Walking is a practical, natural way to a healthy life
It seems hardly a day passes without a headline like "Exercising 10 minutes a day can boost life expectancy." With medical costs going up and today's computer-focussed days competing with yesterday's TV-focussed days, a natural solution is walking. Little cost to the individual, small cost to government for an old, tried and true way of being active.
Are we walking in a 'good' manner? In particular, hiking in Whitehorse includes lots of hills — can we save our knees, can we have less achy quads?
Healthy walking techniques
- I take regular long walks. What exercises should I do beforehand?
- What stretches should I do after my long walks?
- Turn your walk into a workout
- Save your knees: hiking tutorial.
- Study looks at benefits of uphill, downhill walking
- Muscle fatigue & decending steep inclines
- Hiking soreness
- Delayed onset muscle soreness
- Moderate-intensity walking timed just right might help protect against Type 2 diabetes. 15-minute walks taken after meals helped curb risky rise in blood sugar
- Same beat set to different tunes changes walkers' pace
- Physical Therapist Shows How To Walk Correctly
- How to Lace a Hiking Boot For Better Fit
- How to Prevent Running Shoe Blisters With a "Heel Lock" or "Lace Lock"
- The risk of the lonely distance runner
Kids
Look, Don't Touch, The problem with environmental education
"THE BIG QUESTION IS: what's the most effective way to parent and educate children so that they will grow up to behave in environmentally responsible ways?...Most environmentalists attributed their commitment to a combination of two sources, "many hours spent outdoors in a keenly remembered wild or semi-wild place in childhood or adolescence, and an adult who taught respect for nature....It seems that allowing children to be "untutored savages" early on can lead to environmental knowledge in due time."
- Active & safe routes to school is a national movement dedicated to children's mobility, health, and happiness.
- Caution. Kids (not) walking. Rule # 1: Start walking yourself!
Katy goes on to say: Many people come to me as adults in despair, wishing that they had had one iota of health presented to them as children. In overzealous response, many of us are replacing our lack of natural movement with fitness, which can take care of one issue but creates others. Walking with your kids is free. No classes, special camps, or equipment required. No more excuses. Kids need more than "playing all day." They need to be able to walk quite a distance. Start your family training today. Their bones and brains will thank you!
- Alberta 'forest school' gets students out of stuffy classrooms for lessons on the practicalities of life.
- 6 ways to get your kids off the couch and onto hiking trails.
- Children driven around too much, Canadian report suggests. Active Healthy Kids Canada annual report card assigns a "D" for active transportation. What's up in Whitehorse?
- Supporting youth in our communities – a training manual for adult allies in Yukon
- Pathways to wellness, our children and families. A background paper
- Walking with Children : 4 Activities for a Neighborhood Walk
- Walking is not really optional in the physiological sense. So, can you get your kids to walk? This is the question.
- The things one stumbles across reading about walking: The horrifying inequality that plagues Ohio students' routes to school.
- Play again: This film encourages individuals, families, schools and communities to examine their relationship with both screen technology and nature, and inspires them to take action and reconnect children to their natural world.
- Walk to school, by Jennifer Keesmaat, reminds us of a simple yet meaningful pastime. In a recent interview, she said, "...walking is a great form of transportation. It's very affordable, it's very equitable. Children and seniors can all get around with just as much ease."
- Iowa Department of Public Health's Walking works for schools is an obvious companion piece for the Walk to school video. California's Active
- The horrifying inequality that plagues Ohio students' routes to school.
- From strategy to action — case studies on physical activity and the built environment, by British Columbia Provincial Health Services Authority. This guide has a wide variety of case studies that look at the built environment and health. ...Norway's Children's trail program: "As part of the initiative, children 8-13 years old at all schools recorded on maps their informal play areas, paths and trails. In all, the children identified 1265 play areas, 550 short cuts, 130 reference areas for schools and 185 reference areas for nurseries. Consideration of the Children's Trails report is a permanent routine in all physical planning."
- How to include students riding school buses in walk to school events could help deal with Whitehorse's school bus reality.
- The link between kids who walk or bike to school and concentration
Community health and walking
- A ridiculous number of us have no clue how much we walk every day.
