What’s better for your health: fast walk or slow walk? We have always heard that walking is one of the simplest, most accessible and most beneficial exercises we can do. It’s perfect because there’s no need to go to the gym, no special equipment, nor too much free time to do it.

However, not every walk offers the same results. A new study showed that the speed of your walk can mark a huge difference when it comes to your health and even the amount of time you can live. So, let’s learn more about this.

Walking

Researchers from Vanderbilt University (United States) analyzed almost 80,000 adults for 17 years. They wanted to find if there were any difference between walking slow and fast when it comes to mortality and cardiovascular health. The results? People walking fast less than 15 minutes per day had 20% less risk of dying during the study. However, those who walked slowly for several hours just showed a minimum reduction of mortality risk.

What do these results mean? The most important thing is not just walking, but also how you walk.

Why is a fast walk better?

The answer is in the heart. When you do an energetic walk, your heart rate is higher, your circulation improves and your body burns more calories. Combining these three factors, we:

  • Strengthen the cardiovascular system.
  • Keep a healthy weight.
  • Reduce blood pressure.
  • Improve the mood thanks to the release of endorphins.

Does this mean slow walking is bad? Not, really, it just doesn’t have huge health benefits in the long term since it doesn’t require too much effort.

Examples of slow and fast walk

If you don’t really know if your walk is fast enough, there’s a trick for this: you should be able to speak while walking, but not able to sing without losing your breath. Now let’s see some examples:

  • Slow walk: walk the dog, move slowly at work, go for a walk with no hurry.
  • Fast walk: going upstairs, walk as if you were in a hurry, making walking part of your daily exercise routine.

Importance of the context

The most interesting thing about the study is that it focused on populations that tend to be less represented in investigations: low income people and Afro American communities in the U.S. Unfortunately, most of the time, these populations have less access to safe places to exercise, that’s why walking is one of the physical activities available for them.

This proves fast walking is a very simple and powerful option that everybody can do, no matter where you live nor what your economic level is.

How can you incorporate fast walking to your routine?

Don’t worry if you want to start doing it and you feel you can’t, because it’s simple and easy to do. In case you don’t know how to start, here are some ideas on how to incorporate fast walking to your daily life:

  • Get down one bus stop before your destination and walk fast from there to wherever you want to go.
  • Always choose stairs over lifts.
  • Spend 15 minutes after dinner doing an energetic walk around your neighborhood.
  • Do some active pauses at work: 5 minutes of fast walking every couple of hours.

As you can see, it’s not that difficult to make walking (just 15 minutes) part of your life. What’s more, you will see that the more days you practice fast walking, the more benefits you will have – according to science, if you do this, it will make you live longer. What are you waiting for? Start fast walking today!