{"id":730036,"date":"2026-06-27T22:51:17","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/730036\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T22:51:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T22:51:17","slug":"walking-tips-the-five-minute-rule-experts-agree-will-help-kickstart-your-walking-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/730036\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking tips: The five-minute rule experts agree will help kickstart your walking habit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whatever your goal with walking<\/a>, the hardest part is often getting started. There are many things you can do to make it a habit and keep it up, but the best approach is to start small.<\/p>\n

The experts all agree that beginning with a five-minute walk<\/a> will set you up for success, especially if you haven\u2019t been that active<\/a> in a while.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/p>\n

Just a short walk each day is enough to start improving your health and fitness.\u00a0iStockphoto<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is something that can\u2019t go from zero to 100 straight away… You\u2019ve got to let your body build up to build that fitness<\/a>, and that\u2019s really important. So, you start small… and then slowly but surely, you\u2019ll be able to build that up over time,\u201d Elizabeth Calleja, Senior Advisor Physical Activity at the Heart Foundation, tells nine.com.au.<\/p>\n

One way to get an extra five or 10 minutes of walking in is to add it into what you\u2019re already doing by taking the stairs, getting off a bus or train stop earlier or parking further away from your destination.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you just did that, you could easily add like an extra 10, 15, 20 minutes to your week [of walking], maybe more,\u201d Dr Kelly Gough, clinical psychologist and President of the Australian Psychological Society, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A benefit to incorporating short walks into your day this way is that you\u2019ll soon find you\u2019re meeting the current Australian physical activity guidelines. The recommendation is for 30 minutes most days of the week of moderate to vigorous physical activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou should be achieving that, but everything counts. There have been studies to show that even doing 10 minutes or more [of physical activity] actually helps to improve cardiovascular fitness,\u201d Calleja said.<\/p>\n

Thinking about what works best for you to get walking and keep it up helps because everyone is different.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the time when we\u2019re talking to clients or patients, we\u2019ll try and individualise it\u2026 Do it with a friend if you\u2019ve got that personality that you\u2019re more likely to do it with someone. Dog walking is, for some people, a really good way of getting out the door every morning and going for a walk,\u201d Professor Jeff Coombes, School of Human Movement Studies at the University of Queensland, said.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re someone who likes to walk in a group, the Heart Foundation has walking groups<\/a> you can join. There are currently 50,000 people using the initiative and 800 groups operating around the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe walking groups are run at different times, different days, depending on the group itself. Some go once a week, some go three times a week, some do a monthly bushwalk, and they\u2019ll go to different locations,\u201d Calleja said.<\/p>\n

\"Group<\/p>\n

Walking in a group helps keep you accountable to your walking habit, while having the benefit of social connection.\u00a0iStockphoto<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the walks will stay and have coffee afterwards; one of my favourite quotes from our walkers is, \u2018They come for the walk, but they stay for the talk\u2019 and that social connectedness is one of the most important factors for our walkers in our annual walker survey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether you walk by yourself or with others, setting goals is helpful. But just like the five-minute rule for getting started, small, realistic and flexible goals are best.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s new evidence to show that having what\u2019s called open goals, that\u2019s been developed by researchers in Australia \u2013 Christian Swann is the academic on that \u2013 is actually more helpful for people to feel like they\u2019re not failing,\u201d Calleja explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou just say [for example], \u2018Oh, I want to walk more this week\u2019, and then you can set little small steps every day to get towards achieving that goal\u2026 you might want to start out to say, \u2018I\u2019m doing 10 minutes today, and I\u2019m going to add 5 minutes later in my lunch break\u2019 and build that up.\u201d<\/p>\n

But if you miss a day or aren\u2019t able to walk for as long as you planned that\u2019s OK. Instead of feeling bad you can use it as an opportunity to have a think about whether there is anything getting in the way of your habit that you can tweak moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cBe kind to yourself if you don\u2019t manage to do it, don\u2019t worry about that, you don\u2019t have to be perfect, just have another go the next day,\u201d Dr Gough said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Whatever your goal with walking, the hardest part is often getting started. There are many things you can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[337,97],"class_list":["post-730036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fitness","tag-fitness","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}