Walking is one of the best Covid-19 recovery exercises to regain fitness and makes you feel
a whole lot better physically and emotionally too. Hi I'm Michelle and today I'm going to guide you
through walking recovery exercises for after Covid-19 or other respiratory illnesses. Now
we're going to be going today through how to start your exercises, how to start your walking program,
what you can expect to feel when you start walking and then really importantly how to
progress your walking week by week and then I’ll give you four safety tips at the end of the video.
So we'll get straight into it. So when is it safe to start walking?
It's usually safe to start walking unless you've had medical advice to the contrary
a week after your active symptoms or your active Covid symptoms have disappeared. So some people
won't have active Covid symptoms but others will have symptoms like shortness of breath, coughing,
high temperature, a sore throat. When those sorts of things have settled down for one week
then you're able to start your walking program. So when you start, you can start with a five minute
walk, that is your initial goal. Now not all of us can do a five minute walk when we've been in bed
and unwell for quite some time, so there's some things you can actually start with before that.
When you do start make sure you can pass the talk test and that means that you can talk and walk
or move comfortably as you're doing so, and if you're familiar with the Borg scale that runs from
6 to 20 and you can see that scale here, you're trying to keep your level of exertion about a six
to eight which means only very light exertion to start out with. So let's say you're starting and
you're able to do your couple of minutes walk or if you can't you can start doing some marching on
the spot. So you can do some seated leg lifts and lowers just like this. So in the chair
and you might be able to do these every hour. So that's just a simple exercise you could do up to
10 of those every hour just to get started. If you're able to stand up you can stand up by the
side of the bed and you can just start some gentle marching and you could always hold on to the back
of the chair if you needed to do so or hold on to the back of a chair like that if you needed to if
your balance is down. So you could do those very regularly but let's say you're really keen now to
get into your walking program and increase your fitness, this is how you go about it.
You'd start with your five minutes and then you gradually build up and you use a time-based
approach. You're not worried about speed and you're not worried about distance. You're thinking
about the time you spend walking. So we're aiming first of all to try and get to a 10 minute walk,
so you can try and maybe increase one to two minutes maybe every couple of days if that
feels comfortable for you. The main thing is that you're going at your own pace and that you're not
exerting yourself too much. Now building up, then you'd build up towards a 10 minute walk. So you're
trying to get in one continuous 10 minute walk per day. Once you can do your single 10 minute walk,
that's when you stop, you don't try to go for 15 minutes. You then try to repeat a
second walk during the day so for example you might do a 10 minute walk in the morning
and then a 10-minute walk again or aim to get towards 10 minutes later in the day. After that,
then you're trying to build up to three 10-minute walks a day. So we're still not going over that
10-minute barrier. You're going maybe 10 minutes in the morning, perhaps 10 minutes at lunch time.
If you can then do 10 minutes later on the day you're ready then to progress to a 15-minute walk.
So you can see how we're using this time-based approach to gradually
increase your fitness and your endurance. Now once you can get to your 15 minutes and if you can do
two lots of 15 minute walks, then you're ready to try for your 30 minute continuous walk,
and that's what our guidelines should be for all of us doing 30 minutes of a continuous walk at
least five days a week. So you can see how we've progressed that walking schedule from maybe even
just a couple of minutes up to your five minutes, then you're 10 minutes and then scheduling your
10 minute walks up to 15 minutes and then to your 30 minutes continuous walk. Now if you'd
like to do some additional strength exercises you can refer to my strength exercise video which is
recovery exercises for after Covid and that will help you strengthen as well as regain fitness
with the walking program that you're doing here. Now be really kind to yourself. Some days
you might not have a great day and that's normal for everyone. Even athletes don't have good days
but think about how far you've come and think about the big picture in all of this. It's going
to take some time to regain your fitness so be kind to yourself throughout this whole process.
Now some safety tips I'd like to give you. When you do start to walk, start to walk maybe with
a friend or with a family member if you're not feeling confident walking on your own
and when you do start to feel confident then you might like then to start your own walking program
timing every day. On that note, you might like to keep a little journal of how long you walk for
whether it's five minutes, seven minutes or ten minutes, so that you can actually see and monitor
your progress. It might take you six weeks, it might take you two months to get to that 30 minute
walk. My third safety tip is to make sure that you don't wear socks when you're walking or thongs or
slip-on shoes. Try to wear or have either bare feet or a fitted shoe that I'm wearing at the
moment. That's so that you don't slip and fall. And finally and most importantly make sure that
you can pass the talk test and speak comfortably while you're walking. If you can't pass the talk
test then you're walking too fast and working too hard and you need to slow down that speed.
Now finally make sure you time your rest with your walking exercise and your strengthening
exercise. So walk when you feel well rested and then make sure you take the time to rest
and recover and that's how your body strength improves. Some of the things you might expect to
feel when you start to walk are sweating, like sweating and that's totally normal. You might
also feel some aches and pains a day or so after walking and that's also normal. Walking might make
you start to cough lightly because it makes you start to breathe a little bit deeper than what you
have been breathing too. So these things are quite normal and it's very normal to feel very tired
after you've been walking, especially when you're just starting out. So once again give yourself a
break, be kind to yourself. I'm sure you're doing a great job. So thanks so much for watching today.
Don't forget my strength exercise recovery video is coming up next if you'd like to watch that and
get some strength exercises too. If this video has been helpful I'd really be grateful if you
can give it a like below and subscribe because that's how YouTube decides whether to recommend
this video to other people that might be suffering from Covid symptoms as well. So thank you for
watching, I look forward to seeing you next time and iIwish you all the best with your recovery.