Recreation
A springboard to healthier life
| • | Top 10 countdown: The games we play |
| • | Walking workshop on tap |
By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer
To enjoy Hawai'i's No. 1 outside activity all you have to do is put one foot in front of the other — outdoors, of course.
Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser
Our panel of health and fitness experts carefully considered the relative merits of scores of recreational pursuits, but their final answer was a walk in the park.
Walking, Hawai'i's No. 1 outdoor activity according to our panel of health and fitness experts, has very few drawbacks and tons of advantages. Unlike running (No. 3), it's easy on the joints; unlike swimming (No. 2), you don't need a pool or ocean to participate. Plus, almost everyone — from toddlers to seniors — can do it.
Or around the neighborhood.
Or on the beach.
Trail, track, crater, stream bed — you get the idea.
The logic was simple: Walking is easy. Toddlers can do it; seniors, too.
Walking is also healthy. It burns calories, promotes good circulation and, if done briskly, can strengthen your heart.
It's easy on the joints, the day planner and the wallet.
It's a great excuse to spend some Q-time with the spouse, the kids, the neighbors, the office gang. It's an even better excuse to spend time with no one at all.
"We often recommend that people who don't exercise at all, start with walking," said Angela Wagner, project manager for the state Department of Health's Health Promotion and Education Branch and coordinator for Kaho'omiki, the Hawai'i Council on Physical Activity. "It's easy to work in a lot of five-minute walking increments during the day."
Stub: As your conditioning improves, you'll get fewer benefits from walking at the same pace. Watch out for: Traffic, uneven or slippery surfaces, poor lighting, debris. Getting started: Leave the car at home for short walkable trips. Grab a friend and walk around your favorite park. Take an after-dinner walk around the block with your family. Plan walking days with different people and see if you can work your way up to a half-hour at a time, three or four times a week. The last word: "I like seeing all the familiar faces and petting all the dogs in the neighborhood," said Barbara Oshiro of Kaimuki. "I look forward to that all day."
Jeff Deininger, health and fitness director for the YMCA, said a regular walking regimen can be a springboard to more intense types of activity.
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The good: Walking is an easy way to exercise — anywhere and anytime. It's also a nice way to reacquaint yourself with your neighborhood.
"There are very few drawbacks," he said. "It's a great way to ease into fitness."
Even well-conditioned athletes can get a worthy workout from walking, provided they know how to pick up the pace. Many a middle-of-the-pack runner has felt the psychological owwie of watching an elite race walker heel-toe, heel-toe into the horizon.
But, even walking at a normal pace, it is possible to screw up.
"Take a couch potato who's just been sitting around for five years," Dennis Chai, a professor of kinesiology and leisure science at the University of Hawai'i, said. "The first time they go walking, they think they have to walk three miles. The next day they're wondering why they're sore. So they go out again and again and after a couple of days, they think, 'This is too hard,' and they quit.
"You have to find the right degree of intensity and stretch it gradually. Your level of fitness at the time you start should be what determines how much you do."
