Benefits of Exercise
 Beginning a Walking Program
 Improving Cardiovascular Fitness
 Shopping Guide for Walking Shoes
 Warming-Up & Cooling-Down
 How to Measure Your Own Route
 Walking for Weight Control
 Eating for Life
 Staying Motivated

The goal of cardiovascular exercise is to increase the amount of oxygen your body can process to produce muscular energy.

To do this, you have to moderately overload your lungs, heart, blood vessels, and muscles by causing these systems to work harder than they're used to. This means walking further or faster than you normally do.

Overloading stresses your cardiovascular system. During recovery, your body adapts to the higher workload and grows stronger.

Here are several overload methods of increasing your cardiovascular fitness:

• Go the same distance, but increase your pace
• Go the same pace, but increase your distance
• Gradually increase your distance and pace
• Train on hills, such as Hospital Hill or Cherry Hill, 1-2 times per week
• "Speed burst" training, no more than once per week
  1. warm-up for 10-15 minutes
  2. very high effort level (lungs and muscles are burning; breathing is rapid and deep) for 1 ½ - 3 minutes
  3. recover with easy walking for 3-5 minutes
  4. repeat interval 2-6 times
  5. cool-down for 10 minutes
• "Sustained speed" training, no more than once per week
  1. warm-up for 10-15 minutes
  2. high effort level (no longer comfortable and conversation is difficult) for 5-15 minutes
  3. recover with easy walking for 5-10 minutes
  4. repeat interval 1-2 times
  5. cool-down for 10 minutes

But you don't want to do too much too soon. Otherwise, your body won't have enough time to adapt to the higher exercise intensity and you may develop an injury. A general guideline is not to increase your mileage by more than 10% a week and to make sure you schedule rest days in your training program.