Ross Herridge

My take... EVERY BODY should walk 🚶 I program walking for my pro athletes, even though their heart rate will barely break 60bpm! 🫀 Why? There are 2 basic types of fitness - cardiovascular fitness and metabolic fitness. For many recreational athletes (VO2max < 50ml/kg/min) walking *does* offer a sufficient cardiovascular demand to force the heart to expand and deliver more O2 to the muscles and improve cardiovascular fitness. It's, IMO, underutilized as a cardiovascular stimulus for many in this regard. However, for very well trained athletes, with a huge heart and massive potential for cardiac output, 60bpm will do nothing for cardiovascular fitness. It's just not a challenge at all to their system to get that measly amount of O2 to the muscles. But... Even a simple walk requires energy. For athletes who challenge their glycogen stores on the regular with hard training, you know where this energy is going to come from? Fat. 🔥 Therefore, even a simple walk serves as an important metabolic stimulus to the body to keep that fat-burning furnace cranking. In this way, it offers important complementary benefits to the "serious" training on the metabolic side of the health and fitness equation. IOW, I don't care how fit you are, you should still spend a lot of time walking.