Episode 5 | August 4, 2026 | Fred Spring

Can You Walk Your Way to Extraordinary Health?

[00:00:00]

Welcome everybody to another edition of Healthy Habits. This is a Tuesday night, uh, event, 7:00 PM Eastern Time every Tuesday night. I’m your host tonight. My name is Fred Spring. I’m a chief health span guide with TY Healthspan. We’re a wellness clinic located in Chamblee, Georgia, right outside Atlanta, and we help people improve their health.

And we s- we do it really with custom health plans and accountability and use precision diagnostics. We put all that together, and we have success, and then you have success. What we do on Tuesday nights is we dish out information and bust myths and provide snippets of healthy tidbits to improve your life, and tonight is no exception.

I’m gonna [00:01:00] pose a question and answer it tonight, which is: Can you walk your way to extraordinary health? Can you walk your way to extraordinary health? I know it’s a little almost counterintuitive, but we’ll explore it in detail. Uh, tonight’s session is gonna go 15 minutes with me talking and talking through some topics.

Then we’ll open it up for question and answers for 10 to 15 minutes, and then I’ll do a little wrap-up, and we’ll close it on down. This is a reminder, every Tuesday night we do these, and they’re recorded, so we can post these on YouTube, which are done shortly after we finish, and then we chunk up bits of this into great content nuggets for healthy dissemination into the, uh, digital ecosphere and then onto our website and into our blog and into social media and places where you might find it.

So stay tuned for more content from Healthy Habits. [00:02:00] So this is the format, and w- let’s get going So tonight I’m gonna walk the talk. I know it sounds kind of weird, but that’s what it’s all about, walking and talking tonight. I’m gonna talk about, uh, there’s a killer in the room, and I’ll explore who the killer is, and then the antidote to the killer.

So there’s a myth around this whole thing with 10,000 steps. You may have heard of this 10,000 steps thing, and it’s on wearables and it’s in the public mainstream and everyone’s striving to get their 10,000 steps in. I’ll give you the real deal. Uh, I’m gonna talk about how this walking thing is friendly and why friendly is good.

I’ll explore heart rate zones and specifically zone 2, and how walking in a certain mode it gets your zone 2 cardio up and why that’s healthy. And then, uh, more minutes is more better, and I’ll explore that. There’s a craze lately called Japanese walking that’s throughout [00:03:00] TikTok and was featured in The New York Times recently.

I’ll, uh, break that down, and then we’ll get to the answer about can you walk your way to extraordinary health, and I’ll, I’ll answer it in full honesty. All right, so that’s the topics outlined for tonight. On the question of who’s the killer in the room, uh, sedentary behavior. It’s a chronic conditions accelerator.

In other words, if you’re sedentary, it is not good. It leads to health problems. The opposite of sedentary is movement, and movement is key. Movement is life. Um, and walking is an essential element of movement. It’s the simplest form of it. It’s very safe. It’s what we were born to do. We were born to walk.

Some will say we were born to run. I’d say we were born to walk. Um, walking is safe, it’s effective, and I’ll get into more [00:04:00] details about it, and it’s the… Really, it’s the basis of movement, and it’s the opposite of sedentary behavior So all about this 10,000 steps thing. First of all, there was never any science behind it.

It wasn’t evidence derived. It came out in the mid-’60s when a Japanese researcher, uh, studied it as he developed the first pedometer, this walking tool, and he picked a number, interestingly, after some testing of his device, of 10,000 steps simply because it was a round number, uh, it was memorable, it was easy to, to remember, and it, it happened to be the, that the Japanese character for 10,000, you can see it on screen here, uh, sorta looks like a person walking.

So that’s really how 10,000 came about, and it got adopted into wearables and into research papers, and there was a lot of tests done. And what the [00:05:00] tests found, the reputable tests, were that the real sweet spot isn’t necessarily 10,000 steps. It’s actually closer to 7,000 steps, and that’s the sweet spot for the number of steps per day to gain all the health benefits for no matter what age you are.

