Walking to improve your general fitness, cardiovascular fitness or to lose weight is best done when you hit a target heart rate. This means that your heart is beating a specific number of times based on the percentage of your maximum heart rate.

It is a mathematical equation that tells you if you are in a fat burning mode, calorie burning mode or just not working hard enough!

Walking monitors make the whole process that much easier. This is because you don’t have to move your fingers around your wrist searching for your pulse while walking with your friends.

Instead, just move your wrist up, like you would to check your watch, and the number is displayed on the monitor you are wearing on your wrist. Continue reading →

Men and women are different – and that applies to their different physiological needs for athletic shoes. Biomechanically, men and women are different in the way that their femurs insert into the hips, the angle of the knee and the way that their feet strike the ground. Each of these factors plays a role in how weight is distributed during walking or running.

The walking shoes you buy will be different from the ones you may use for running because the mechanics of running is also very different from walking. The build, features and design of the shoe should be matched to the purpose.

As you walk your weight first strikes the ground through the heel and then rolls through to the ball of the foot, which is different from running where the weight often strikes first through the center of the foot or the ball of the foot. Continue reading →