Move the Meeting: How Walking Sparks Better Thinking

Why Walking Meetings Are Reshaping the Way We Move, Think, and Work

Picture this: you’re halfway through your third virtual meeting of the day. Your shoulders are stiff, your brain feels foggy, and you’re silently calculating how long it’s been since you moved more than a few feet. Now imagine you had taken that same meeting outside, on foot, breathing fresh air as your thoughts started to untangle. The conversation feels lighter, ideas flow faster, and your body, finally, feels alive again.

This isn’t wishful thinking—it’s the increasingly embraced reality of the walking meeting. What was once considered unconventional is now becoming one of the simplest and smartest ways to merge movement and productivity. For fitness professionals, wellness advocates, and anyone looking to infuse more health into their workday, walking meetings represent far more than a novelty. They’re a practical, research-supported way to reduce sedentary time, stimulate the brain, and model the kind of lifestyle we ask our clients to lead.

Let’s be honest: most workdays don’t support healthy movement habits. Even in fitness-focused industries, administrative work, programming, and virtual coaching calls keep us glued to screens. And our clients? Many are stuck at desks for hours with only brief windows for physical activity. The result? A culture where our bodies are stagnant, but our minds are constantly spinning. It’s no surprise that stress, burnout, and brain fog are so common.

Walking meetings flip that dynamic. They introduce a simple but powerful shift in routine—getting up and moving while continuing to communicate. The science is clear: walking increases blood flow to the brain, boosts creativity, supports cognitive flexibility, and improves focus. It’s not just about burning a few extra calories—it’s about thinking better, feeling more alert, and creating mental space for meaningful ideas.

That mental clarity is one reason leaders from Steve Jobs to Richard Branson have famously favored walking meetings. There’s something about side-by-side motion that softens power dynamics and invites more honest, collaborative conversation. In coaching environments, this is especially useful. A walking check-in with a client often leads to deeper insights and more natural dialogue than sitting across a desk or logging into another video call. Clients tend to open up more when they’re moving. There’s less pressure to “perform” and more room to reflect.

For fitness professionals, walking meetings also offer a chance to model healthy behavior in real time. You’re not just telling clients to move more—you’re showing them how movement can become part of everyday life. That’s especially impactful for clients who feel stuck in all-or-nothing patterns, believing that if they can’t hit the gym for an hour, movement isn’t worth it. A 15-minute walking meeting reframes that belief, showing that fitness can be fluid, accessible, and built into the day.

And the physical benefits of walking? They’re well-documented and highly underrated. A brisk walk supports joint mobility, improves posture, boosts circulation, and helps regulate blood sugar. It contributes to non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), which plays a major role in overall metabolic health. Even light walking helps reduce the musculoskeletal strain from long hours of sitting—something that affects not only office workers, but coaches and trainers who spend hours programming or online.

Beyond physiology, walking introduces something else: presence. It pulls us out of screen fatigue and into a sensory experience. The rhythm of your steps, the feel of the breeze, the background hum of birds or traffic—it all grounds you in the moment. That kind of subtle mindfulness is invaluable in a world that constantly competes for our attention.

Of course, not every meeting can be taken on foot. Group calls that require screens, spreadsheets, or real-time collaboration may not translate well to the walking format. But a surprising number of conversations don’t require a desk at all. Coaching check-ins, planning sessions, creative brainstorming, and personal development chats are all prime candidates. Even voice memos or asynchronous audio tools (like Voxer or Loom) can create flexible walking meeting formats.

For clients, walking meetings can be a game-changer. They create a sense of partnership. You’re not prescribing change from a distance—you’re walking alongside them, literally and figuratively. For some, this breaks down emotional resistance. For others, it provides a safe space to open up. And for clients navigating stress, burnout, or mental fatigue, the shift to movement-based meetings can feel like a breath of fresh air in every sense.

That said, accessibility matters. Not every client has a safe or practical place to walk outdoors. Some have mobility limitations or conditions that make walking painful. But walking meetings are adaptable. They can happen indoors, in hallways, on treadmills, or even just pacing a quiet room. The value comes from the intention—not the location.

For team leaders, encouraging walking meetings also sends a powerful message: that movement and wellness are not disruptions, but integral parts of productive work. In cultures that reward grinding through the day without breaks, walking meetings reframe what it means to be effective. They legitimize stepping away from the screen. They validate the need for mental space. They remind us that we think better when we feel better.

As fitness professionals, we’re uniquely positioned to champion this. We already understand that movement affects mood, cognition, and energy. We know that consistent daily activity is more impactful than intense bursts of effort once or twice a week. Walking meetings embody that truth in real time—and they help our clients experience it directly.

But the magic isn’t just in the benefits. It’s in the symbolism. Walking forward—literally—while having a conversation about goals, challenges, or new ideas adds emotional resonance. There’s momentum in the movement. The simple act of walking can represent progress, growth, and openness. It helps conversations breathe. And in a world obsessed with constant output, it gives us a new metric to measure by: not how much we got done, but how well we felt doing it.

So are walking meetings a productivity hack? Yes—but they’re also something deeper. They’re a reintroduction to rhythm. A permission slip to move. A way to bring more humanity, energy, and clarity into our workdays. Whether you’re a coach leading a client, a professional checking in with a teammate, or someone just trying to stay grounded in a fast-moving world, walking meetings offer more than efficiency. They offer alignment.

And sometimes, the best progress you’ll make all day starts with just putting one foot in front of the other.

^{Written by: L.R. Marshall}