The indoor walking workout can not only help improve your fitness, but also your heart (Image: GETTY)
A personal trainer has revealed a simple 10-minute exercise you can do from the comfort of your home to stay fit. April Hattori, a personal trainer with senior fitness and functional training specialist, revealed the 14 exercises that will help improve your cardiovascular health, increase strength and boost your mobility on her YouTube channel.
Perfect for seniors and beginners, the movement will work your legs, glutes, core and upper body without being too draining.
Hattori said: “Join my 81-year-old mom and me as we walk and say yes to next steps to good health. Take [my mum’s] advice, ‘Don’t sit around. Get up and walk’.”
Hattori recommended doing a warm-up before you start the 10-minute workout that is performed in 30 second rounds.
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Using your feet and legs is key in this routine (Image: GETTY)
1. March in place
You kick off the session with your head up, shoulders back and engaged core, while you walk in one place. The trainer explained you can go at your own pace.
Getting marching right during the workout is key as you will need to “keep your feet engaged the entire time”, returning back to the marching position after doing every single new movement.
2. Sidesteps
For the next exercise, you need to step out with your right foot and then touch it with your left foot. Then, you step out with your left foot and touch it with your right foot.
“You have to think about it when you’re doing this move so it’s really good for your brain in addition to your muscles,” Hattori said.
3. Out outs and in ins
The next move requires you to step out with both of your feet. You start with one foot and step out and continue with the other foot and step out again. Then you step back in using each foot. You can keep saying “left, right, in, in” in your head to get the movements right.
Then you swap your legs and go “right, left, in, in”. The fitness expert added: “If you want to squat a little bit while you do this move, that engages your glutes and leg muscles even more. [But] don’t feel like you have to do that.”
One movement requires you to place your right knee up as high as you can and touch it with your left hand (Image: GETTY)
4. Heel touches forward
During the next move, you walk in one place but use your right and left heel to touch forward – the movement resembles a mini kick. The expert recommended engaging arms as well.
5. Knee ups
In this step, you place your right knee up and touch it with your left hand, then your left knee up and touch it with your right hand. But if you can’t touch your knee, Hattori explained you can just keep your arms on your side or on your hips.
She said: “Lift you knee as much as you can; it doesn’t have to be high. To do this, you’ve got to shift your weight.”
6. Walk forward
You start by stepping forward with your left foot, then step forward with your right foot. One more step forward with your right and left foot. As your left foot touches down for the second time, you reverse. Walking backwards, you use your right and left foot until you get to your second right and then reverse again.
“This move is great to engage your posterior chain muscles, your glutes, your hamstrings,” the expert said.
7. Side steps with arms up
Similarly to the first round of side steps in this routine, you step right with one foot and touch it with the other, then step left with your left foot and touch it with your right foot. But this time, you bend your arms, holding them by your waist and lift them up every single time you do a side step.
8. Bicep curls
This simple exercise only requires you to walk in one place while curling your biceps. Imagine you’re lifting two weights – one in each of your hands. Hattori said: “We’re testing your coordination here but also we’re challenging your upper body as we walk.”
9. Out outs and in ins
Then you repeat the out outs and in ins you did earlier in the session, using your left foot going forward, right foot going forward and then using your left foot to return back in, as well as your right foot. You can keep saying “forward, forward, back, back” in your head.
The personal trainer added: “It’s really good to strengthen those muscles to prevent falls. Makes you stronger.”
10. March in place with punch up
This exercise involves marching in place while using both of your arms to punch up in the air, reaching for the sky. “You have to force that blood up, above your heart, which is great to get your heart rate up,” Hattori said.
11. Heel touches forward
After the punch ups, you repeat heel touches, where you use your right and left heel to touch forward. Remember, this is the movement that resembles a mini kick.
12. March in place with crisscross arms
“March in place with the arms out to the side and crisscross them in front of your chest,” the trainer said.
13. Knee ups
After this march, you repeat knee ups from earlier in the session. You use your right knee to go up and touch it with your left hand, then your left knee goes up and you touch it with your right hand.
14. March in place
This is the very last round of the exercise, where you just march in place. The expert shared that you need to remember to breathe.
