Walking is a pleasure that many people don’t like to take part in, yet its benefits are many.

If you walk and carry weight you will build your leg muscles a lot and built strength in your hips, thighs, calves and legs.

It is simply wonderful how people differ in this respect because hardly two persons walk alike.
I often find that when I am walking with others that I have to slow down to keep pace with them.

They either carry their heads, or bodies, or arms differently, or there is a distinct difference in the way they use their legs or feet for the pace that they are setting.
However, there is nothing wrong about this, for this is their natural state of walking,
all though a person could slow down or speed up according to the occasion as will and who they are walking with.

When I was overweight and needed to cut down on my eating while also being away from food I would take long 11 km walks.
This helped me greatly when cutting down on smoking cigarettes because I would leave home without a cigarette and then have to walk 11 km to get back home to have a cigarette.
Stubbornness and pride refused to allow me to ring someone to come get me, and so not matter what the weather I would walk all the way home slow or fast.

Westhall gave this advice on walking:
“To be a good and fair walker the attitude should be upright, or nearly so, with the shoulders well back, though not stiffly so, and the arms, when in motion, held well up in a bent position, and at every stride swinging with the movement of the legs well across the chest, which should be well thrown out.
The loins should be slack, to give plenty of freedom to the hips, and the leg perfectly straight, thrown out from the hip bodily and directly in front of the body, and allowed to reach the ground with the heel being decidedly the first portion of the foot to meet it.”

Walking can be done by most of us, and is a way for fitness with less strain that swimming and running while also enjoying nature as we go along the way.
Some people walk fast and furious and then give it up quickly having hurt themselves or exhausted themselves and decided to not walk anymore.

My advice is to walk, preferably by yourself (less interference), or at least often by yourself, and go at a steady pace that suits you and only you.
Once that pace becomes easy set some more speed into your walk, and then more as that gets easy.
You may end up running from this.

Keep to soft surfaces regardless of your show types and expense, a soft ground otr a ground with “give” allows the impact on the joints to be healthy, low and steady.
Hard walking surfaces are high impact on the joints and we often pay for this when we get older with bad knees, aching joints, hip and lower back issues.

Try to be conscious of what surface you are walking on, the feelings of your muscles, legs, hips and stomach, while also listening to your breathing
– this helps you monitor what is happening to your body as you go.

If you pray, pray and walk. Also you can take a pencil and notebook with you and write down thoughts that come to mind or use a voice recorder to record your thoughts along your walk to playback and listen to later on that evening.

All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
17th of May, 2021.