Exercise plays an essential role in helping maintain a healthy weight and prevent chronic health problems associated with excess weight like diabetes and heart diseases. One of the main reasons why exercise has such beneficial effects on your body is the effect exercise has on your heart rate. One way to see this effect in action is observing the change in heart rate experienced when walking uphill.
Walking Heart Rate
Anytime you go for a walk, you increase the amount of energy being used by the muscles of your legs, as well as your arms, if you tend to swing them while you walk. In order to continue supplying the energy to your arm and leg muscles, your body needs an ample supply of oxygen. This oxygen is supplied through your lungs and into your bloodstream. This means that to meet the need, both your breathing rate and heart rate are increased to supply the oxygen to the cells.
Uphill Resistance
While walking does not increase your heart rate as much as other exercise activities like running, there are ways to increase the intensity of your walk. This intensity increase can come from either speeding up how fast you're walking or walking uphill. As you walk uphill, your leg muscles require even more energy to deal with the increased resistance. The more steep the incline of the hill, the more energy that's required. Along with an increase in energy use comes an even greater increase in your heart rate, even higher than your heart rate while walking on a flat surface.
Benefits
The increased heart rate experienced when walking uphill has several benefits for your body. First, the increased heart rate means you're using more energy, which means as new energy is created, you have a greater chance of creating a calorie deficit, resulting in fat loss. This can help you lose or maintain your weight. The increased heart rate also increases the strength of your heart over time when you make regular exercise a part of your routine. A stronger heart does not have to work as hard to pump blood through your body, resulting in a reduced blood pressure. Lower blood pressure reduces your risks for common heart problems like hypertension and heart diseases.
Recommendations
In order to see the benefits from walking at any incline, it's important to include at least the minimum weekly amount of exercise recommended by organizations ranging from the American Heart Association to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These recommendations include at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise each week. This goal can be achieved through walking on flat and uphill surfaces alone, or through a mixture of physical activities like biking, swimming, hiking or taking an exercise class.
References
- Mayo Clinic: Exercise -- 7 Benefits of Regular Physical Activity
- University of Maryland Medical Center: Exercise - Exercise's Effects on the Heart
- University of Arizona: Effects of Exercise on the Cardiovascular System
- American Heart Association: Guidelines
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Physical Activity and Health
Member Comments