Can Walking Provide As Good A Workout As Running?
Running can keep your heart healthy, improve your mood, stave off sickness, and aid in weight loss.
Regular cardio (at any speed) is part of a healthy lifestyle. Lap for lap, running burns about 2.5 times more calories than walking.
Running may also help control appetite- this may have to do with runners’ increased levels of the hormone peptide YY, which may suppress appetite, so runners may lose more weight than walkers no matter how far the walkers go.
But running does have downsides: It puts more stress on the body and increases the risk for injuries like runner’s knee, hamstring strains, and shin splits (which plague even the most consistent runners).
So what’s the bottom line?
Move!!!! I tell my clients you’re
wasting your time and my time coming to work out if you’re sedentary the rest of the time. We’re the most sedentary civilization in the history of humanity. As a result, we’re more unhealthy than we’ve ever been. It’s primarily tied to a lack of movement. And as we become more technologically savvy with every innovation, we move less and less.
So, how much do you really need to walk each day? Twelve thousand steps is the minimum for the average person, if you want to be in good shape and 14,000 if you want to get ripped (Twelve thousand steps is the equivalent of about 5.6 miles and 14,000 steps clocks in around 6.6 miles, FYI.)
So when running isn’t in the cards, walking with added weight might be your next best bet for an effective workout. Walking on the treadmill while wearing a weighted vest can increase the metabolic costs and relative exercise intensity. Similarly, increasing the incline on the treadmill makes for a more effective walking workout.
Ultimately, listening to your body and completing a proper warm-up and cool-down are all ways to prevent injuries. So in the long “run” you can spend more time running on the treadmill—and less time running to the doctor.