I like my exercise to feel really exercisey. I want sweat patches, grimacing, breathlessness and the opportunity to buy specific footwear. I know theoretically that pain is not the only route to gain, but when it comes to it, pain just feels too good to pass up.
However, scientists are discovering more about the benefits of less strenuous forms of activity. This week there came news from Vanderbilt University in Tennessee that fast walking for just 15 minutes a day could significantly improve heart health, boost cognitive abilities and memory, and reduce the risk of dying early from a number of causes by almost 20 per cent.
It comes hot on the heels of a newly popular exercise trend, Japanese walking, which despite having the dubious accolade of being all over TikTok is scientifically proven to be strangely effective at increasing fitness and lowering blood pressure — and requires hardly any pain at all.
The Japanese walking technique (so called because the original 2007 research was conducted in Japan) is simple and backed by a considerable body of evidence. You walk for three minutes at a late-to-nursery-pick-up pace, then slow down for three minutes, and repeat this pattern for no fewer than five rounds (or 30 minutes). That’s it.
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Researchers found that middle-aged and older people who practised the technique four times a week had lower blood pressure, stronger thigh muscles and better aerobic capacity than walkers the same age who kept a more moderate, continuous pace.
Kristian Karstoft, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen’s department of clinical medicine, led the latest review of the data last year. He asked people in their sixties, who were all suffering from type 2 diabetes, did not exercise and were carrying considerable excess weight, to try the approach. The results defied explanation: the interval-walking group mysteriously shed more fat even though the energy expended was exactly the same.
“The effect on body composition was surprising,” Karstoft says. “We’ve done follow-ups to see if there was an afterburn effect [burning more calories even after you’ve stopped moving] and then we looked at whether interval walking was affecting energy intake. There was no afterburn and no change in energy intake, so we don’t really know.”
There were also important beneficial effects on the subjects’ diabetes, and small but significant positive changes to their blood pressure.
The most common mistake, Karstoft says, is to walk too quickly during the downtime, which should be used for recovery. “For the fast section you have to walk quickly enough for it to be unpleasant to have a continuous conversation,” he says. “You should be able to utter a few words but you should not be able to share the story of your life. For the slow part, the slower the better.”
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The point is to make the intense periods of walking properly hard work. The slow three minutes is there to allow you to recover and then go again at full throttle. This is exactly the same principle as the on-off pattern in HIIT (high-intensity interval training) but designed for people who would find it hard or unsafe to run or perform star jumps and burpees.
“This is more accessible and will cause fewer injuries. If you were obese and went running, that would have a large impact on the joints. Walking is a lot more tolerable,” Karstoft says.
Before you invest in an array of timer apps, three minutes is not a magical optimal number, it was just chosen as a test period. Small-scale trials tried one-minute intervals and results were much the same.
And the results of Karstoft’s studies were impressive. The largest amount of fat lost was a staggering 10kg (more than 1.5st). “This was [Japanese] walking five times a week for six months with each session lasting an hour.”
Additional research at Shinshu University Graduate School of Medicine in Japan, involving more than 700 people, found that interval walking also has benefits for cognitive function, depression and sleep quality.
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What the findings demonstrated is the value of exercise that is more easy-listening than thrash metal. Moving more gently can be transformative for all of us, says Rhodri Whittaker, a trainer at the Absolute Body Solutions gym in London. “Working at varying intensities is incredibly important,” he says. “Spending time at a higher-than-normal tempo is a good way to build your body up, but a longer bout at a fast pace is challenging. Working there for a short interval is far more manageable.”
For my own experiment with interval walking, I used a playlist of three-minute songs and strode through the park on a hot day. I suspect I looked like a man who’d forgotten an important meeting, then remembered he had the wrong day, then realised, no, he was still late.
Despite being fairly addicted to hard exercise, I’m usually a slack walker, prone to distracted lolloping. I view the activity as something that doesn’t count as part of my fitness regime. Adding “reps” changed the frame, however, and elevated walking from functional foot-based transport to a workout worthy of serious focus.
It wasn’t long before the faster bursts started to make their mark. I’m someone who happily runs 10km, but these New York-paced bursts felt like serious work. Twenty minutes across Hyde Park and I was listening to the Rolling Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction — three minutes, 45 seconds — and thinking I’d quite like Mick to stop moaning and bring the track to a close.
I have friends who look at the fitness world from the outside feeling it has very little for them, and view their state of health as something only drugs can address. Now, having spoken to the man who has been researching Japanese walking for more than a decade, I’m going to recommend it to every one of them. It requires no equipment, no gym membership and no athletic clothing — just the occasional theatrical glance at your watch to justify the odd-looking pace changes.
AloJapan.com