Seven X Seven Smart Stability Stamina Strength Systems – Part 5

Seven X Seven Smart Stability Stamina Strength Systems – Part 5 Walking for Wellness

The Seven X Seven smart stability stamina strength systems series will help boost your body, mind, and spirit transformation. Focusing on each of the key strategies for one week and practicing one subsystem each day will put you on the road to resilience. Combining several subsystems during the day for cross-training benefits will get you there faster. A key role in the Seven X Seven smart stability stamina strength systems is Part 5 Walking for Wellness to enjoy fun in the sun. A key distinction about walking is to focus on nasal breathing and breathing in through your nose and out through your nose. Mouth breathing may be a sign you may need some breath coaching.

5 Walking for wellness is one of the easiest healthy habits you can maintain for fitness and longevity. With a little creativity and imagination, walking can be turned into a well-rounded and wonderful wellness workout. Walking is a fundamental fitness activity to do every day. Some simple suggestions to enhance, multiply and stack the deck with additional benefits include:

1. Backpacking while walking provides a better overall workout. Carrying some additional weight on our back gives the legs and lungs an extra workout. Carrying trekking poles while you walk turns walking for wellness into a total body workout. Training for an adventure backpacking trip provides additional incentive and motivation. The movie The Way can be very inspirational and motivational. A Walk in the Woods is another great movie with a big bonus dose of humor. A bonus coaching tip is to wear a backpack and pretend you are walking along on the trips to engage your body and brain more fully. Remember too many movies, shows, and videos lead to too much sitting and too much sitting leads to sadness and sickness so turn your screen time into terrific training time.
2. Beach and sand walking while barefoot offer big buckets of bonus benefits. Being barefoot on sand allows the foot muscles to engage more fully and helps us be grounded. Adding a backpack or bag of sand adds even more conditioning. Bonus tip: bending down to pick up trash and carrying a trash bag is a great back, butt, and leg workout that benefits you and the environment. Walking backward and sideways are additional training tips to improve balance and stability.
3. Breath walking helps you focus on deep breathing, fitness, mindfulness, relaxation. and stress reduction all at the same time. It is the perfect solution for people with an overactive monkey mind and stressful days who are looking for simple steps to let go and release at the end of a hectic day. Gurucharan Singh Khalsa Ph.D. is a great resource to learn more and teaches the benefits of breath walking, Kundalini yoga (mentioned in Seven X Seven Part 7), and meditation.
4. Hand weights carried during a walk for wellness will turn your walk into a full-body workout. Simply carrying hand weights while you walk gives the arms, back, and shoulders a good workout while also increasing the benefits to the legs and lungs. There are so many ways you can carry and use the hand weights to strengthen, tone, and train the upper portion of your body. A great resource is the book, Heavyhands -The Ultimate Exercise System by Leonard Schwartz MD.
5. Hillwalking and stair walking enhances better overall balance, conditioning, and stamina. It is important to train your body and brain to navigate over a wide variety of terrains. Also, practice stepping over and under obstacles to engaging a greater variety of balance, muscles, and stabilizers. It is also a great idea to do some side steps and backward walking to teach your body and brain to be more adaptable, multi-functional, and stable in different directions of movement.
6. Interval training and walking provide a variety of aerobic and anaerobic training mixed together. Consider two minutes of aerobics followed by five or ten minutes of walking and then another two minutes of aerobics and repeat. Or consider one minute of bodyweight exercise like crawls, lunges, planks, or squats followed by five minutes of walking and then add a new bodyweight activity. By mixing your activities up you avoid boredom and create more variety. Remember…variety is the spice of life.
7. Power and Speed walking mixed in during a walk for wellness helps build better stability, stamina, and strength. Power walking is the simple system of exaggerating and intensifying your walk for wellness. This can be done by adding some stairs, carrying hand weights, vigorously swinging your arms, or walking up and down hills. Speed walking is just what it sounds in that you pick up the pace and take more steps per minute than normal. A simple way to start speed walking is to walk normally for a few minutes then speed walk for one minute and then return to a normal pace. Over time you will find you can speed walk faster and for longer periods of time. With power and speed walking the goal is to increase your breathing rate where you are not able to carry on a conversation.

All of these Seven X Seven smart stability stamina strength systems offer great benefits and when you combine them your benefits go way up. Remember…investing in exercise and fitness habits will pay big dividends as they boost your emotional, mental, and physical health. Too many movies, shows, and videos lead to too much sitting and too much sitting leads to sadness and sickness so turn your screen time into terrific training time.

We program our body and brain for peak performance or poor performance based on our choices and decision…so train with Seven X Seven seven days a week. Remember…a key distinction about all walking for wellness is to be able to breathe in through your nose and out through your nose as you walk regardless of the pace. If your airways or sinuses are blocked or restricted consider some holistic health guidance to assist you.