- From inspiration to action: Implementing projects to support active living
- Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines
- Pathways to Wellness talks about Nature nurtures and People on the move
- Presentation on rural land use planning for health practitioners. It's BC focused but by the middle starts talking about different components to consider when planning for health, particularly at the local government level. Reading it makes one curious for a Whitehorse version. But it is interesting understanding the components of healthy cities.
- Heart and Stroke Walkabout. There are many reasons to walk. Whether it's to spend time with friends, clear your head, discover a new part of town, or to manage weight and get from here to there, walking is an activity for all of us.
- 23 and 1/2 hours: What is the single best thing we can do for our health? This 9 minute youtube video, fun to watch. The key question: Can you limit your sleeping and sitting to just 23 and 1/2 hours per day?
- Walking, the activity of a lifetime, 2011 version; Go the extra mile
- From Globe and Mail Why is walking in the woods so good for you? "...believe that going for a walk in the park gives voluntary attention a break, since your mind has a chance to wander aimlessly and be engaged – involuntarily but gently – by your surroundings."
- A creative life is a healthy life. Following your passion, being creative, the link creativity and better mental and physical health. In short, it's OK for me to pursue these walkability ideas!
- How many steps do you walk each day? "Maybe you have heard the recent guidelines about walking 10,000 steps per day. How far is 10,000 steps anyway? The average person's stride length is approximately 2.5 feet long. That means it takes just over 2,000 steps to walk one mile, and 10,000 steps is close to 5 miles."person walk?
- How fast does the average person walk? "Although walking speeds can vary greatly depending on factors such as height, weight, age, terrain, surface, load, culture, effort, and fitness, the average human walking speed is about 5.0 kilometers per hour (km/h), or about 3.1 miles per hour (mph)."
- 31% of Canadian kids are overweight or obese. Prevalence unchanged in decade but remains 'a public health concern'
- Physical inactivity costs $6.8B a year to taxpayers "Between 2007 and 2009, only 15 per cent of adults were getting the recommended 150 minutes of weekly exercise. The country's youth were still more sedentary, with only nine per cent achieving the minimum amount of activity."
- The grave health risks of unwalkable communities : "The idea is to provide more choices, in how to get around and what to do outdoors, and especially, more healthy choices. You might still live in your current suburban house, if you want, but find that you can now walk to a small town center nearby that has a bus or streetcar stop, a little park, and a market. As a result you can get a quart of milk without burning up a quart of gasoline. Along the way, you might see a neighbor, exchange some news, or bring the kids for a nice walk. And you might not just be improving your life: you could be saving it."
- Under Social support for physical activity, the Centre for Disease Control has Establishing a community-based walking group program to increase physical activity among youth and adults, an action guide
- US Department of Health and Human Services has Be active your way, a guide for adults
- California Center for Physical Activity's has a walk kit - How to start a walking program: A guide for local program coordinators.
- Foot commute hits 10 years - and 25,000 kilometers. Inspiring how a simple choice can set a lifestyle in motion.
- Unemployed, I Went to Spain, to Walk from the philosopher Mark Kingwell, "Genuine idling is never an evasion of work; it is instead, as Aristotle argued long ago, cultivation of the most divine element in us through the exercise of leisure: spirited but serious reflection on who we are and what we are up to, free from the base demands of mere usefulness." I was ready for idle walking. "You need six weeks to walk the Camino. Two weeks for the physical body. Two weeks for the mind. Two weeks for the spirit." Idleness is underrated.
- The Experience of place, a new way of looking at and dealing with our radically changing cities and countryside, by Tony Hiss. Over 20 years old, but it seems to be addressing Whitehorse and our trails and greenspaces.
- Living well together Physical activity for example, can be influenced by the availability and quality of local parks, shops and other walkable destinations, road networks, footpaths, traffic and road safety, street lighting, and the presence of nature. Many of these elements also impact on mental health, for example the social connections that are generated through the use of parks, open space and public places.
- Every Body Walk! is an online educational campaign aimed at getting Americans up and moving; walking 30 minutes a day, five days a week really can improve your overall health and prevent disease. We provide news and resources on walking, health information, walking maps, how to find walking groups, a personal pledge form to start walking, as well as a place to share stories about individual experiences with walking.
- Kill your conference room — The future's in walking and talking
