Vigorous speed walking is a low-impact workout with minimal risk of injury. You'll have even less risk of an injury if you wear properly fitted shoes with good support, loose clothing appropriate to weather conditions and drink plenty of fluids.
Walking Basics
Brisk walking is an aerobic activity. This means waking raises your heart rate and forces you to breathe faster for an extended period. MayoClinic.com recommends you get in at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise each week. You might want to walk longer if you are trying to burn calories and lose weight. The number of calories you burn in a specific amount of time depends on your weight, walking speed and how far you walk.
Benefits
If you are walking to burn calories, you probably want to lose weight or keep lost pounds from returning. Walking is a good way to do that, but it has other benefits as well. A regular walking workout reduces your risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. You might reduce your LDL bad cholesterol and raise your good HDL cholesterol. Walking is effective for getting and staying physically fit and tends to improve your mood as well, according to MayoClinic.com.
Required Information
You need three things to figure how many calories are burned speed walking: your weight, the time you spent walking and the distance covered. You can measure distance using a pedometer, by walking on a treadmill or on an outdoor route of known distance. Use your time and distance to figure out how fast you walked. Divide the distance walked by the time in minutes and multiply by 60. For example, if you walked eight miles in two hours, you have (8 miles/120 minutes) * 60, which works out to 4 mph.
Calories Burned
To figure the calories burned speed walking for two hours, just multiply the distance times the calories burned per mile for your walking speed and weight. Calories burned are proportional to weight. That is, a person weighing 200 lbs. will burn twice as many calories as a 100 lb. individual walking the same distance. To figure your calories burned per mile, first divide your weight by 100. Multiply the result by the number of calories a person weighing 100 lbs. burns walking one mile at the speed you walked. At 3 mph, that's 53 calories per mile for a 100 lb. individual and at 3-1/2 mph, 52 calories. From there calories burned go up to 57 calories per mile at 4 mph and 64 calories per mile at 4-1/2 mph. The 100 lb. person will burn 73 calories per mile at 5 mph. Suppose you weigh 200 lbs. and walked for two hours at 4 mph. Divide 200 lbs. by 100 and multiply by 57 calories. You burn about 114 calories per mile. Multiply 114 calories by your distance covered of eight miles to find the total calories burned. In this example that's 912 calories.
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