• 8 weeks to walking your way thinner

  When walking it is easy to slack off because it is such a comfortable, familiar activity. If your goal is to slim down, you need to keep up a faster pace. The faster you walk the more calories you burn. For example a 60 minute walk at 3mph burns 240 calories (based on a 150lb person). Speed up to 4mph, and you can blast those calories in just 42 minutes. Keep it up for an hour, and you will burn nearly 50% more calories – 346 in total. At that pace, walking 5 days a week, you could lose an extra 10 pounds a year. Speeding up will also train the heart, lungs, and skeletal muscles to use oxygen more efficiently. 
   
  The short and fast walk teaches your nerves and muscles to react quicker so your legs move faster; the long and steady walk progressively builds endurance and trains your body to sustain a faster speed for a period of 30 minutes or more. Do each of the speed walks below once a week and a moderate pace walk two to four times a week and soon you will be blazing a trail to health, and leaving everybody else in the dust.
   
  Weekly guide to walking
   
  Do each of these speed walks once a week, allowing at least two days between speed sessions for your muscles to recover. Stick to a moderate pace the rest of the week. Warm up walking at an easy pace for 5 minutes, and do the same to cool down afterward. If your walking speed is less than 3.5 mph (or more than a 17 minute mile), aim for the lower range of steps per minute (SPM) in the chart below. If you walk faster use the higher end of the SPM range. Check your pace with a pedometer to track the number of steps you take in 3 minutes, and then divide by 3. If you don’t have a pedometer, simply count your steps for 60 seconds. As the weeks pass, you’ll get a better feel for your speed. Happy walking.
   

  week	Short & fast (20 mins)	Long & steady
  1	120-130 SPM	120-130 SPM for 35 minutes
  2	125-134 SPM	120-130 SPM for 40 minutes
  3	129-138 SPM	120-130 SPM for 45 minutes
  4	133-142 SPM	120-130 SPM for 50 minutes
  5	137-146 SPM	130-150 SPM for 35 minutes
  6	140-150 SPM	130-150 SPM for 40 minutes
  7	143-153 SPM	130-150 SPM for 45 minutes
  8	145-155 SPM	130-150 SPM for 50 minutes

   
   
  Surf yourself a fit body
   
  Now summers here, head to the beach for some serious resistance training on the waves. Surfing the big blue gives you a super strong core and toned legs, while carrying your board across the beach and doing pop-ups (the move to get you standing on the board), gives you toned arm muscles. 

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