Um, I will add something to that, um, that frequency matters. The more time you achieve 7,000 steps or 10,000 steps or more, more times, more better. You should aim for at least three days per week to get that, um, lift in your health outcomes And know that there’s no upper limit, so there’s no harm in walking more.

You’re not gonna hurt yourself walking 10,000 or 15,000 or 20,000 steps a day. In other words, there’s really no upper ceiling. So walk to [00:06:00] your heart’s delight

All right. Uh, I think this whole topic of walking is a friendly topic, and I, I think about it because one way to enjoy and get even more benefits from walking is to get a walking buddy, to get a pal, a friend. Not only can you walk and talk and enjoy company and social connection, which is very healthy, but it leads to more likely to do the walking, or we, we call in the health realm is it a- adherence, adherence to a behavior.

It’s also, of course, better for your mental health, and if you walk more and you’re in a better mental spirits, you’re more likely to, uh, do other things that are great for your health. So walking with a buddy is a great step. It’s a friendly step. It’s a way to ensure that you’re gonna do some more walking.[00:07:00]

Hey, and your buddy could be a pet. It could be a dog. It could be your, your friendly pet. If you have a pet, you end up walking more just to walk the pet, and that could become your walking buddy. Um, and of course, walking for most people is free. You don’t have to pay for this. It’s not like you have to join an expensive gym to get your cardio in.

You can get some cardio in with walking, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about that. Speaking of cardio, on the right-hand side of this screen is a chart with target zones for heart rate in this what we call zone two heart rate. I’ll try to explain heart rate zones as simply as I can. There are five heart rate zones, starting with the easiest, which is one, and going up to the most extreme or difficult, which is five.

When I say difficult, I mean that’s when your h- heart rate is at its highest. It’s at its maximal. [00:08:00] It is working hard to fuel, uh, the systems to work in your body to move or to breathe. At one, so heart rate zone one, that’s where, where I am right now, sitting quiet, s- uh, comfortable, could be at a very slow walking pace, who could be doing things around the house.

That’s a heart rate zone of one. And then there are zones in the middle of that, zones two, three, and four Zone two activities like brisk walking or biking create a great health benefit. And what I mean by that is it’s a safe way to expand your aerobic base, to expand your aerobic capacity by expanding the base or your foundation of aerobic fitness.

Zone two is best described as a, a heart rate or an activity level where you can talk, [00:09:00] but you can’t go on and on and ramble on for a long time talking. You likely cannot sing while you’re doing this activity, but you are able to talk for paragraphs at a time Zone five, you cannot talk. You’re doing all the work you can just to move and stay, uh, upright For very fit people who’ve been at this for a while, zone two, to get into zone two walking type activities, you’re gonna need a treadmill and be on an incline or add a walking vest, a weighted vest, a rucking vest to your, your walk.

Or you might decide to hike up hills or walk up hills. That will get your heart rate into a zone two level to achieve the maximum benefit for your aerobic base. In zone two, you also tend to burn the most fat. [00:10:00] It’s what we call the oxidation zone for fat burn. And again, it’s a very safe zone to exercise in, and it’s also a great zone to burn fat in.

So that’s the sort of, um, background behind zone two and zone two training, and being a brisk walker, walking at a good clip can get your heart rate into zone two. In a few slides, I’ll talk a little bit more about how to effectively measure your zone two, because everyone has different heart rate zones.

So why, why work in zone two? It’s safe. There’s very low injury risk. As you get up into h- upper heart rate zones, three, four, five, you might have heard of high-intensity interval training. High intensities are zones four and five typically, but they carry some risk. If you’re not a conditioned athlete or fit n- fit person, you wanna spend very little time up in zones four and five.

I’m not saying [00:11:00] avoid it, but be careful because that’s where a high risk, um, and reward situation can be. I already talked about zone two being a fat oxidizer more so than any other heart rate zone. The tip I’m gonna give you from TY Healthspan is more is better. More minutes in zone two, more better for your health.

At a minimum, and this is guidelines from the CDC and from other health institutions, walk a minimum of 150-plus minutes a week. That’s like a cardio base establisher. Think of that as if you were to walk five times a week, that’s 30 minutes per time, and, uh, strive to get into that zone two walking.

