Just Get Started: Walking is Healthy

Why don’t you estimate how many hours we spend sitting on average per day and how much time we spend doing moderate to heavy activities per day? Women spend an average of 6.7 hours and men 7.1 hours sitting per day. Combined with about 8 hours of sleep, this means that more than half of the day is spent without significant physical activity.

In addition, women engage in 5.7 hours and men 4.4 hours of light activities such as shopping, walking, and cooking, leaving an average of only 3.4 hours for women and 4.5 hours for men for moderate to heavy activities (cycling, construction work, sports, etc.) per day.

Why “walking,” of all things?

Walking is the most primal and natural way of getting around. Covering long distances on foot has been part of everyday human life for thousands of years. Sports physician Klaus Völker calls it “a cultural technique available to everyone.”

In the meantime, walking has become unfashionable. And wrongly so. Because it is the simplest of all forms of locomotion. Walking doesn’t require much effort. It happens as easily as breathing. Anyone who wants to walk can simply get started. A few steps on foot can always be incorporated into everyday life.

We are doing our bodies a great favor. After all, it is a small marvel of muscles, tendons and bones and is better equipped for nothing than being on the move. You can always walk: young or old, alone or in company, at any time and in any place. You don’t need expensive sportswear or equipment for it, no fixed training ground and you don’t have to pay any fees or entrance fees.

Why is walking healthy?

Walking exercises our organism, for example, when we walk briskly, we absorb up to ten times more oxygen than when we are at rest. But walking also helps relieve pent-up stress. In stressful situations, the body works at full speed. Muscles are tensed, blood flow and oxygen supply are increased, and hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol are released in greater quantities. The body thus prepares itself to meet the challenge.

This alarm reaction of the body was once necessary for survival in dangerous situations, such as attacks. Today, we still experience stressful situations, but we hardly ever have to run for our lives. This means that the energy provided is no longer consumed automatically. Those who are physically active provide a balance.

Examples on the subject of “walking”

A receptionist takes an average of 1,200 steps a day, a graphic designer 1,400 steps, a manager 3,000 steps, a salesperson 5,000, a housewife or househusband with children 13,000, and mailmen still take 18,000 steps a day. With a stride length of 80 centimeters, 3,000 steps will take you about 2.4 kilometers. Here are some examples of this distance:

  • In Hamburg, you get with 3,000 steps from Hafenstraße to the Michel, in Munich from the main station to Marienplatz.
  • In Berlin, the distance between Alexanderplatz and Brandenburg Gate is slightly longer, about three kilometers.
  • In Leipzig, it is about 3,000 steps from the main station to the Central Stadium and in Düsseldorf from Burgplatz to the main station.
  • In Dresden, it is along the banks of the Elbe from the Augustus Bridge to the Marienbrücke and back again only 3,000 meters and in Stuttgart once the shopping mile Königstraße up and down.
  • The subway stations in Berlin are on average 790 meters apart. Who gets on times a station later, makes – with a step length of 80 centimeters – quite simply 987 steps extra.

But an extra walk is not always necessary at all. Small changes in everyday life pay off and add up over the day. Who, for example, renounces the elevator and climbs 200 steps a day, already thus demonstrably strengthens heart, circulation, respiration and metabolism.