I never used to consider myself a “walking” kind of girl. I skipped the “hot girl walk” trends on social media and never took “mental health walks” during the pandemic lockdown. In fact, I long thought walking—one of the first milestones we reach as babies—had received a little too much PR hype, especially after learning that the much-ballyhooed “10,000 steps” we’re supposed to take every day is an arbitrary figure invented to market pedometers.
If I am going to do cardio, I reasoned, I’m going to do cardio: cycling, running, swimming, or playing sports. If I’m not sweating, what’s the use? But after trying out Peloton’s guided walks, available in the at-home fitness giant’s incredibly versatile app, I have discovered the utility of the “very slow run.”
I am now, finally, a walking girl.
Is walking good cardio?
The former reductive view of cardio—that it has to be sweaty for it to matter—was always false, which I kind of knew. As Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki has explained before, walking is cardio—and actually a pretty good form of it too. How fast you walk can even be used to measure your health and endurance capacity.
Different intensities of cardio do different things for your body, and at a basic level, walking burns calories. It’s also an easy way to bring a little extra movement into your life, especially if you’re a fitness beginner or are recovering from an injury. The catalyst for me checking out Peloton’s walking offerings was my mom being “prescribed” walking as a treatment for an issue she’s been having with her back that prevented her from walking for long periods or walking quickly. After addressing it with her doctors and physical therapists, her at-home assignment was to walk for longer and longer durations on a walking pad.
As an able-bodied person living in a walkable city, I have definitely taken my ability to walk for granted. I decided to check out Peloton’s walking workouts to see if they’d be useful for my mom—but they ended up being useful for me.
How Peloton’s walking workouts work?
To find walking workouts on the Peloton app, select Walking from the top of your home screen or type “walking” into the search bar. Peloton’s walking workouts are designed for use on their Tread treadmills (or any treadmill), but I’ve found that I enjoy them just as much if I go outside, though I obviously can’t control the incline when I do that. The guided walks are like any class Peloton offers: They come in a variety of lengths and formats, are led by a certified instructor who encourages you and reminds you of safety cues, and feature playlists of music that keep the energy going.
I start off nearly every weekday morning by walking to Dunkin’ Donuts, and then to the post office to drop off whatever I’ve sold on resale apps, so I queue up a Peloton walk for my journey. While I don’t necessarily need to have an instructor in my ears reminding me to walk, it encourages me to keep my pace up; I just ignore whatever they’re saying about messing with incline and resistance buttons.
This morning, I walked along with a five-minute warmup walk routine from instructor Logan Aldridge, who shared encouraging reminders that walking, even if it feels easy, is “massively worth it” for a person’s health. He also gave speed cues using practical examples instead of relying on cues built around treadmill functions. At one point, he described the pace goal as “not Manhattan walking, not New York City walking,” which is funny because I was, in fact quite literally Manhattan-walking my way to Dunkin’, so I slowed down a bit.
You can enable location sharing for more accurate measurements. I have my Apple Watch paired with my Peloton app to give me better data on my heart rate, output, and speed, too. I forgot to enable my location tracking at the beginning of the walk, so at the end, it prompted me to enter in my distance walked for better measurements. I glanced at my watch, which told me how far I’d gone, entered in that number, and was taken to a screen where I could review my output.
If I have a long way to amble, I will use the Peloton app to track freestyle-type walk. At the bottom of the home screen, you’ll see a button that says Track, with a little plus sign. If you tap that, you’re prompted to choose an activity, with Outdoor Walking at the top. (Others include strength, outdoor running, rowing, etc.) Tracking these within Peloton can be redundant if you use Apple Health app to do the same thing, but it’s useful if you’re maintaining a Peloton check-in streak or like keeping all your fitness data within a single app. When you finish your freestyle workout, Peloton tells you your pace and how far you walked.
You can do all this on a treadmill, and the walking class workouts are more or less designed for you to. The live classes enter the on-demand archive when they’re finished, and you can choose from cool-down walks, power walks, hikes, walks set to certain kinds of playlists (like ’90s music or EDM), or even “walk & talk” walks that have two instructors if you like that chatty, podcast kind of feel. Some classes feature walking and running and their titles tell you that upfront. As you’re scrolling the options, you’ll mostly see title cards with instructors on Treads in the Peloton studio, but you’ll also see a few where the instructors are outside. These guided walks are designed for the outdoors and the instructors will call out the half-way point so you always know when to turn around and head home (or back to the office). The workouts vary in length, from five minutes up to 75 minutes, with the longer ones often incorporating both walking and running.
Why I like Peloton’s walking workouts
These workouts are an easy way to slot some extra intentional movement into my day, just as Peloton’s stretching classes have helped me on my flexibility journey. As a carless New Yorker, I generally walk around a lot, but I’m not always doing it with purpose. Having an instructor reminding me to connect with my steps, and a playlist designed to keep me on a certain pace, turns a standard coffee run into a mindful exercise.
Walking is also low-impact and accessible, so even on a day you’re tired or if other forms of cardio feel out of reach, you have access to a whole world of fitness opportunities. Perhaps most importantly, this is the most accessible kind of workout on the app, because you really don’t need anything extra at all—you don’t need a floor mat, yoga blocks, or weights, let alone a fancy treadmill. As long as you have some good shoes, you can walk all you want while still benefitting from some encouragement and guidance from a trained pro.
