Beautiful summer days are perfect for learning to walk or getting back into it after a period of inactivity.
Here are some very simple walking workouts that will keep you in shape this summer. If you have children, bring them in pushchair or ask the older ones to follow you on a bike. A pair of shoes and a water bottle is all you need. On the hottest summer days, you can continue your workouts, but it will be important to drink twice as much water.
So here is a 4-week program that includes 3 or 4 walking sessions per week and some yoga exercises that you can also replace with muscle strengthening exercises.
You can use this training example throughout your pregnancy, by lengthening or decreasing the duration of the sessions according to your condition, or by adding interval training (see the training examples below).
To vary walking workouts, you can play with duration, intensity or choice of terrain. Here are some simple examples of alternating periods of brisk walking with periods of slower walking. Power walking can be done athigh intensity, 5 or 6 on the adapted BORG scale, and walking at a steady pace at a moderate intensity, 2 or 3 on the adapted BORG scale.
And here is an estimate of the number of calories burned for one hour of walking, depending on the intensity at which you walk.
