Walking’s good for your health of course

Let’s start with the walking part because, despite that headline, we thoroughly recommend walking.  It is quite literally just what the doctor ordered as within UK medical guidelines on health, it’s recommended we take at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise (i.e. a walk) a week.

For many working people, it can feel hard to fit a decent amount of exercise into demanding schedules, but a daily walk can often be managed without too much upheaval.   A walk-and-talk with a colleague at lunchtime?  Add an extra walking route into a commute?  Or perhaps ensure that you leave the car behind for short trips at the weekend?

All can add up towards better health and even longevity – a BUPA study found that an additional 15-minutes of brisk walking a day can add up to 3 years to life expectancy.

Walking stimulates creative thinking

Steve Jobs was often ahead of things and he famously held important meetings to persuade people of his vision while taking long walks around the Apple campus.  A Stanford University study confirmed that people who were tested while walking came up with more creative responses than the control group that remained seated indoors.  And creative benefits weren’t restricted to the actual walk – even those who simply walked and then took the creative thinking test performed better than those who remained seated throughout.

All good reasons to introduce walk and talk meetings if you have an opportunity to explore or a problem to solve.

Walking meetings improve personal relationships and connection

More recently, the University of Hong Kong conducted a fascinating study into the effect walking has on relations between two people.  They discovered that not only does walking side-by-side help people connect together, participants tended to quite literally “fall into step” – even if they were strangers and weren’t allowed to talk on the first stretch. They found that participants’ impressions of their partners grew more favourable after the first part of the walk – which took only 3 -4 ½ minutes. Those who were allowed to chat on the return trip got to like each other even more.

Even more great reason to conduct appraisals or resolve possible conflict through a walking meeting.

So, why trundl?

Being a non-competitive, walking-for-charity app membership, trundl brings all the encouragement and reward of walking for personal health, with the added bonus of helping others too.

Knowing that you’re walking to help others as well as yourself has great benefit for social esteem and emotional wellbeing.  Save the Children has named that end-of charity-walk feeling of accomplishment as ‘helpers high’ and a study by Northwestern Medicine and Rush University demonstrated that having purpose in life and helping others can improve overall sleep quality.

And with trundl, there’s even no need to raise any funds yourselves as trundl and their business partners do the donating.

Walking has never been so meaningful or rewarding.

trundl offers business membership for companies of all sizes.  If you’re looking for workplace wellbeing ideas and would like to know more, please visit our trundl for business page or contact us at: hello@trundl.co.uk