Walking is the most convenient and easily accessible physical exercise habit to have. It is no surprise that it is easy to form a habit of it to meet your daily exercise needs.
Building some habits is easier than others. But without the right guide, they may as well all be impossible or high maintenance.
Scheduling your walks, preparing your shoes every night, and sleeping in walking gear are some of the tricks beginners try to use. However, they end up failing because, well, they suck.
Here is a full list of hacks that don’t suck and actually work for starting and keeping a walking habit.
1. Use the 10-minute negotiation
Bargain with yourself to walk for just 10 minutes, according to Mentally Strong People podcast host and psychotherapist Amy Morin. After 10 minutes, you can stop if you don’t wish to continue. However, most times you find that you keep going.
2. Walking is the reward
Think about walking as a reward “I get to go for a walk”, not something you have to do. Do it as a reward to yourself for having a productive session of work. Plan out your work and then take a break and step out, recommends Karin Cleary, PhD, a licensed psychologist.
3. Combine it with something you want to do
Make the walking part of something else that you want to do, especially when you have no motivation to walk. This can be talking on the phone with a loved one or going to buy something or a favourite place.
“One of the things that get me out the door for a long walk, especially when I am not in the mood, and I just want to veg on the couch, is to combine it with an activity I really do want to do,” says a certified personal trainer, Jonathan Jordan.
4. What does walking mean
Look at walking as moving your body than a workout. “Telling yourself to move today seems like less pressure than telling yourself to go for a long walk,” explains Susan Masterson, MPH, PhD, a licensed psychologist.
It takes out the success-failure tone making it easier to build on.
5. Add it to one of your current habits
Link your walk to something you do every day that doesn’t require struggle. Walk immediately before or after the selected daily habit. Leeann Rybakov, a health coach says “Just pairing it with something you already do will make it more likely that the habit will stick.”
6. Route plan
Creating a routine path is important but if you start to lose the juice, explore a new walking location. However, take it easy. You don’t want to max out all the available routes. The bonus of changing scenes is new landscape works different muscles.
7. Make it an act of service
“So often, we are willing to do for others what may be difficult to do for ourselves. I challenge my clients to find a friend who needs a walk even more than they do. Is someone you know who just had hip surgery? Help them with their prescribed walking therapy. Does a friend call in emotional distress? Lace-up and meet them for a walk,” says Karina Krepp, a personal trainer.
Find a way you can give back and make your walk part of it.
8. Partner up
Find a person or dog to go along with on the walk. This part helps with accountability and a journey shared is shorter. Ben Reuter, PhD, certified strength and conditioning specialist and exercise physiologist say, “my accountability partners are two labrador retrievers. Bad weather, when I am most likely to make excuses, is when they thrive on walks.”
9. Focus on walking
If your main priority in health habits is walking, don’t introduce any other habit to build. You will not do any of them well or long enough for any impact. “Tell yourself, ‘all I’m doing is adding a walk. I don’t have to change anything else,’” says Elisabeth Goldberg, a licensed marriage and family therapist.
Change can impede action, don’t make it harder by overwhelming yourself.
10. Spice it up
Give yourself a challenge in a specific time window. Introduce small challenges into your group walks or with your partner.
Takeaway
You don’t need high-end walking gear, calendars and all sorts of tricks to start walking. You don’t need to feel ready either. If it is your goal, build on small systems that will make it not only a habit but something you associate with good experiences.
