In between completing your training sessions, tracking them and dialling in your nutrition, achieving your body composition goals can feel like a challenging pursuit. And that's before you've factored in work, family commitments and a social life.
However, there may be a simpler way to support your goals without making major sacrifices elsewhere.
Coach Dan John says that adding a short walk after your lifting session can deliver multiple benefits.
‘When I go for a walk after I lift, I feel like I get two benefits,’ he says. ‘First off, I think it helps with body fat loss, but I know for a fact it helps with my lower back because it feels better. So it's a win-win.’
The Post-Workout Walking Method
The key, according to John, is fitting walks into your day whenever possible rather than relying on one long session.
‘I walk 10,000 steps a day. Of those steps, at most 3,000-3,500 come after my workout. I do an early morning 2,000-3,000 steps first thing before I even have a cup of coffee.’
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After that, he lifts weights before heading out for another walk.
‘That walk, the post-workout walk, the 3,500-step one, is a third of my walking for a day, but I also have two to three other doses a day,’ says John.
The coach admits his own weight loss journey taught him the value of moderation.
‘When I first started, I made a lot of mistakes,’ he says. ‘I tried to be too harsh on the fasting side. I was doing 3- to 5-day fasts. That’s not going to happen again.’
He also found himself adding too much intensity to his movement, which made recovery harder.
‘I would ruck. I would have a 30- to 60lb vest on. I would put ankle weights on. And it was too much. And I was lifting really hard, these long kettlebell swing workouts, with a lot of other movements.’
Why Walking Works for Fat Loss
John believes the real benefit comes from the cumulative effect of steps on your daily activity levels and NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis).
‘If you walk 10,000 steps for 100 days, that’s a million steps. And I don’t care what you do in life. If you do something a million times, it's going to nudge you in the right direction,’ he says.
While a short walk might not seem particularly significant in isolation, those extra steps add up quickly over weeks and months.
The Bottom Line
Small habits such as post-workout walking may not seem transformative when you first start them, but they contribute to the consistency required to achieve your training and fat-loss goals.
Crash diets and extreme lifestyle overhauls can be tempting, but they're often difficult to sustain long term.
‘It is the consistency that makes you strong. It's consistency that helps with body composition,’ explains John.
‘And over time, it's far better to accumulate than to try to, like most of us when we first started our fat-loss journey, undo 51 years of accumulation by smashing our face against the wall on day one.’
‘The most important thing in the body composition game, the strength game and elite performance is little and often over the long haul,’ he concludes.
If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.
Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.
Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.
