Rather than set goals that you may have trouble sticking to, start low and aim high. You may have an ultimate goal of walking for an hour a day; asics gel kayano start with a 15-minute daily walk and add five minutes each day for the next six days. At the end of the week you're walking for 45 minutes. If you feel you can do more than 45 minutes comfortably, add time to your walk during the following week. Walking Site suggests that walking on five days of the week is a good goal. You can also join one of the nationwide American Heart Association's "Start Walking" clubs and find new friends while getting fit.

Clock Up the Miles

Use distance as a guide to ensure that your walking is providing you with sufficient exercise. The National Institutes for Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that everyone perform some moderate exercise for 30 minutes a day, most days of the week. ACE Fit suggests that one way to achieve this is by walking two miles a day at a brisk pace, equivalent to about 4 miles per hour. asics trainers Consider using a pedometer to measure distance and make sure you're clocking up enough miles. If you can't fit a two-mile walk into your schedule, ACE Fit says break it down into three shorter walks per day.

Put Your Heart Into It

To improve your heart health, you also need to reach your target heart rate during at least 20 to 30 minutes of your walk. The target heart rate for beginners is 50 to 60 percent of your maximum heart rate. Find your maximum heart rate by subtracting your age from 220 for men and 226 for women, then multiply by 0.5 and 0.6 to find your target zone. Advanced walkers may use this heart training zone as a warm-up before progressing during a walk to 70 to 80 percent of the maximum rate. The Walking Site says you should be breathing hard but not feel out of breath. If your aim is to lose weight, walk at this faster pace for at least 45 to 60 minutes, five days a week.

Watch Your Limit

Walking at 80 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate improves your ability to use oxygen efficiently during exercise and your ability to tolerate lactic acid, which causes fatigue. Routinely walking at this high rate improves your overall cardiorespiratory system and burns more calories, 15 percent of which will come from your fat stores. If you can't sustain this pace throughout a walk, you can still benefit from it by using the interval training technique of building short bursts of high-intensity into your normal walking pace. However, walking at 90 to 100 percent of your maximum heart rate, which the Walking Site calls the Red Zone, is so intense that most people can do it only for short periods of time. asics gel lyte 3 It is also recommended that you have a medical check-up before attempting to walk at this pace.