Longevity folks like Peter Attia preach a higher minimum of 180-plus minutes per week, and again, he advises more is better. So that’s a little tip from TY and from longevity [00:12:00] experts At the outset, I mentioned this thing called Japanese walking. Um, apparently it’s a craze being explored on TikTok, recorded and, uh, leveraged.

Uh, I know it was featured recently in The New York Times. Uh, I’ll call it a fitness trend. It’s where you alternate between very fast walking and easy, slow walking. It has a lot of benefits because it be- begins to combine some higher heart rate zones for a short amount of time and a lower heart rate zone, likely zone two.

It improves, it improves your blood pressure, your overall cardio fitness, and it can boost your leg strength. How to do Japanese walking? It’s very simple. It’s three minutes on and three minutes off. Think of it as three minutes of walking very, very, very fast and three minutes of walking very, very, very slow, and you just keep repeating.

Rinse and repeat for 30 minutes. If you do this several [00:13:00] times a week, you will ag- in, in- indeed get those benefits that I talked about. So in a nutshell, that’s what Japanese walking is about, and you may have seen people out there doing it. Uh, I, I urge you to give it a try. See if it’s something that’s good for you, good for your workout habits, and, um, uh, maximize your zone two.

All right, now I’m gonna tackle the big question for today. Can you walk your way to extraordinary health? I’m gonna say yes with an asterisk or a caveat. It’s if you really push yourself. Walking at what most normal people do w- is walk at a 2.5 to three p- miles per hour clip is gonna maybe get you into zone two, probably the upper end of zone one, which is beneficial because you’re not sedentary.

Keep doing it. But in order to push yourself to get muscle growth and upper end cardio advantages, [00:14:00] you’re gonna need to walk a lot. You’re gonna need to walk really fast, I’ll call it very briskly. We’re to tackle some hills or wear what’s called a weighted vest or a rucking vest, and my guidance is to start out with like a vest that’s 10% of your body weight before you start adding more weight.

You might wanna increase your walking capacity using dumbbells. That will get your heart rate up and get your exercise in, your muscles worked out. You can do curls and tricep extensions while you’re walking. Um, a friend of mine just reminded me this morning about the advantages of Nordic walking. He walks with trekking poles, one in each hand, and it allows him to go a little faster, a little more safely, and it does increase your health benefits The other way to great, really c- increase your, your walking, um, um, [00:15:00] a- ability is to walk on a hill.

And the, if you have a treadmill, you can actually increase the incline on the treadmill by percentage points. And getting to 10% or 12% or some treadmills go up to 15%, that will activate your glute muscles Incredibly so. That is a bigger boost to your overall health, ’cause you’re building this foundation, including your, your glute muscles and your leg strength.

So can you walk your way to extraordinary health? Yes, you can. If you push yourself with some of these tactics, you’re gonna get more benefit, more cardio, more, um, leg strength, more muscle adaptation, and an overall better health. The tip for today is if you wanna combine some of these things, like a weighted vest and hills or a high incline on your treadmill, [00:16:00] you’re gonna get the most benefit, and you’re, you’re indeed gonna quickly boost your health.

So that’s what I wanted to tackle today. I also wanted to let you know that what we do at TY Healthspan is we measure. We measure your body. We figure out measurements for you. One of the ways we do that is through this test called the VO2 max test, where pretty much you would get on a treadmill. We would cause you to get to your maximum heart rate.

We’re doing this with precision measurement. From that measured maximum heart rate, we can then use a, um, software to calculate your personal heart rate zones that are gonna be very different from your wearables which guesstimated or estimated. And there you can get your custom zones, including your custom heart rate zone two, so that you can build that aerobic base and live longer.

Um, there are wearables on the market that do a pretty good [00:17:00] job of tracking your activity and your, your heart rate zones. Some of them are listed on the screen here. And know that if you use wearables, use them consistently, track your behaviors, and you can actually dramatically shift your health and your mind and your body.

So, um, any questions about measurement on the VO2 max or measurements with wearables, uh, s- reach out to me or reach out to TY Healthspan. We can help you with discounts for these wearables. We have great discounts with, uh, f- Oura, with Garmin, and some others. We can get you set up. We can get you measured.

