Planning a Walking Routine Around Your Day

Walking needs no booking, no kit beyond comfortable shoes and no particular skill. That is its strength and also its weakness: because it can happen at any time, it is easy for it to happen at no time. A walking routine works when the walks are attached to fixed points in a day that already exists.

This article follows one illustrative week from Monday to Sunday to show how that planning can go. The person in it is made up. The timings are an example of the method, not a schedule to copy, and the walks could equally be done with a stick, a frame or a wheelchair at whatever pace is brisk for the person doing them.

Three facts to plan with

Short walks count. The NHS says a brisk ten-minute daily walk has health benefits and counts towards the 150 minutes of weekly activity recommended for adults aged 19 to 64. The UK Chief Medical Officers’ guidelines go further: activity can be accumulated in bouts of any length, including under ten minutes.

“Brisk” is about effort, not a stopwatch. The NHS describes a brisk walk as about 3 miles an hour, faster than a stroll, and offers a simple check: you can still talk but cannot sing the words to a song. Our piece on exercise intensity in everyday language explains this talk test.

The weekly figure can be divided any way you like. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gives 30 minutes on five days as one way of reaching 150 minutes, and says it can be broken into smaller chunks. These are guideline figures for adults in general. Both the CDC and the World Health Organization say some activity is better than none, so a week that reaches half the figure is still a week of useful walking.

Before the week: map the fixed points

Our example is someone who works in an office on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, works from home on Wednesday and Friday, and lives a 12-minute walk from the railway station. They currently get a lift to the station and walk very little.

On Sunday evening they list the things that happen every week whatever else changes:

• the journey to and from the station, three days;
• a lunch break, five days;
• a regular Wednesday phone call with a sister;
• a Saturday morning trip to the shops.

Each fixed point is a place where a walk could be attached. They decide to start with fewer walks than seem possible and to add more only if the first week feels comfortable. The NHS advises people who are not very active to increase their walking distance gradually.

The week, day by day

Monday

Walks to the station instead of being driven: 12 minutes at a pace that makes talking slightly breathy. Accepts a lift home in the evening because it is raining. Brisk minutes: 12.

Tuesday

Walks to the station (12 minutes). At lunch, a ten-minute loop around the block before eating. The NHS suggests wearing ordinary work clothes with comfortable shoes for commuting walks and changing shoes on arrival, so a pair of trainers now lives in the work bag. Brisk minutes: 22.

Wednesday

Home day, no commute. Takes the weekly call with the sister on foot: 25 minutes around the local streets, some of it brisk, some of it slower when the conversation needs attention. Counts 15 minutes as brisk and the rest as pleasant. Brisk minutes: 15.

Thursday

Walks to the station and, for the first time, back again in the evening. The evening walk turns out to be the better one: it draws a line between work and home. Brisk minutes: 24.

Friday

Home day. A meeting overruns, lunch is eaten at the desk and no walk happens. Nothing is “made up” later; the day simply scores zero. Brisk minutes: 0.

Saturday

Walks to the shops and back with a rucksack rather than driving: 15 minutes each way. The return leg, with shopping, is slower but harder work. Brisk minutes: 30.

Sunday

A 40-minute walk in a park with a friend at a conversational stroll. By the sing-or-talk check, perhaps ten minutes of it were brisk. Brisk minutes: 10.

What the week showed

Reviewing the week takes five minutes and shapes the next one.

• The commute did most of the work. Walks attached to a journey happened four times out of a possible six. The stand-alone lunch walk happened once out of five.
• Weather needs a plan in advance. Monday’s rain cancelled a walk because there was no coat. The CDC’s advice for weather is to dress for it when you can and keep an indoor alternative ready when you cannot.
• Company helps. The Wednesday call and the Sunday park walk were the ones most looked forward to. The NHS lists walking regularly with a friend, and joining a walking group, among its ways of making walking a habit. Our article on making time for social connection looks at the same idea from the other side.
• A missed day is just a missed day. Friday did not undo the week.

For week two, the example person keeps the station walks, adds the evening return on a second day, and moves the lunch walk to home-working days only, where it is easier to step straight out of the door.

Planning your own week

1. List your fixed points: journeys, breaks, regular calls, errands.
2. Attach a walk to two or three of them, starting short.
3. Decide the wet-weather version now.
4. Note brisk minutes each day if numbers help you, or simply tick the days if they do not.
5. At the end of the week, keep what happened easily and change what did not.

For longer walks, the NHS suggests taking water, a snack, a spare top and sun protection. It also notes that if joint problems make walking difficult, water-based exercise classes are an alternative, since water supports the joints. If walking brings on symptoms that worry you, or you have a health condition and are unsure how much is sensible, that is a reasonable thing to raise with a health professional. Our guide to preparing for a medical appointment can help you make the most of that conversation.