Find out how a small change can revolutionize your daily walk!
Tl;dr
- Small breaks while walking could boost metabolism.
- Steps taken during short walks might be more beneficial.
- Results are based on a small sample of participants.
The benefits of short walks
If you’re used to walking to stay fit, a new study suggests you might benefit from taking breaks to smell the roses every now and then.
Indeed, Italian researchers discovered that short walking sessions could give your metabolism a boost. more intense workout than traveling the same distance without interruption.
One walk, a multitude of benefits
Walking works the muscles in your arms, chest, back, abdomen, pelvis and legs.
Additionally, although it doesn’t take much conscious effort to coordinate all of this, your brain “also benefits from a good exercise while going for a walk”according to the researchers.
Interval walking, a new boost for health?
The famous adage of 10,000 steps a day originated in 1965, when a Japanese company created a step-counting device called “Manpo-kei”literally meaning “10,000 step counter”. But new research led by pathophysiologists at the University of Milan shows that not all steps are equal.
Indeed, as lead author Francesco Luciano and colleagues explain in their published paper, using steady-state walking to calculate energy consumption “considerably underestimates energy expenditure for short sessions”.
A discovery to explore further
It’s important to note that these results are based on a fairly small sample of just 10 healthy participants – 5 men and 5 women – all aged around 27 years old. Therefore, the results may not be representative of a broader population.
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