The Easiest Way to Move More Between Workouts

Let’s start with math instead of motivation.

If you train with us three times a week for an hour, that’s three hours. There are 168 hours in a week. Which means 165 of them happen somewhere else: at your desk, in your car, on the couch, in the pickup line at school.

Here’s the thing nobody says out loud: those three hours are excellent, but they can’t carry the other 165 by themselves. No program can. If the majority of your week is spent almost entirely sedentary, you’re asking a very small slice of time to do a very large job.

This isn’t necessarily a reason to train more. Most of the people we work with don’t have another hour to give. It’s a reason to look at the space between your workouts, and walking is one of the easiest things to supplement.

1. Why Walking Is the Right Tool for That Space

There are plenty of ways to move more. Walking wins for boring, practical reasons:

It doesn’t cost you anything in recovery. If you’re strength training two or three times a week and you add hard cardio on top, you’re pulling from the same recovery budget as your lifting. You show up to your next session more beat up and your progress stalls. Walking doesn’t do that. It actually helps you recover better: more blood flow, less stiffness, looser hips after a long day of sitting.

It requires zero setup. No gym, no gear, no changing clothes, no shower afterward. The barrier is so low that it survives busy weeks, which is exactly when everything else falls apart.

It’s the one thing you can do every single day. You can’t lift hard daily. You can walk daily for the rest of your life, and your body will thank you for it.

2. What It Actually Does for You

Beyond the obvious, here’s what our clients notice first:

The afternoon crash gets smaller. A short walk after lunch can support blood sugar regulation while giving you a natural reset before heading into the second half of your day.

Your joints feel better. Sitting for eight hours can leave your hips and lower back feeling stiff. A few short walks throughout the day can help keep you moving instead of asking your body to go from eight hours in a chair straight into a workout.

Your head clears. A ten-minute walk between meetings does more for a stuck problem than a fourth cup of coffee. Most people come back having solved something.

Your engine gets bigger. Daily walking builds the aerobic base that makes everything else, like stairs, hikes, chasing your kids, and your third set of squats, all feel easier.

3. Stop Looking for Time. Look at the Time You’re Already Spending.

The mistake is trying to carve out a separate 45-minute walking block. That block is the first thing deleted when your week gets busy, and then you feel like you failed at walking, which is a genuinely silly thing to feel bad about.

Don’t find new time. Attach walking to time you’re already spending sitting:

During the workday

• Take one call a day on your feet. If it’s a 20-minute call, that’s real distance.
• Ten minutes after lunch, before you sit back down. Highest-return ten minutes in your day.
• Take the stairs. Every time, without holding a debate about it.
• Park at the far end of the lot instead of circling for a closer spot. You’ll usually get inside faster anyway.

Around your family

• At your kid’s practice, walk the perimeter of the field instead of sitting in the bleachers. That’s 45 minutes you were already going to spend there.
• Ten minutes after dinner, with your partner, your dog, or your kid. Nobody has ever regretted this one.
• Take one errand on foot if it’s close enough.

On the road

• Airports are the single best walking opportunity most people ignore. Walk the terminal instead of sitting at the gate. You’re going to be there for an hour regardless.
• At a hotel, take the stairs to your floor and walk to dinner if it’s under a mile.

At the edges

• Show up five minutes early to an appointment and walk the block instead of scrolling in the parking lot.
• Walk while you’re on hold. You were going to be on hold anyway.

Notice that none of these ask you for extra time. Every one of them takes time you were already spending seated and turns it into time spent moving. That’s the whole idea.

One free upgrade once you’re consistent: pick up the pace a little. A brisk walk, one where you can hold a conversation but wouldn’t want to sing, gets you noticeably more out of the same ten minutes.

4. Beat Your Own Number

We’re not going to hand you a step target, and you don’t need one.

The number that matters isn’t from a chart. It’s the one you’re doing right now, which most people have never actually looked at. Check it this week. Almost everyone is surprised, in one direction or the other.

Then just beat it.

If you’re at 3,000 and you get to 5,000, that’s a real change in how your week looks. If you’re at 8,000 and you get to 10,000, same thing. Both of those people moved in the right direction, and neither needed permission from a number someone else picked.

And with STEPtember starting this month, there’s no better time to find your baseline, pay attention to where your steps are coming from, and see how much more movement you can build into the life you’re already living.

The Bottom Line

Your training sessions are the part that builds and holds onto muscle. That doesn’t change, and nothing replaces it.

But those three hours were never meant to carry all 168. Walking is how you fill in the rest: no gear, no recovery cost, no new hour carved out of a calendar that doesn’t have one.

Look up your daily average this week. Then find one pocket of time you’re already spending sitting, and spend it walking instead.

That’s the whole idea.