I’m not a fancy fitness girl — I like basic, effective workouts that don’t need a lot of skills, frills, or thrills. And since I love walking in the hilly woods near my house with my dogs, the idea of the 12-3-30 walking workout got me all excited.
What is the 12-3-30 Workout?
The 12-3-30 workout is a treadmill workout where you set the incline to 12 percent incline, the pace to three miles per hour, and you walk for 30 minutes. Simple, right? Created by influencer Lauren Giraldo, she first introduced the 12-3-30 workout on YouTube in 2019, but it didn’t gain such intense popularity until Giraldo posted a TikTok about it in late 2020, crediting it to how she’s lost and kept off 30 pounds for two years. That’s what intrigued me, the weight-loss aspect. Since I was still trying to lose some of the COVID pounds I had gained over the past year from baking so much (not much else to do in quarantine!), I wanted to see how the 12-3-30 workout compared to my other workouts and see if it was more effective at helping me get leaner.
I Tried the 12-3-30 Workout
I already have a treadmill that I MacGyvered into a walking desk for work, so I used that. I decided to try this workout for two weeks, just to see what all the excitement was about. Giraldo said she did it about five times a week, so that’s what I did, too. I wanted to see how this walking workout compared to the rowing I had been doing daily for the past four months, to the running I had been doing in the summer and fall, and to the HIIT workouts I’d been throwing in at home. Could a walking workout really be as effective?
