Exercises With Hand Weights for Walking

Walking is a great low-impact cardiovascular exercise that almost anyone can do at any age. One weakness of walking for exercise, however, is that the intensity level workouts are often lower than running, and that it can take longer to achieve a similar level of muscular fatigue. Using hand weights to perform exercises while walking will increase your heart rate and muscle fatigue, resulting in a more intense workout.

  1. Walking Bicep Curls

    • When you walk briskly, you will likely notice yourself swinging your arms in front of you to maintain form and balance. By holding hand weights while walking briskly, this swinging motion becomes much more difficult to sustain, creating a more challenging workout. When you start your walk, allow your arms to swing naturally with your weights in hand. Chances are they will not swing as widely as they would if you weren't using weights.

      After allowing your body to warm up for a few minutes, begin to exaggerate the swinging motion, bringing your hands farther upward, lifting the weights. As you do this, rotate your wrists inward at the top of your arm motion, curling the weight in toward your chest. Continue alternating curls until your bicep muscles begin to fatigue, then resume a normal arm carriage, or move on to a different exercise.

    Weighted Lunges

    • Interspersing your walking routing with sets of weighted lunges can really get your legs burning and your heart working. To do a weighted lunge, stop walking for a moment and put your feet together, allowing your hand weights to rest at your sides. Take a large step forward with one foot, keeping the other foot planted. When your stepping foot comes to the ground, the knee should be in a deep lunge, bent at around 90 degrees. Use the strength of the stepping leg to push up and support the body, then bring the back leg forward, and straight up once more.

      Continue by lunging with the opposite leg, and alternating lunges for 10 to 20 reps, or however many you feel comfortable with. Keep the arms loose and dangling at your sides throughout the lunge, allowing the hand weights to increase the difficulty of the exercise.

    Cherry Pickers

    • If you've ever participated in a school sport, you may be familiar with cherry pickers. It is a simple yet effective way to work the shoulders and quickly increase the heart rate. To do cherry pickers with hand weights, raise your hands to the sides of your head, and alternate raising them straight upward, as if you are grabbing cherries off of a tree. Instead of opening your hands, keep a firm grip on your hand weights. Try to do this for 30 seconds to 1 minute without stopping.

    Considerations

    • Using hand weights while walking can increase the intensity of a workout and add new exercise possibilities, but it can also increase joint impact. Weights will also reduce the speed you can walk when walking briskly. Therefore, if you are concerned about your joints, it may be best to keep weights and walking separate, to keep your stride and arm carriage as natural as possible.