How to make your daily walk even more beneficial

How to make your daily walk even more beneficial

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Story Published: Aug 20, 2008 at 7:08 AM PDT

Story Updated: Nov 20, 2008 at 10:12 PM PDT

By Herb Weisbaum

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SEATTLE -- You know how I feel about walking -- it's great exercise. My friend, Dr. John Swartzberg at the UC Berkeley Wellness Letter says, you can get more out of your walk if you try a few things.

Swing your arms.

"It burns more calories and it may be also a little bit of a workout for your shoulder and arms," he says.

Walk up and down hills and choose a varied terrain. You burn more calories walking on grass or gravel.

And what about hand weights?

"Good, but be careful," Dr. Swartzberg said.

Good because they make you burn more calories. Just make sure you don't hurt yourself

"I remember jogging once with real low weight hand weights and boy my neck was sore for about two or three weeks," he said. "So it's very important that you start with very low weights and you do small amounts and make sure it agrees with you, so you slowly build up the weights and don't injure yourself."

Finally -- and this is no joke -- try walking backward.

"When you walk backward you're using different muscles than when you walk forward so to the extent that it does train and strengthen different muscles, it's a good activity," Dr. Swartzberg said.

You just need to make sure you have someone with you to keep you from running in to something.

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