Summer often provides better weather and longer daylight hours for walking, but walking requires integrating other exercises to increase your speed, improve your body shape, and reduce injury risk; especially strength exercises that enhance muscle strength, balance, posture, and coordination, adding variety that makes walking easier, more enjoyable, and effective without boredom, says certified personal trainer Christina Dorner.

This combination of walking and strength exercises is called “cross-training,” a program that combines various training methods to improve physical fitness, according to the American Council on Exercise (ACE).

According to a 2020 study published in the British Medical Journal, cross-training is a smart strategy everyone can apply to achieve balance, flexibility, strength, and mobility in daily life, strengthen the lower body and core, and improve overall fitness, making walking faster and more efficient.

Stephanie Mansour, a certified health and fitness expert on “Today,” says the best way to achieve these goals depends on a mix of developing your walking routine over time and varied training by gradually increasing intensity, duration, or pace weekly, walking longer periods, or increasing speed. Strength exercises can also benefit both upper and lower body and help increase walking capacity.

Activities like swimming or yoga can improve fitness without stressing walking muscles, making exercise more dynamic and effective.

“Walking may be a simple exercise, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t challenging,” says Stephanie Mansour, explaining three key factors to develop a walking routine and improve fitness level:

Duration: If you are coming from inactivity or just returning to exercise, 5 minutes is a great goal. Once accustomed to walking 5 minutes, increase to 10 minutes and keep increasing as you feel able.

Speed: Increasing walking speed is a way to develop your walking routine. For example, if walking around the neighborhood initially takes 10 minutes, set a goal to make it 8 minutes by adding short bursts of fast walking, then slowing down for a few minutes before adding another short burst to raise your heart rate.

Distance: Another walking goal is to increase the distance or steps walked daily by focusing on covering more ground and moving more.

Dorner says even those who do light exercises like walking can benefit from integrating cross-training into their walking routine to help prevent injuries and have a stronger body that enhances recovery after walking.

Additionally, Stephanie Mansour confirms three main benefits that help you walk faster and longer without feeling tired or exhausted:

Core Strength: Core strength is important for walkers because it helps stabilize the spine and pelvis, improving posture and balance. Strong core muscles allow more efficient energy transfer from lower to upper body, enhancing walking speed and reducing back strain.

Core exercises like planks and bicycle crunches help maintain correct posture and prevent injuries, making walking more comfortable and effective.

Flexibility: Flexibility is essential for walking to prevent injuries and improve range of motion; warming up prepares muscles for activity, while cooling down allows recovery.

Mansour recommends dynamic stretches like toe touches, side leg swings, and side bends to increase blood flow and relax joints before walking, and static stretches to reduce muscle soreness and improve flexibility.

Mobility: Prioritizing joint mobility in fitness routines through exercises like hip circles, shoulder rotations to reduce stiffness or discomfort, and ankle circles to maintain joint health and walking enjoyment is important to improve overall mobility and reduce injury risk.

Stephanie Mansour advises adding exercises to your walking routine to strengthen glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps, and calf muscles to help you walk faster, with each exercise done in 3 sets of 10 repetitions with one-minute rest between sets.

Dorner also recommends using common objects encountered during walking, such as park benches, to incorporate cross-training.

This exercise activates quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and core muscles and is a great way to strengthen the lower body and core. It can be performed as follows:

It is a push-up exercise that strengthens the upper body and core, activating chest, anterior muscles, and triceps, performed as follows:

It is beneficial for walkers as it activates the back of the arms and the entire core muscles. It is done as follows:

Meaning turning walking into strength movements at specific markers; for example, Dorner suggests: