“In the past few weeks in particular, I’ve started my day with a walk, clearing my mind and leaving my phone,” he says. “Sometimes I get a little woo woo and touch the plants.”
Mendes says a walk for about 25 minutes a day serves not only as a meditation, but also as a way to “ get the sound out of my ears, ” so he’s more present with the people he loves. When he remembers the pressure of being in the studio, a photo pops up on my Apple Watch of Mendes with a guitar.
New episodes of Time to Walk, which launched on Mondays, will appear in the Workout app every Monday through the end of April. (The timing for possible future episodes beyond “This Season” has not been disclosed.) For Apple Watch users using wheelchairs, Time to Walk becomes Time to Push, which tracks “role” goals instead of steps.
It is Apple’s last step to add exclusive content to attract new users to its fitness products and compete with companies like Peloton.
For me, walking has always been my favorite way to move: low impact and free. Running a bunch of familiar voices at the same time feels like a personal spin on a podcast (although Apple never uses the p-word). I can even hear Mendes take a deep breath, just like me.
In Parton’s sessions, I hear the background noise of birds as she talks about her Tennessee farm. “During this time, Covid and all, I know many of you can’t get out and walk as you normally do, and I’m sure a lot of you feel trapped,” said Parton. “But I know how important it is to be able to walk. So even though we can’t get out and walk around all the places we want today and at this time … I can still take you on a walk on memory lane. Hopefully when we walk together we will feel a little more freedom. ”
She tells me that she writes a lot while walking and the backstory of her famous number “9 to 5”; I listen intently as she taps her own acrylic nails so it sounds like a typewriter for rhythm in the background, something I didn’t know until today.
If NBA player Draymond Green recalls how the Golden State Warriors celebrated a championship victory, Drake’s “Big Rings” brings him back to the locker room. It’s one of three songs he intro and plays in his episode, which also includes a nice story about a walk he took after failing a class and falling out with his mother. He talks about the sounds of the Malibu waves in the distance and the cars on the highway nearby.
While Time to Walk is no substitute for a walk with a close friend, intimate storytelling is a welcome change from walking alone.