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Walking is hard to beat when it comes to popular forms of exercise. It doesn’t require special skills or equipment, training or locations, but you gain plentiful health benefits. Since walking increases your heart rate, it’s considered a cardiovascular physical activity. Once you read about the benefits of walking, you’ll want to lace up your sneakers and get moving. To inspire you, we’re giving you some wonderful options around the Denver area that are perfect for your next walk workout.

Benefits of walking

Walking is a low-impact way to work out. You can increase your speed, elevation and distance to get more of a challenge or modify these elements when you need a lower-intensity exercise. This flexibility makes walking an ideal exercise for nearly everyone, regardless of fitness level.

Regular walking workouts have numerous benefits, including:

• Improves cardiovascular health: Since your heart rate increases when walking, it improves blood flow and delivers oxygen throughout your body. It lowers the risk of stroke, cardiovascular disease and death. Just 30-45 minutes of walking daily can reduce your heart disease risk.
• Eases joint pain: When you walk, you strengthen your leg muscles and relieve pressure from your joints. Walkers with osteoarthritis often get relief from knee pain because walking and exercise can rebuild cartilage.
• Enhances mental health: Whether depression, anxiety or stress, walking and other forms of exercise is good for your mental health. When you move your body, endorphins are produced and released. Some psychologists believe a 10-minute walk can be as good as a 45-minute workout to relieve anxiety and depression.
• Better sleep: A study in the journal Sleep Health found participants had significantly better sleep after increasing their daily step count by 2,000.

Where to walk for exercise in Denver

The wonderful thing about walking is that you can do it just about anywhere, including on a treadmill, in a gym, at the mall, on hiking trails, city sidewalks or in parks. Here are some of our favorite spots in the Denver area to walk for exercise:

Harvard Gulch Park: While various activities bring people to Harvard Gulch Park including golf, softball/baseball and basketball, it’s also a great place to move your legs on the bike/pedestrian path. You can even chart your course on the park grounds.

City Park: Also home to the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and Denver Zoo, City Park offers acres of walking terrain and lovely spots to take a rest when needed.

Washington Park: A favorite gathering spot for many in the Denver area, Washington Park has lush landscaping, two lakes and expanses of green grass. When you visit to get your steps in, you’ll quickly realize why this park is often ranked as one of Denver’s favorites.

High Line Canal: Referred to as a linear park, Denver’s High Line Canal offers 71 miles to walk and is one of the longest continuous urban trails in the country. If you walk all 71 miles, you can earn a commemorative medallion and sticker.

Walking is a great physical activity to complement other forms of movement such as Pilates and functional training. Please call or text us at 303-472-6742 if you would like to incorporate Pilates, functional training, or OOV classes into your health lifestyle.