Since the beginning of the pandemic, there
has been one pastime that people have been able to indulge in more than normal.
Walking.
اضافة اعلان
A recent survey for Transport for
London showed 57 percent
of people have been walking more than normal, and other surveys indicate it’s
one lockdown habit that people intend to keep up. But is walking alone enough
to keep us fit?
The answer is it can be — depending on how fast you go.
“Nothing will give you quite the benefit that brisk walking
does unless it’s running — and it’s as good as running,” says Thomas Yates, a
professor in physical activity, sedentary behavior and health at the University
of Leicester.
In fact, Professor Yates recently published a study which
demonstrated that the speed at which you walk is a good indicator of how fit
you are.
“Fast walkers can live up to 20 years longer,” he says. “It
improves cardiovascular fitness, which is a measure of how efficient your heart
is, and your ability to utilize oxygen, which is an indicator of fitness.”
That is true even if you feel only slightly breathless
afterwards.
Professor Yates’ study, involving more than 400,000
middle-aged people on the UK Biobank database — which holds the health records
of more than half a million UK residents — revealed that the pace we walk can
even indicate our chance of fending off infections such as COVID-19.
The results, in the International Journal of Obesity, found
that slow walkers (defined as going at under 3 mph) are 2.5 times more likely
to develop severe COVID-19, and 3.75 times more likely to die from it than
faster walkers — even among those of a healthy weight.
“If you’re a fast walker with a high BMI [body mass index],
your risk is still lower than for slow walkers with healthy lifestyle
behaviors,” he told Good Health.
But just how fast is brisk walking? “Three miles an hour or
100 steps a minute is the minimum: you get the greatest benefit increasing your
pace from slow to steady (3 mph to 4 mph), but there is increased benefit over
4mph,” says Professor Yates.
A simple pedometer can help determine your walking speed.
Fast walking builds numerous muscles, says Dr William Bird,
a GP and creator of the Health Walks initiative, which encourages people to
walk for mental and physical health.
“Fast walking will build your gastrocnemius [calf muscle],
quadriceps [thigh muscles] and core muscles, which will increase your resting
metabolic rate, and targets unhealthy visceral fat, which pumps out toxic
chemicals around the stomach,” he says.
The reason for this is that fast walking, which is a form of
low to moderate intensity exercise, burns fat, while vigorous activity utilizes
carbohydrates.
Walking can also build aerobic fitness — in other words,
heart and lung strength. But to achieve this we need to exercise to at least 40
percent of our capacity.
This is where another measure comes in useful.
The metabolic equivalent of a task (MET) tells you how much
harder it will make your body work than when you are at rest.
The higher the MET of an activity, the more it helps you
build aerobic fitness. (MET is the ratio between the amount of oxygen we
consume at rest and the amount we consume when we are exercising.)
Activities have fixed MET values. Walking briskly has a MET
value of four, while running at 6 mph has a value of almost ten — but our
individual maximum MET capacity varies according to our fitness level and age.
For an average 20-year-old woman this maximum is 12.1 MET,
compared with 8.2 for a woman aged 50.
“If you have a maximum capacity MET of eight, walking — with
its MET value of four — means you’ll be exercising at 50 percent of your
maximum, which will get you out of breath,” says Dr Bird. “But if you have a
MET capacity of 15, you will be able to walk for hours. The older you are, the
more likely walking will increase your fitness.”
So a brisk walk counts as a good overall moderate intensity
exercise for men and women aged 50, when our MET capacity is around 8.2 for
women and 9.2 for men. But it may not be enough to push a fit 20-year-old.
“If you’re younger, walk uphill, because the MET value goes
up to eight or nine,” says Dr Bird. “I would say 85 to 90 per cent of your
exercise needs can be met by walking. What’s missing is vigorous activity and
upper body strength.”
However, simply changing arm position will help. As Nina
Barough, founder of the annual 26.2-mile MoonWalk event and author of Walking
For Fitness, told Good Health: “If you keep your hands by your side, you’ll get
to around 4mph. To go faster, keep them bent at 90 degrees and pump them as you
walk.”
This will help up your pace to 5mph — which will get you
covering each mile in 12 minutes.
And it’s unnecessary to fixate on achieving 10,000 steps a
day. A 2019 study in the journal JAMA concluded older women who walked 4,400
steps a day had a lower mortality rate than those who took 2,700 — but benefits
tailed off at 7,500 steps a day.
Read more health news
.jpg)
.jpg)
