Recently, Brett Hoebel, the new trainer on The Biggest Loser, and the creator of a revolutionary new abdominal training system called Rev Abs, has teamed up with Sears to introduce Fitness First, Sears’ new line of fitness footwear. Fitness First is comprised of different brands of toning fitness shoes all designed to provide your lower back with the utmost support while simultaneously shaping and toning your calf, quads, hamstrings and gluteus muscles.
Best of all, these stylish toning shoes are so comfortable you will literally want to walk for days. That is because the rounded soles of these toning shoes are similar to the design of rocker-bottom shoes often used to lessen the impact of running or walking for people with bad knees, provide arch support for flat feet or otherwise treat specific foot conditions.
Why Walk?
Like all health and fitness professionals, Brett Hoebel understands the immense health benefits of incorporating a walking-for-fitness routine into your daily life. Walking-for-fitness refers to walking at a pace that elevates your heart rate and helps you maintain that elevated heart rate for at least 30 minutes. This versatile, low-impact, and highly effective form of exercise engages over 95% of all your body’s major muscle groups and can be performed by almost anyone, regardless of age, gender, health, weight or socio-economic status.
Today, walking, as a form of exercise, is highly underestimated. Often, those who engage in this highly social form of fitness only do so in order to reap the psychological and recreational benefits of it. However, what most people do not realize is that walking, as a form of exercise, has the power to improve your overall fitness, tone and shape your body, extend your life, improve your quality of life by adding to it a significant number of disease free years, and boost your overall well being by helping you relieve stress.
Best of all, incorporating a walking routine into your regular fitness routine and reaping all the physical and emotional rewards of this innate form of exercise requires nothing more than the will to lead a healthier lifestyle and a great pair of walking shoes.
The following lists the many ways we can all benefit from incorporating a walking fitness routine into our everyday lives.
Walking Keeps Your Heart Young, Fit and Strong
Incorporating a daily brisk walk, that lasts for at least 30 minutes to an hour, into your regular workout routine is a pleasant and highly effective way of improving your heart health by increasing your body’s overall aerobic fitness.
Maintaining a high level of aerobic fitness is the key to living a long and healthy life. This is due to the fact that your heart is a muscle and like all other muscles in your body, your heart will only function at its optimal capacity if it receives regular aerobic exercise. A heart muscle that is operating at its peak capacity will be better able to pump oxygen and nutrient-rich blood to other vital organs, such as your brain, lungs, kidneys and liver. This, in turn, will help keep your vital organs young and your metabolic age down.
A recent Duke University Medical Center study findings highlight the extent to which everyday, health-conscious individuals can improve the health of their hearts by simply incorporating a brisk, 30 minute, walk into their daily workout routine. Researchers reported that amongst the group of women studied those who walked for at least 30 minutes a day, at a brisk and sustained pace, significantly lowered their odds of developing Metabolic Syndrome which is a cluster of risk factors linked to higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. This study’s findings are revolutionary in the sense that in the United States today over 24 million women suffer the health consequences of Metabolic Syndrome. So, by simply encouraging everyday people to walk more we can reduce the effects of this public health risk.
Walking Keeps Your Brain Young, Fit and Strong
Incorporating a brisk walk into your daily workout routine will not only help you live longer but it will also significantly improve your quality of life as you age.
Due to advances in medical technology, and an increased focus on healthy living practices, it is estimated that we will live an average of 15 years longer than our grandparents. Armed with this knowledge, today’s health conscious individuals are increasingly interested in finding ways to improve their quality of life during their extended golden years. And of course, medical professionals, fitness professionals and well-informed members of society all agree that the best way to stay healthy and happy during our twilight years is to stay fit and active.
The medical profession’s quest to help us lead healthy lives has recently established a direct correlation between our heart health and brain age. In other words, today, the fact that we can keep our brains from shrinking, during our old age, simply by keeping our hearts fit and strong is a commonly accepted medical fact. One of the most notable studies regarding senior brain health was conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Boston. This study concluded that otherwise healthy seniors, who had lethargic hearts, had overall older brains than their more fit peers. These findings went on to explain that individuals with weak hearts had overall lower levels of oxygen and nutrient-rich blood being pumped to their brains, which in turn aged their brains by an average of two years.
Walking Keeps Your Body/Spirit Young, Fit and Strong
Though walking, as a form of aerobic exercise, plays an instrumental role in advancing everyone’s health, recent women’s health studies have dubbed it as one of the top 5 most beneficial forms of exercise for women. The following three studies highlight just some of the many ways walking-for-fitness can extend and improve the quality of women’s lives:
- Breast Cancer: A recent study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, studied the health benefits of starting a regular walking routine in 74,000 postmenopausal women between the ages of 50 and 79. Amongst the study’s participants, those women who had a normal BMI reduced their risk of developing breast cancer by 30%. The overweight and obese participants reduced their overall risk by an average of 10%.
- Osteoporosis: Walking is a highly effective form of aerobic exercise that engages over 95% of your muscles. This increased muscle activity, in turn, chain starts a series of metabolic activities that push your bones to strengthen themselves so that they can handle the extra strain your muscles place on them.
- Depression: Research has shown that all forms of exercise can help alleviate depression symptoms such as extreme mood swings, anxiety, insomnia, fatigue and unexplained aches and pains. However, a recent Duke University study has concluded that walking for at least 45 minutes a day, three times a week, is just as effective in relieving the symptoms of major depression as taking anti-depressant medication.
As you can clearly see the health benefits of walking-for-fitness are too numerous too ignore. So, if you are ready to finally take charge of your own well-being and move one step closer to living a healthier, happier, more active lifestyle please take a moment to listen to Brett Hoebel explain how investing in a pair of stylish and affordable toning shoes can enhance your walking-for-fitness experience.
You can also follow Brett Hoebel on Twitter to get the latest product reviews, fitness tips and Sears giveaways.
Benefits of Toning shoes from Sears Footwear on Vimeo.
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August 9, 2010 at 11:59 PM
I wish I could write like you as Margaret Laurence once said "When I say "work" I only mean writing. Everything else is just odd jobs."