Walkers who want to burn as many calories as possible may want to take lots of breaks instead of going on a long stroll at a continuous pace, a new study suggests.
For the study, researchers asked 10 healthy adults who were 27 years old on average to complete a series of exercise tests on treadmills and stair climbers that involved either short bursts of exercise or longer sessions at a continuous pace. During workouts and during resting periods, scientists measured oxygen use, which can indicate how much energy people are burning during workouts.
Overall, participants used 20 to 60 percent more oxygen during a series of 10- to 30-second bursts of movement on the treadmill or stair climber than they did while covering the same distance during one continuous session, according to findings published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
These results for walkers mirror what can be seen with high intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts that alternate short but intense bursts of movement with periods of rest or slower movement, says Paulo Gentil, PhD, a professor at the Federal University of Goiás in Goiânia, Brazil, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
“This can be likened to a car: Covering 100 kilometers at 150 kilometers per hour consumes more fuel than covering the same distance at 50 kilometers per hour,” Dr. Gentil says. The body, like a car, uses more energy as it builds speed than it does to maintain speed, Gentil says.
What Happens When You Start and Stop Walking
In the study, researchers collected data on how much oxygen participants consumed to calculate the energy demands for a series of brief walking sessions on the treadmill or stair climber, as well as for longer sessions at a continuous pace. People exercised at three different speeds, with shorter sessions lasting from 10 seconds up to 4 minutes.
Participants had the highest oxygen needs (indicating they burned the most energy) right at the start of each session, the study found. During the longer sessions, people started to use oxygen more efficiently and had lower oxygen needs (indicating that they burned less energy) once they acclimated to the session and maintained a continuous pace.
The Study Had Some Limitations
Beyond its small size, another limitation of the study is that results from experiments with young, healthy participants may not reflect what would happen with older adults or people with medical issues that make breathing or exercise challenging.
How much people benefit from short bursts of walking interspersed by rest periods will also depend on how hard they push themselves and whether their movements are vigorous enough to really live up to the “high intensity” that’s a hallmark of HIIT workouts, says Ada Tang, PhD, a physical therapist, professor, and the assistant dean of the school of rehabilitation science at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
“Shorter walking bouts can allow the person to reach higher-intensity efforts if they push to walk faster or at a more vigorous pace to raise heart rate and engage more muscles, thus burning more energy,” says Dr. Tang, who wasn’t involved in the new study.
Rest periods in between bursts of high-intensity walking can also help people recover enough to go harder each time they start moving again, Tang says.
Faster walking is likely more achievable when done in shorter bouts, allowing the person to reach a higher heart rate and reap the benefits of higher energy demands.
Even if people are out of shape or have medical issues that make intense training unsafe, they can still benefit from shorter bursts of movement in between periods of rest, Tang says.
“Breaking walking into shorter bouts can also be helpful for individuals who are deconditioned or have limited exercise tolerance and are just starting out with exercise,” Tang says. “Starting with shorter bouts can be an option if they cannot sustain exercise for long periods yet, which can be a manageable way to build up endurance.”
Lisa Rapaport is a journalist with more than 20 years of experience on the health beat as a writer and editor. She holds a master’s degree from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and spent a year as a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. Her work has appeared in dozens of local and national media outlets, including Reuters, Bloomberg, WNYC, The Washington Post,Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune, Huffington Post, Yahoo! News, The Sacramento Bee, and The Buffalo News.
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