We can get you integrated into healthy apps so that you get more information and you get to measure your progress. Right now I’m gonna stop talking for a bit and take any questions that we might have about health, about walking, about this whole topic of walking to extraordinary health. That happens to be a picture of me after my walk today, which I enjoyed with a [00:18:00] friend and my furry friend.

That’s our dog, Biscuit. I wore a weighted vest, and it did elevate my heart rate a little more, which I enjoyed. So that was me practicing my, uh, my talk today. Do we have any questions? Yeah, Fred, I believe we do. All right. You wanna feed them to me, and I’ll help answer them. Sure. Um, how about, you know, is, is…

What about walking versus running or jogging? So they all have, um, their place, and I believe that walking is a base level healthy behavior. If you have injured bodies or knees or, um, have health conditions, more often than not, walking is gonna be a better resource for you than running or jogging, which have more impact and more pounding [00:19:00] on your lower body.

Running is healthier than jogging. Jogging has all the pounding with less of the benefits of the cardio. Running tends to be a little more gliding over the surface, less injury, um, and produces higher end capacity interval training. So if you’re gonna choose between jogging and running, I’m gonna promote running over jogging.

All of it is good because all of it is movement. Uh, my words of wisdom are based on your current conditioning, your injury status, and your goals. Um, try all three and see what’s working for you. We also do a walk every Thursday from TUI Healthspan. We can explore that more in depth with you while we’re walking and talking Thursdays at 12:30.

What other questions might have come up? Um, on your, on [00:20:00] your chart- Yeah, let me go back to that … um, are the… Yeah. On the, on that chart, are the target, are those target, are those targets actual zone two? Yeah. This is a zone two estimate for the average person who are in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s and so on.

This is an average. It’s a guide. It is not what is your personal zone two heart rate zone. For that, you would wanna do a VO2 max test to get those custom heart rate zones measured particularly for you and, and that’s what we do at TY Healthspan.

Great. Um You know, you had said there, there was 150 to 180 minutes per week. Is, is, is there, is there a minimum for people that are just really, really busy that, like, what, what would you say is, is 150 really the [00:21:00] minimum, or can you get by with less? So 150 is a guidance from, um, the National Institute of Health, the CDC, and some other health organizations.

Any amount of walking is better than not. So sedentary is the killer, walking is the antidote to that. Um, more minutes, more better. I would say get started, get walking. Um, you’ll be surprised. You, you might set out to do a two to five-minute walk around the neighborhood, and before you know it, you’ve spent 10 to 12 minutes walking and didn’t, didn’t, didn’t even pay attention to your time.

The other thing that I would encourage you to do is, is to track your walks. You know, start your timer on your watch, or look at the time before you go out, or check your wearable device or any type of tracker you have, and then monitor how you feel when you walk different lengths [00:22:00] and different time durations.

And start adjusting it based on how you feel after your walk

Uh, a couple of previous Healthy Habits, uh, me- meetings we have, uh, people have s- discussed walking after eating and the, and the, and the benefit of that That is fantastic. Let, let me stop you there. Yes, there’s a, a slew of, uh, research out there about walking after meals. And what it does in a se- in, in a nutshell is it helps regulate insulin after a heavy meal or after eating carbohydrates.

So what you’ll find is that healthier societies, healthier realms of people and populations are people who walk more often, and especially those who walk after meals [00:23:00] It’s a great way to help digest and regulate your insulin response to your food

Great. I think that’s all the questions that we have, Fred. They were good questions. Um, again, thank you everyone for those that joined and for those that are watching after the fact. I appreciate your interest in your health, and reach out to us at TY HealthSpan when you’re ready to create a custom health plan with us.

We’re ready to dev- to develop that for you and get you on your way. Again, my name is Fred Spring. I’m a chief HealthSpan guide with TY HealthSpan. Each and every Tuesday night we do these healthy habits. We’ll see you on the next one Great. Thanks, Fred You’re welcome. Hey, what can I do to, what can I do to help you?