For some time now it has begun to demystify that you have to achieve 10,000 steps a day to stay in shape. Some study already pointed out that it was enough to walk 4,400. But now other research, published in ‘Proceedings of the Royal Society B’, suggests that including daily ‘micro walks’ could help burn more calories than slow walking.
Italian scientists from the University of Milan have discovered walking or climbing stairs in stretches of 10 to 30 seconds It required 20 to 60% more oxygen, an indicator of energy consumption, than covering the same distance in a continuous session, largely because walking is more efficient after several minutes in motion.
«When we walk shorter distances, we expend more energy and we consume more oxygen to cover the same distance. It’s like having a car that consumes more fuel during the first kilometers than later,” explains Francesco Luciano, researcher at the University of Milan and first author of the study.
The team began the study after observing that many estimates of the energy needed to walk were based on data from people exercising in a stable metabolic state, that is, when the heart rate is constant and the body’s energy production and consumption They are balanced, a state that is compared to that of a car traveling at cruising speed.
The scientists recruited 10 healthy volunteers who were monitored while they exercised on a stair-climbing machine and a treadmill. The exercises covered three different speeds with sessions that lasted between 10 seconds and four minutes.
During the exercise sessions, the researchers recorded the amount of oxygen each person consumed and calculated the metabolic needs for the different walks. They discovered that more energy was needed at the beginning of each walkto get going and warm up the body, than later in the exercise, when the body was already moving and working more efficiently.
«When we start walking, we may incur some fixed costs at the beginning of the journey. By analogy, driving a car requires some fuel to start the engine or get the car out of the garage. We discovered that when you start walking from rest, a significant amount of oxygen is consumed just to start walking. We incur this cost regardless of whether we walk for 10 or 30 seconds, so it proportionally weighs more for shorter walks than for longer ones,” he explains.
Measurements of participants on the exercise machines also revealed that in the early stages of a walk, people are less efficient at converting oxygen and energy into effective movement, but this improves as they gain pace.
The work reinforces knowledge about the health benefits of short walks and bouncing up stairs, particularly for people who are largely sedentary, and may explain the improvements in fitness that occur with the popular ‘exercise snacks‘, brief moments of activity that often last no more than two minutes each.
‘Researchers typically measure energy demands during walks lasting several minutes. However, some people are not able to move for that long. Let’s think about older people or those with gait disorders. If we want to design programs to promote physical activity or exercise for these people, we have to rethink how to estimate their energy demands and adapt. Understanding the energetic demands of short walks could help us promote physical activity in a more inclusive way,” says Luciano.
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