I Take 10,000 Steps Around My Swimming Pool Every Day
By: Dan Stout
Tags: Health, Exercise, Fitness, Walking, Life

Photo by John Robert Marasigan

I like walking. I can just walk and walk and walk. I just keep walking. However, I live in Phoenix, Arizona. It is not the best walking city in the world.

Roaming the streets of Phoenix provides me no real sense of entertainment unless I listen to a podcast or some music, but I don’t like having something in my ears when I walk.

I like to be an observer, and to me, that means listening. Then there is the traffic in this city. There is a lot of it. If I have to walk along any part of the main road I should probably put on a mask or ventilator of some kind. The constant intake of carbon monoxide from the continuous traffic makes walking along these routes bad for me. So, I don’t walk along main roads and just stick to the residential streets.

Unfortunately, I start to lose the sounds of the city when I choose this route. Instead, it is just a barking dog at every house I pass that has a dog, which is a lot of them. I start to feel bad for postal carriers at this point and my walk begins to trend towards the negative. My neighborhood isn’t, let's say beautiful. This is also a bummer for walking the residential streets in my area.

It should be plainly obvious by now, I was just not enjoying my walks here. I know what the real problem is too. There was a time when I lived in New York City. Obviously a great walking city. I could step out of my Harlem apartment and just walk. So many things to look at and keep me distracted from the fact that I am walking and doing something good for my body. I miss those days, but my reality is I don’t live there anymore.

Then one day after a couple of hours in the garden I just started walking around my pool. It seemed like the right thing to do. There is already a track that has been built with the cool deck that surrounds it. My backyard also has a lot of greenery which makes for a pleasant experience.

In fact, I started to move many of the flowers, plants, and trees that I have into places that were right next to where I walk. I even put a basil plant on the route because I love basil. In this way, I am always walking past things that are beautiful to me. Beauty in the path of my walks makes time pass quickly and puts a smile on my face. I like to smile, it is good for me.

One of the bigger bonuses of my backyard walking course, in my case, was that I was not “being watched”. I am one of those people that does not like to be on display. This really just means being around one person who could be watching me. What a terrible feeling.

I, however, love people watching. When I would walk outside, I would just walk. That is all I would do. Now, when I am walking around my pool, I know that I am not on display and can get a little more creative with my walking. Sometimes I pretend that I am an Olympic fast walker, or swing my arms wildly like a crazy person.

I have built a few invisible hopscotch locations that I can move along and some inflatable tires that I can hop through, also invisible. This is something that is just plain good for me. In the middle of walking around the pool, I just stop, do twenty Jumping Dans, and then continue with my walking.

I’ve carried jugs of water ranging from one gallon to three gallons around the pool hundreds of times, done some arm circles, arm curls, skipped and tripped. This helps to keep my heart rate higher and I end up burning more calories on my walk. I really do wish I was the type of person that could do these silly things when walking outside but I am not, if you are, kudos to you.

Now that you have heard about my backyard walking course, I am sure that you are super inspired and have begun to think about where you would put the course at your house. What is the next step?

Go outside. Front or backyard. Maybe you can use both. Look at your yard. Close your eyes. What do you see? Open your eyes. Really look at your yard.

Ok, now envision where you want your course to be. What areas do you want to highlight on your walk?

I think a circular path is important for your journey. I have tried a path that just went back and forth but it didn’t work. It felt like I was back in high school running from one side of the basketball court to the other. Suicides I think they called them. It was not a pleasant experience.

If you already have a pool then you are most certainly ready to go. If not, get creative. Move some things around. Put things along your path that make you smile. Start walking. See where it leads.

Important note. Make sure you do not walk in only one direction. Try to keep the tread on your shoes even by walking clockwise and counter-clockwise in equal time frames. I cannot stress this enough.

This does not work if you live in an apartment, but could it? I thought about it for a bit, and it would have to be a very large apartment. Sorry.

Keep walking!