The Benefits Of Walking Just 10 Minutes A Day

It can feel intimidating to commit to an ongoing fitness plan, especially one that meets recommended guidelines in the U.S.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you should perform moderate physical activity for 150 minutes weekly — for example, five days in which you get 30 minutes of exercise. And walking, specifically brisk walking, can meet this standard. Additionally, the guidance says you should do strength training two days a week.

While a single burst of short exercise — in this case, a 10-minute walk — won’t meet these moderate physical activity recommendations, you could still reach the goal by taking three 10-minute walks each day. And, if you can’t do that, you can start with even shorter walks, which can still support a healthy life.

“The data really supports that one of the most harmful things we can do for our health is to be sedentary,” said Dr. Samantha Smith, a sports medicine physician at Yale Medicine. A sedentary lifestyle puts you at increased risk for negative cardiovascular outcomes like strokes or heart attacks and is also a risk factor for other medical conditions, she said.

It can be a pretty big leap to go from zero minutes of exercise to 150 each week. So, if you need to start small, that’s OK. Experts say shorter bouts of exercise are still beneficial, because doing something is better than doing nothing. Even that quick 10-minute walk in your day will be good for your mental and physical health. Here’s how:

“When we stand or sit, our blood can pool in our legs,” Smith said. But as we walk and “as our muscles are squeezing, that helps with improving our circulation in our body.”

According to Smith, good circulation is important for many things. It supports tissue health, helps clear out waste products from the body and reduces the risk of blood clots.

“Just getting up and moving … activates your whole system so you feel more energy, whether it’s [getting up] from your chair at work or the couch or the bed,” said Jamie Shapiro, a professor and co-director of the Sport & Performance Psychology program at the University of Denver. So, that 10-minute walk is quickly going to perk you up.

When you stand up for a walk, your blood starts flowing, which then increases your energy levels, according to Shapiro. “You just feel more activated,” she said.

Shapiro added that she likes to call these quick bouts of exercise…