on walking treadmills
Believe it or not I'm writing this from the walking treadmill, one of the greatest purchases I've ever made. It feels weird to admit this, but it's true.
To us mere mortals walking is the equivalent to an elite runners "easy or base" pace. The time where they spend 80% of their efforts. Think about walking as building your engine. The more walking you can do, the bigger the engine, and the greater your ability to take on more, harder work.
even walking as slowly as I do when on this pad (normally 2.6 or 2.8 mph), I've noticed the following
- Energy. Most important one by far is how much better I feel during the day. If I do this proactively, I rarely get tired. If I start to get tired, lose focus, etc. I'm immediately firing up the pad to get that boost, and I almost always get it. It's also amazing for after breakfast/lunch where I can walk directly after a meal while I get some work done. There are major benefits in walking after meals to help regulate glucose and avoid crashes
- Accomplishment. I love looking down and seeing the big number. Whether it's 1 or 11k it feels good to know I'm getting a bit of exercise in. Only the well trained athletes will not see a cardiovascular improvements (see images at bottom) from merely walking. If that's you, walk faster or walk with a waited vest on. But regardless you'll get metabolic benefit from walking at basically any speed.
- Sitting sucks. This might be the biggest one for me. Time I spend walking is time I don't spend sitting. I do stand a fair bit aswell, but actually think that walking for a long duration and working feels better than standing.
- Level headedness. Walking calms me down when I get tense or upset at work. When I'm stuck on something, I just walk it out (RIP UNK). When there's something that needs an outside the box solution, I get the pad out and think on it. I try to work in blocks and if there's anything that requires me to think, plan, tinker, I often pull out the pad and one of my favorite robot companions and go to work for the duration of the block.
Here's the pad I use
Bookmarked tweets from Alan Couzens, who is the guru of walking
