Tag: Walk

Urban walk aka farmer’s walk for the non-farmer

If you don’t know what a farmer’s walk is or why it’s good for you, I recommend that you read about it on t-nation.com. For the TL;DR people out here, doing a farmer’s walk is the art of walking while carrying something heavy in both hands for a certain distance, the kind of thing a typical farmer do everyday (and how often do you see an out of shape farmer?). The reason it’s good for you is that it makes use of every muscle group of your body and works your cardio at the same time.

I bet you’re a fan of “carrying all the grocery bags in one trip”, so why not taking it to a new level by using what we learned in that article about the farmer’s walk?

Instead of carrying the bags only from your car to your house/apartment, go to the grocery store on foot, buy some food (the heavier the better ;)) and walk back to where you live. It’s like killing 3 birds with one stone, but instead of being a bird murderer, you get food, a good walk and you get a full body workout at the same time!

That’s pretty much it, you can experiment with the weight, distance and speed to see what fits you best, just don’t forget to switch hands from time to time if you happen to carry bags of unevenly distributed weight which is often the case with grocery bags. And don’t forget your reusable bags to do your workout in an eco-friendly way!

Walking alone

A few weeks ago I started going to the grocery store on foot, partly because of my car’s poor reliability and also because it was the only kind of physical exercice I was allowed to do after a surgery. I discovered that I was getting a lot of creative ideas about things that worried me or about some projects I had in mind at the moment. I ended up doing it almost everyday since and always returned home with something nice to try. Being far from everything lets me really concentrate on one thing without being distracted by TV, Facebook, emails, Youtube, etc.

Being alone is pretty important here so you’re not getting into a conversation but just thinking about something that matters to you. It can also be nice to listen to some music so you’re not getting distracted by every little sound around you, keep something to take notes with you whether it’s a pad and pen or your smartphone (if you can resist the urge to do something else with it) and you’re good to go. I recommend walking for at least half an hour so you can get deep in your subject.

Some people would say that any exercise could work but I do not agree. For instance it is impossible for me to do it at the gym because I must concentrate on counting reps and keeping a good form throughout each set. I can’t do it while running either as I keep focus on my breathing. My personal preference is walking because I have no need to think about it while doing it but you can try other ways if you think it could work for you.

Most of the time I walk in the evening after sunset so it’s calmer in town. It also helps me to reduce stress and just relax while burning a few calories. I think most people could benefit from it if they would take some time to do it.