Fitness: Interval Walking - A Fun Rainy Day Activity
for Physical Education Classes
Interval walking is a good indoor physical education acNeed a rainy-day fitness activity? Try this "Walking Intervals" workout in any gym or long space. It's sure to get heart rates up! Great for kids young and old!
Set-Up
In a gym or long space, define the following terms:
- Single: one length of the gym
- Double: down & back (two lengths)
- Triple: down, back, down (three lengths)
- Quadruple: down, back, down, back (four lengths).
![Fitness: Interval Walking - A Fun Rainy Day Activity for Physical Education Classes](/members/images/341b.jpg?cb=20240723053453)
Execution
Explain the workout, then have students pair up and work their way through the workout. Walk with them and encourage those who are struggling to keep up.
Suggestions
- Stretch after the warm-up laps and after the cool-down laps.
- After EACH single, double, triple, etc, students MUST wait 10 seconds (or other length) of time before they can walk again OR wait until their heart rate recovers to a certain BMP (120 for 18 year olds, for example).
- Each interval MUST be walked at maximum speed. The idea is to really create a wave workout, where heart rates go up and down, up and down.
- You can also have students perform other exercises between intervals (for example, heel raises, wall sits, squats)
Reproducible Sheet
To see a reproducible page containing this interval walking workout, download the pdf version of this article below.
Conclusion
This is a great workout that doesn't require any equipment, can be done almost anywhere, and is a lot of fun!
Contributor: Dr. Sandy Kimbrough is an Association Professor and Assistant Department Head with the Department of Health and Human Performance at Texas A&M University-Commerce.
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