Fitness Walking For Dummies by Liz Neporent

Author:Liz Neporent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strong leg and buttocks muscles lend your walking stride purpose and power. They make it easier to charge up hills and sprint toward home. Strong upper body muscles contribute to a more forceful arm swing. Strong middle body muscles help you maintain good walking posture. Good walking posture helps prevent fatigue and allows you to maintain deep, regular breathing. In short, strong muscles allow you to walk farther, faster, and longer.

Weight training helps prevent osteoporosis

Osteoporosis is a condition characterized by low bone density. It leads to brittle, weak, and porous bones that break easily and do not support your body properly. Older women in particular are susceptible to osteoporosis and osteoarthritis. In fact, the average woman loses about 1 percent of her overall bone density each year after the age of 35.

If you break or fracture an already weakened bone, it may not heal properly for weeks or even months. Until recently, we accepted this as an inevitable fact of aging. There is now evidence that bone loss can be prevented or slowed down through a combination of diet and exercise. Many respected professional organizations, including the American College of Sports Medicine, now recommend a combination of land-based aerobic exercise; a calcium-, vitamin D-, and protein-rich diet; and regular weight training (including weight-bearing activity) as the best defense against osteoporosis for both women and men.

A regular walking routine covers the land-based activity part of the equation. Walking provides enough stimulation to help preserve bone density in the bones of your lower body. But walking alone is not enough to prevent bone density loss entirely.

Osteoporosis is joint specific. The bones you “stress” are the bones that harden. Bones that receive no stimuli are still in danger of losing valuable calcium and other minerals. That’s where weight training comes in.

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