A Step-By-Step Guide to Making Your Walk a Workout

If you want to exercise, it doesn't get much easier than walking.

That's why so many of us are breaking out the sneakers for lunchtime power strolls. In 2006, 87.5 million Americans walked for exercise.

But like anything else, walking can get old. To prevent that, there are many ways to power your walk into a workout.

Setting goals for one -- walking farther, faster or uphill can take you to the next fitness level. Carrying hand weights, too, can work your arms while you walk.

Even rainy days offer a chance to shake up a walker's world. Just follow the steps taken by some downtown workers.

"If it rains we do the stairs in the building, 12 flights, four or five times," said Kim Januszkiewicz, 42, an employee at M&T Center in Buffalo, N.Y. She and three other workers walk daily through lunch either taking a 4.8-mile loop down Delaware to Gates Circle or a 3.5-mile out and back to Erie Basin Marina.

The friends average 4 mph, fast enough to energize, but slow enough for comfortable conversation, as essential to some walkers as a chilled bottle of Poland Spring.

"We sit at our desks all day, so if we don't walk, it definitely makes the afternoon longer," said Marianne Tyree, 30. "We have things to talk about. We walk together for companionship. Most of us exercise in addition to this."

By walking 10,000 steps -- or five miles daily -- the average person can achieve the level of exercise recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and American Heart Association. In addition, research from the American Journal of Preventive Medicine indicates that people who walk to exercise get "moderately intensive" activity when taking 100 steps a minute.

"Walking conditions your heart," said cardiologist Dr. JoAnne Cobbler. "It improves circulation to your legs, reduces obesity and high blood pressure, and over time your heart rate will decrease because the heart becomes more efficient pumping more blood per each beat. Heart disease is preventable."