothes, put them somewhere they're easy to grab. Pick out whatever podcast, music, or episodes you want to listen to. That way you don't have to hunt around for everything. Because what they say is that's where habits go to die. When you have to look for something, anything that breaks your momentum makes it harder for you to do it, at least with me. Stay with that pace. And then sometimes if you can't your socks or your shoes or your earbuds, sometimes you just sit down for a second then and you start scrolling on your phone. Three hours later, you're watching people reorganize pantries on Instagram or you're watching yet another cat or dog video and then that momentum's gone. So we want to make it easier for ourselves. We've got to figure out what works for actual life. Not a fantasy life, you know. Not when we're fully rested. It's like the if, if, if. Not when the house is clean. Not waiting for nobody to need anything because that will never happen. Everybody always wants something. And you can create a little habit like maybe walk after coffee. Maybe walk before dinner. Maybe while the laundry is going. Or maybe just before sitting down. You can always just dance or skip through the house too. I do that sometimes. And if you have pets, they're going to love it because my cats think I'm insane. Well, they already know I'm insane. So for them, it's like, okay, she's doing something weird again. So you can tell yourself. So before I scroll, I'm going to walk around the block. Before I watch TV, I'm going to do 10 minutes of moving. After the last email, I'm going to walk for a few minutes. Or before I shower, I'm going to take a quick walk. Whatever makes sense for you and your life and your schedule and your personality. And if you miss one, then the walk just moves. It doesn't disappear. No biggie. Moves to another time slot. Slow it down slightly. Deep breath in through your nose And exhale through your mouth. Roll your shoulders backwards. Big, big, big rolls. If they creak like mine, well, you're in good company. Roll them forward. All the way up. All the way down. All the way back If you can, stretch when you're done. Just a little bit. I like to stretch my calves. Press follow so the next walk is waiting for you. And I'll see you next time.