Sticking to Your Walking Routine

Once you start following the routine you’ve established, it can be easy to slack off if you’re not careful. If you let yourself slip or decide to “take it easy” for a day, it can eventually lead to you dropping the walking routine altogether. Here are a couple of ways you can keep your walking routine engaging and fun.

Set Goals

Establishing goals for yourself is a sure way to get the most out of any activity. Goals help you to structure your time and effort. They also give you something to work toward, which provides you with reason to push yourself. Achieving your goals also makes you feel accomplished, which leads to a boost to your self-esteem.

Setting goals are especially important when it comes to walking for fitness. Of course, walking is still great for your body if you set out without a plan. You will still get some benefit out of each walk. However, in order for walking to have a serious positive impact on your health, you’ll have to walk on a more regular basis.

It’s best to start out small. For many new walkers, this means planning to walk for around fifteen to twenty minutes. While this may not seem like much walking, remember that it’s important to set goals that aren’t too hard to accomplish. If, once you go on your walk, twenty minutes doesn’t seem like enough, feel free to start out with a longer walk next time.

Once you have determined a reasonable distance goal, and you’ve managed to achieve it with each of your walks, it’s important to step it up. Of course, how exactly you add to your workout is up to you. But, if you add some time to each workout at regular intervals, you can expand on the fitness progress you’re already making.

Once your goals are established, backing down from your walking routine will be like breaking a promise to yourself. Keep track of how many days you can successfully follow your routine. This will give you that extra drive to get out and walk. If you’re thinking about skipping a day, you’ll have to reset your count.

Mix It Up

One reason you may find yourself straying from your walking routine is that doing the same thing day after day can become tedious. While this is true, there’s no reason that your walk has to be the same every day. Turning each walk into a different experience can be as easy as walking in a different direction. Walking in a new environment helps to keep walking fresh, even if you do it daily. This doesn’t mean that you have to travel far away in order to walk. If you plan on walking around your neighborhood, use a street map to plan out several different routes of the same length.

Make Walking Fun

Consider one, two or all three of the following ideas to make walking fun. The first one is utilizing a free app such as Charity Miles, to help others. This app keeps track of the distance you walk and donates 25 cents per mile to one of several charities. Charities include Autism Speaks, Habitat for Humanity and Pencils of Promise. Obviously, the more you walk, the more the charity benefits.

Geocaching has been around for quite some time. In the event you’ve never heard of it, think of it as a high-tech treasure hunt of sorts. In simple terms, you pick a local geocache that sounds like something you’d love to find and use any GPS-enabled device (think cell phone) to locate it. You can easily download the official app and learn all about it at geocaching.com.

Invite a friend to join you for a movie or an afternoon of shopping. If you live within walking distance, getting there is a no-brainer. If your destination is too far away to walk to it, drive part of the way, park somewhere and walk the rest of the way. If you’re shopping, think of the money you’ll save because you won’t want to be weighed down with shopping bags on your way back to your vehicle.