An easy sell: 'It's a wellness walk, so yeah.' MUSC steps into the fun of National Walking Day

Quoia Gibbs was at her desk working as an administrative assistant in the Medical University of South Carolina’s Simulation Center when she got an invitation she couldn’t resist. 

“Come on and walk with us,” called Kevin Boyd, chief security officer for MUSC Health. Gibbs got up and joined a group of people marking National Walking Day with a stroll through campus. “It’s a wellness walk, so yeah,” she said as she kept pace with Boyd and his fellow walkers.

The walk was indoors due to rain, but luckily, MUSC actually has a mapped-out Wellness Walk that took participants through several buildings without having to set foot outdoors. 

 

Ni-cole Bernier, Wellness and Resiliency manager for the MUSC Health system, helped lead the event. “It's really about getting people moving,” she said.

The American Heart Association launched the National Day of Walking in 2007 and celebrates it on the first Wednesday of April. Bernier said it’s a great way to remind people of the importance of adding movement to the day. 

“Ideally, the American Heart Association and other organizations recommend 150 minutes per week. So whether that's 30 minutes a day, five days a week, or what I like to tell a lot of people is do movement snacks. And so those movement snacks are five, 10 minutes.”

Movement snacks, she said, can include:

• Parking far away at the grocery store.
• Taking the stairs instead of elevators. 
• Walking the dog. 
• Walking to someone’s office instead of calling them on the phone.
• Going to another floor to use the restroom instead of using the one down the hall, if you work in an office building.

“Walking is a huge stress reliever. And also, it is very good for your heart health, great for your breathing, overall physical well-being. And really, it's about building community. So grab a partner, grab a colleague and go for a walk,” Bernier said.

It doesn’t take much walking to have an impact, according to a paper in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. It found that just 2,200 steps a day could help fight health conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, although getting 9,000 to 10,500 steps a day made a bigger difference. 

 

But people weren’t worried about step counts during the National Walking Day stroll at MUSC. They were busy enjoying the simple pleasure of moving while talking with friends, new and old. 

And while Quoia Gibbs ended up back at her desk again, she had some exercise under her belt. It was an easy way to break up the workday and squeeze in some steps. That’s something Bernier hopes becomes a habit for more and more employees at MUSC as they step up their game – whether it’s on Walking Day or a regular workday.

If people can just take those five minutes, decompress, reset their mind or even go for a walking meeting, that would be beneficial on so many different levels,” Bernier said.