“There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.” – Thomas Jefferson.
Does Walking Tone Your Legs
Walking is one of the leg exercises that most people can do anytime and anywhere. Walking doesn’t require any special equipment or environment, after all.
Many believe that walking will keep you in shape and tone your legs. But does walking tone your legs?
Without a doubt, walking is one of the best workouts for your legs. If you walk regularly, even for a few days a week, you’ll notice a remarkable improvement in your muscle tone, strength, and overall health.
Let’s get to know how walking as an exercise can tone your leg and thigh muscles.
Does Walking Tone Your Legs?
Walking exercise can tone your leg muscles, help in weight loss, reduce thigh fat, and help manage your overall weight.
Walking also helps in improving blood circulation and leg muscle toning. However, you could amplify these benefits with a simple modification to your walking.
If you’d like to up your game and maximize your walking experience, you should try power walking, also known as “brisk walking.”
A power walking exercise is similar to normal walking. You just do it faster with a more controlled technique to work out your muscles a bit more.
According to fitness experts, speed walking exercise should yield about 100 steps per minute. That’s between 3 and 3.5 miles per hour.
It’s important to exercise power walking using the correct technique to get the maximum results.
What Are the Benefits of Walking?
All of the benefits we’re about to mention come from walking and power walking alike. The only difference is that power walking gives you more of these benefits.
1. Strengthens Leg Muscles
Quadriceps, abdominal muscles, hamstrings, calves, thigh muscles, and hip adductors are all muscles that benefit from walking. These muscles get leaner, stronger, and acquire a better muscle tone the more you walk.
If you’d like some more strength in your legs as you walk, you could try walking uphill more often. It will add some extra pressure to your buttock muscles, hamstring, and calf muscles.
2. Improves Blood Circulation
A better blood circulation means better health. When you walk regularly, you constantly force your body into moderate physical exercise.
The blood is responsible for providing your organs and muscles with oxygen and nutrients. When the circulation improves, your organs benefit more from the air you breathe and the food you eat. In other words, regular walking can help you build muscle mass.
Blood circulation is improved best when walking is done in close intervals. Walking, let’s say once a week, won’t contribute much to blood circulation improvement.
3. Burns Calories
Depending on your walking speed, you will burn a certain amount of calories to help in that weight loss journey.
If you walk at 3 mph, you’ll burn anywhere between 60 and 132 calories for every mile you walk. The range in calories burnt differs according to body weight.
A heavier body will burn more calories per mile. On the other hand, a lighter body can walk more distances before getting tired.
Walking may not burn so many calories, but will still help you lose weight.
4. Improves Physical Endurance
Endurance, by definition, is the ability to withstand physical strain for prolonged periods. You might ask, how would walking improve endurance?
Walking for long distances isn’t something that everyone can do. Speed walking narrows down the number of people who can do that even more.
Don’t get deceived by the word “walking.” If you use the correct walking technique, then your first walking session will be a lot more exhausting than you think.
Walking applies a lot of pressure on your leg muscles. The first few times will prove difficult. You may not even be able to go the whole distance without resting in the middle.
However, as you continue your strength training, you’ll start stretching more miles without having to rest in between.
How Often Should I Walk to Tone My Legs?
Unlike most sports, walking is a sport that you can do every day if you want to. It may pressure your leg muscles, but not hard enough to need prolonged recoveries.
That being said, we still recommend taking at least one day off to allow your body to relax.
You should aim to walk 30 mins at a speed of 3+ mph for at least five days a week. If you can keep that schedule up, you’ll keep those toned legs, and you’ll get all the benefits of walking.
Yet, you might be surprised how fast you can get tired if you speed walk correctly. Some people can’t go more than 5 minutes without resting.
Don’t be discouraged if you get tired quickly in the beginning. In the first week, gradually reduce the lengths of your breaks.
In the second week, try to omit one of your breaks. Alternate between reducing your break times and taking out one break session every week.
Keep this up and you’ll speed walk for the whole 30 minutes with no breaks within a month.
If you practice long enough, you could try to gradually extend your workout to a whole hour. It’s not mandatory, though; 30 minutes are more than enough to keep your leg muscles toned.
If you fancy a challenge, you could try wearable weights to push yourself even further. You could even hire a personal trainer to keep you from backing down.
Final Thoughts On Does Walking Tone Your Legs
So, Does Walking Tone Your Legs? Definitely. Walking is an easy cardiovascular exercise that you should never refrain from doing.
If you don’t have time to walk regularly, you can swap one of your short commutes with a walking exercise.
Walking isn’t only good for your physical health but your mental one as well. It clears the mind and allows you to think freely while burning calories.