On most Tuesday and Thursday mornings Loretta Anderson and a group of about 20 other seniors start their day with a morning walk.
Their walk begins at the Norman Park Senior Center and ends a few miles away.
Chula Vista Walking For Fitness, a senior walking group at the Norman Park Senior Center, started nearly three years ago as part of a collaboration between U.C. San Diego and the National Institute of Health for a program called Peer Empowerment Program 4 Physical Activity.
The program was designed to understand the effects that walking has on the senior population in low-income areas. The goal of the program was to take every senior in the group and increase their total number of steps by 2,000, or a mile, over the course of two years.
Walkers documented the number of steps walked each day and reported it in their daily log.
The log includes information such as the date walked, the number of steps logged, if they met their goal and what were their walking circumstances.
Throughout the program, seniors would try to beat their goals and set new personal records.
As part of the program, seniors got their blood pressure checked and tested their balance and walking formation, which U.C. San Diego gathered for their own data.
The results of the research have yet to been released, but the group themselves saw the positive effects, and when the program ended about a year ago, the seniors took it upon themselves to continue the group.
“It was so popular that we just went on with it,” said Diana Milburn, volunteer coach.
Milburn said she has seen firsthand the benefits walking has had on individuals in the walking group.
“There are people who went from using a walker to using a cane, there are people who discarded their walker completely, there are people who report taking less chronic disease medicine,” she said. “It is nearly miraculous, it’s just incredible.”
Milburn’s job, along with fellow coach Madelaine Corbeil, is to monitor and track each walkers progress and encourage them to reach their goal.
Anderson,63, said before she participated in Chula Vista Walking For Fitness she had high blood pressure and other health problems. Since she started walking, she said, her health has drastically improved.
“Health wise it really keeps me going,” Anderson said. “Walking seems to have made me more flexible. It keeps that flexibility in my joints and it really helps my leg muscles.”
Anderson admits she barely walked before she joined the group. She said before the group she would park as close as possible to a store entrance, now she likes to challenge herself and park further away from store entrances so she can walk a longer distance.
Today, Anderson walks up to 5,200 steps a day, more than 2 miles.
Thank you, Robert Moreno, for a lovely piece on Chula Vista Walking For Fitness. We appreciate your hard work on this article.