Welcome to your health and fitness guide. In my last article, we focused on setting realistic goals for your new or old exercise plan. We looked at ways to plan how we were going to incorporate exercise into our daily lives.

In this article, we focus on a walking and jogging plan. Whether you are on the treadmill or walking around your local suburb, we can all benefit from walking. Walking is a great part of anyone's workout. However, for you to truly see the benefits of walking it is important to make sure that you follow these tips:

• You need a good pair of walking/running shoes to provide optimum support for your feet;
• It is important to warm up the body before commencing a fast paced walk. You can simply do this by walking for the first 10 minutes at a moderate pace. After your 10 minutes of walking, you can then pick up the pace and really focus on your walking. You need to walk at a pace where you can just keep a conversation flowing. If you can talk with ease, then you need to pick up the pace. However, if you can hardly talk you are walking too fast.

If you are ready for the next step, you can focus on working harder on your walk. You might even like to incorporate a jog within your walking program. Some people will get scared of the word "jogging". Fear not - jogging is a great way to burn off extra calories and it need not be a scary experience. The key is to break your jogging experience down into smaller pieces and incorporate this into your walking routine. The following plan is great way to incorporate jogging into your regular walk. You can either do this on a treadmill or in your local suburb.  

As you go along you can increase your challenge sections by a minute each time. Before you know it, you will jogging the whole 20-30 minutes of your workout.

Yours in health & fitness, Monique

Please note:  Always consult with your doctor before beginning an exercise program, increasing your physical activity or have any other individual concerns.