Hey Athletes! Want to know how you can become a better human by walking your dog? Tune into this week’s episode of Ask Me Anything!
Episode 29 of Ask Me Anything is up!
Ask Me Anything: Become a better human by walking your dog
This week Jerred and Joe answer a question from Todd. He asks if there is any research that encourages walking your dog for health? The guys go over why walking your dog daily can, in fact, make you a better human.
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Related Resources at End of Three Fitness:
- Ask Me Anything: Male Body Image Issues
- Getting Tactical with Light and Sleep to Build a Better Human with Dan Pardi
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To becoming better!
Jerred
Transcript:
Ask Me Anything: Become a better human by walking your dog
[00:00:00] Jerred Moon: Welcome to garage gym athlete. Ask me anything. It’s pretty simple. I’ll be answering questions from the thousands of athletes that follow our daily programming. If you have a question or topic you want submitted, go to dot com slash AMA. Let’s get started.
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast. Jared moon here with Joe Courtney. What’s up Joe.
Joe Courtney: Hey, it’s a new day again.
Jerred Moon: Not the same, not the same day. It’s a new day. That’s glad that I was stated. We need to make sure people know that. All right, we’re doing an ask me anything.
in regards to kind of the recovery game, we don’t really call it the recovery game anymore. Even though this is more recent question, we call it the three elements. And we used to do, a quick, quick tangent on that. So it used to be the recovery game to where you did certain things. [00:01:00] It takes points away from you, and then you do the recovery game to get some of those points back.
And then we switch it to the EO. Three elements is just, Hey, here are the nine things you need to do or try to do every single day to be a better human and to see more results in your fitness and health program. The reason I took away the recovery game is because it was becoming. Just the way people, some people are asking me questions on email and all of that was this.
I’m allowed to do these things so long as I make up for it here. And so the recovery game started to backfire on me a little bit because. We had things like, Oh, if you drank alcohol, like it took you down like two or three points or whatever. And so people would be like, okay, drink alcohol down, three points, eat healthy, you know, eat my fruits and vegetables, take the dog for a walk, do this.
Cool. I negated the alcohol and that’s just not true. That’s not how life works. That’s not how works. And so I changed it to the elements. I don’t think I’ve ever explained that. publicly. So that’s why we [00:02:00] switched it. anyway, Todd asks during the recovery game, there’s a question about other activity like walking a dog.
Is there any research on human health and walking your dog? I’d like to show my wife slash encourage us to walk the dogs daily. He said, thanks for the programming. Done two cycles and feeling much better. Okay. So Todd, there are multiple studies. you know, there’s one in from 2018 encouraging. encouraging dog walking for health promotion and disease prevention, factors associated with daily walking of dogs and your health.
Like, I mean, I didn’t even dive into as far as I could have with the research. So yes, there is for sure. Research on walking your dog for health. Now, why is it in the recovery game? We are looking for just an extra set of an aerobic activity every single day. That’s 10 minutes beyond your normal training.
That’s what we’re looking for. Because the only thing that we’re looking for is [00:03:00] blood flow. Looking to get the blood flow, to help your body, move good stuff to your muscles. It doesn’t take away the bad stuff to put it in. And, you know, the, the simplest terms that we can. And so that’s why we encourage things like walking the dog, because sometimes people are like, Oh, you want me to do another workout on top of the training you already prescribed, like.
No, I’m not, I’m not asking you to go do an additional bike ride or a second training session, but if you walk your dog today and then you also worked out, you wouldn’t consider yourself having done two workouts. So I like to put it in perspective for people. but yeah, walking is the good part of that though.
Like that’s. I, I don’t, I can’t get into like the, the mental side. I didn’t see that in the research as much, but I’m sure that there is like, dogs make you happy. Like Joe, you’re a dog guy, right? Like dogs make you happy. And they can, I think that they can make your life better if you enjoy having an animal and stuff.
