Easy New Way to Find Ideal Walking Pace for Fitness
Ditch that fitness tracker and forget trying to calculate max heart rate.
We’ve all heard walking is good for us. But how much, and at what pace? And who wants to fiddle with those complex, often inaccurate wearable devices to measure steps-per-minute, heart rate, and oxygen something-or-other?
A new study just took a giant step toward simplifying fitness goals and measurements for regular ol’ walking (which is, yes, a highly recommended approach to warding off disease and supporting general mental and physical well-being).
U.S. federal guidelines for adults call for 2.5 hours weekly of moderate exercise, which can include walking, or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise. Even more is better, the recommendation goes. (Muscle-strengthening should be added in, too, the guidelines say.)
But what qualifies as moderate, or vigorous?
University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers just figured it out for the 21–40 age group (other age groups are still under study). They had 80 men and women do a series of treadmill tests, all while wired up to fancy equipment that you can’t afford and which isn’t very portable.
