by Tom Venuto
It's commonly believed by many people that walking is not an intense enough exercise to benefit your health very much and you'd get more benefit if you ran. In a similar train of thought, many fitness enthusiasts believe that unless cardio is high in intensity (like interval training or sprints), it's not beneficial ("high intensity or nothing" mentality).
Yes it's true, high intensity interval training (HIIT) can give you major improvements in health and cardiovascular fitness in a short period of time, but does that mean lower intensity exercise like walking is not effective at all? Not according to a study from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which I wanted to share with you in today's newsletter.
The results found that walking briskly can lower your risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes (all risk factors for heart disease) just as much as running (and more), and the benefits increased in a dose-response manner.
There's great confusion to this day about the benefits of exercise - including at various intensities (low vs moderate vs vigorous). An even bigger problem is that the majority of people confuse health benefits, cardio fitness benefits, and fat loss benefits (three entirely different subjects!).
This study looked at health benefits, specifically risk factors for cardiovascular disease in subjects 18 to 80 years old, clustered largely in their 40s and 50s. They found the following:
Running reduced risk for first-time hypertension 4.2 percent, and walking reduced risk 7.2 percent.
Running reduced first-time high cholesterol 4.3 percent, and walking 7 percent.
Running reduced first time diabetes 12.1 percent, compared to 12.3 percent for walking.
Running reduced coronary heart disease 4.5 percent, compared to 9.3 percent for walking.
Isn't that fascinating? They said benefits were "similar" but if you look at the numbers, walking was actually better.
Of course, the devil is in the details: they weren't comparing equal amounts of time spent, like 30 minutes of walking vs 30 minutes of running (running would win that comparison), they were testing whether equal amounts of energy (calorie) expenditure by moderate intensity walkingand vigorous intensity running provided equivalent benefits.
When energy expenditure was equivalent by moderate exercise (walking) and vigorous exercise (running) the health risk reductions were similar, but that does mean it takes a lot more time investment walking to achieve the same energy expenditure as you'd get with running or other higher intensity options.
In other words, high intensity exercise is more efficient than moderate intensity exercise and moderate intensity exercise is more efficient than low intensity exercise. So, contrary to what many people believe, it's not that walking doesn't benefit your health as much as higher intensity types of exercise, walking is simply not as time efficient.
It's the same thing if we shift the subject to fat loss. Low, moderate, and high intensity cardio can all burn fat, but the higher the intensity, the more efficient the exercise is (less time required). This is why people who are short on time and are physically able to do intense exercise often choose the higher or moderate intensity cardio over lower intensity cardio.
The thing is, high intensity cardio is difficult and not appropriate for everyone. The author of the study, Paul Williams, pointed out that walking may be a more sustainable exercise for many people when compared to running.
He said that people are always looking for an excuse not to exercise ("I can't run or do HIIT because of my knee, my hip, my foot" etc. etc. ), but thanks to research results like these, we now know we can get the same health benefits (and fat loss benefits) from walking as we do from running (or other types of intense cardio), it will simply require more time --you gotta walk longer... for example, you might have to walk 60 minutes to get equal benefits as 30 minutes of more intense exercise.
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