Walking for 30 minutes: Enough to Build Muscle and Stay Healthy?

Walking is as beneficial for the body as it is for the mind. However, do 30 minutes of daily exercise suffice for good health and toning?

In crowded subway cars or endless traffic jams on the road, many people prefer walking for their daily commutes. Praised for its benefits for the mind, it also helps combat sedentary lifestyles and allows for a moment of physical activity. But is granting oneself half an hour of daily walking enough to maintain good health and build muscle? Answers from a sports physician and a fitness coach.

Insufficient Exercise for Muscle Building

Both specialists agree that simply walking for 30 minutes daily is not enough to increase muscle mass. "It's too gentle an exercise that doesn't generate enough resistance to stimulate significant muscle growth," comments the sports physician, Victoria Tchaikovsky. This is problematic because, "beyond the aesthetic aspect, we need to have toned muscles to improve our posture and thus prevent back pain, relieve pressure on the joints, and densify the bone system," she explains.

A Healthy Activity

However, exercise is beneficial for our health due to its cardiovascular benefits, provided that certain rules are followed. Sports physician Victoria Tchaikovsky recommends opting for a longer walk during the day rather than several shorter ones: "Below about 10 minutes of walking, we are not working on endurance, and the cardiovascular system is not really engaged." To get the heart working, it's also important to walk briskly: "By increasing our pace to the point of feeling slightly out of breath, we oxygenate our bodies more. Over time, with regular practice, this will help reduce our blood pressure, stress, and the risk of heart attacks and strokes."

A Practice to Intensify...

If you want your 30 minutes of daily walking to tone your figure, you need to intensify the session. Julie Pujols-Benoit, a fitness coach, recommends, for example, choosing routes with inclines and stairs to tone the leg and buttock muscles. To strengthen the abdominal muscles, she also suggests contracting the pelvic floor and abdominal muscles, pulling in the belly button, and walking as upright as possible. "I also suggest using our walks to work on our breathing through heart coherence exercises. For example, counting 5 beats while inhaling for 5 steps, and 5 beats while exhaling. This helps relax, better control your breath, and gently exercise your heart."

To complement this routine and take it further, muscle strengthening sessions should be included alongside your walks, ideally two or three times a week. Julie Pujols-Benoit suggests practices such as Pilates, gymnastics, or weightlifting. According to the fitness coach, the need to strengthen your muscle mass becomes even more critical after the age of 30: "From this point, muscle loss begins to occur, and our muscles naturally atrophy if we don't stimulate them."