So there is, there’s a mental side, but what’s good about walking. Your dog is the walking and that will never be bad. [00:04:00] So. What else do you have on this jail?
Joe Courtney: I can’t be a cat. Cats are just jerks
Jerred Moon: cats. Don’t walk. I’ve never known benefit before I’ve seen people walk
Joe Courtney: cats on a leash several times.
Jerred Moon: I’ve never seen it.
I mean, growing up, my parents owned a few cats and all they did was attack me. I didn’t, I never had a good experience with a cat, so I’ll never own a cat. My wife’s allergic to cats and, I don’t want a cat. So is
Joe Courtney: that detrimental to the health? But yes, walking is great for, just moving around and stuff.
It’s just an excuse to get out, but you don’t necessarily need to have it be a dog. It’s just an easy companion on your walk.
Jerred Moon: but to his question, he’s like, hopefully, well, don’t, don’t let your wife listen to this unless she is, but you 100% have some ammunition, man, on getting, encouraging your wife to walk the, you know, there are all these studies on it.
There’s I mean, and then if you were to be like, okay, well, can I zoom out from dog-walking studies to walking [00:05:00] studies? And now we’re talking about thousands upon thousands of studies about walking in your health. It is absolutely beneficial. And, and then you could get into studies about being outside.
Cause you’re not going to walk your dog on a treadmill. Doesn’t happen. Nobody does that. So now we have being outside, we have vitamin D if you’re walking your dog in nature, even better, there’s actual research on like forest bathing and all this jazz. You could walk barefoot in the forest and do some, a little bit of earthing.
They have walking. Yeah. Have the mental side of a dog making you happier. Like. I can’t see a single negative two walking a dog. There’s like 500 positive. like I said, sunshine, fresh air, all these things. Aren’t yeah. For walking a dog, it might just suck in the winter time. That’s the only
Joe Courtney: recovery overdose.
If you just want to do all that,
Jerred Moon: you know? Yeah. Be like one of the, I talk about Keystone habits a lot of time. Like what’s the one big thing I can do. That’s going to ripple down to all these other things, walking the dog might be it. Cause if you could walk your dog and. You can knock off a lot of other things on the checklist, [00:06:00] for, for that day.
And yeah. Walking your dog in the cold is also like a good mental toughness practice. So there’s, there’s no con anywhere.
Joe Courtney: Yeah. When we, I remember when we interviewed the star threats, while back they were a big promoters and encourages of walking and they convinced like their whole neighborhood, their whole street to just walk their kids to school.
And like they own a gym, they do all kinds of fitness stuff all, but they were just. Getting people to walk to school. And like, they saw a lot of improvement and people even losing weight just because they started walking their kids to school now. And that was it.
Jerred Moon: Yeah. And I try to take walks in the morning.
like, so not like it’s not even super routine just in the morning at somewhere during my work hours. I try to just go on like a 10 minute walk, real fast. And it helps, you know, it helps break things up. It helps you get focused again because my dog doesn’t walk. I have a dog, I can’t walk my dog. We tried walking my dog a mile.
Like a few months ago and he just gave up and [00:07:00] laid down, had to carry him the rest of the way
Joe Courtney: to be fair. A mile to you is like 17
Jerred Moon: miles for your dog. So, yeah. So I have a tiny, like four pound dog, if anyone’s wondering. So that’s why my, my dog does not need walk walking from my front door to my back door is enough exercise for this thing.
but anyway, that’s a tangent Todd. Yes. Even your wife should walk dogs every day. That’s it to that one. If you guys have a question, go to dot com slash AMA. We will answer your questions. Just like we answered Todd’s. If you’re enjoying it, videos on YouTube, go ahead and leave his comment and a thumbs up.
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I hope you enjoy. Today’s ask me anything episode. So one more time. If you want to submit a question, [00:08:00] topic or idea you can do so@groggymathlete.com slash AMA and Hey, while you’re there, if you haven’t already sign up for garage, gym athlete membership, we are the best. Community and programming on the internet.
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