Japanese walking: how the latest fitness trend shapes up

Times

a day ago

At first there was yoga. Then, there was pilates. Now, social media fitness fanatics have turned to a new exercise trend: Japanese walking.
The simple workout, also known as Nihon Aruki in its homeland, boasts a range of health benefits, according to researchers.
The exercise involves interval-style bursts of fast and slow walking, alternating between walking at a higher intensity for three minutes and a lower intensity for the next three.
The researchers capped the fast intervals at three minutes because that was the point at which many older volunteers started to feel tired.
During the fast intervals, people should aim to take longer strides than during the slow intervals. Engaging the arms by bending them at the elbows and swinging them with each step is recommended as a way to help maintain proper form during longer strides.
It was developed by Professor Hiroshi Nose and Associate Professor Shizue Masuki at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, Japan, as a way to help elderly citizens get the health benefits experienced by athletes undertaking high-intensity interval training.
According to the researchers, the high-intensity walking should be undertaken at a speed where holding a normal conversation is slightly difficult. The lower intensity pace should be light, and normal conversation should be possible.
Their initial research, conducted in 2007, compared 'Japanese walking' with normal walking at a continuous speed, for 8,000 steps per day. Those who participated in the study found that those walking at varying speeds experienced weight loss and lower blood pressure.
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Both leg strength and physical fitness also improved for those undertaking the Japanese walking programme.
A later study, conducted by the same researchers in 2018, found that, over a ten-year period, those who did interval walking reported fewer age-related declines in their muscle power and aerobic capacity.
Some experts have, however, said that simply walking more, and at more rigorous speeds could boost health, and that this specific walking regime may therefore not have any particular benefits.
'Achieving a certain number of steps per day has also been shown to help people live longer,' Sean Pymer, an Academic Clinical Exercise Physiologist at the University of Hull wrote in The Conversation.
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'For those aged 60 and older, the target should be around 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day and 8,000 to 10,000 for those aged under 60. Similar evidence does not appear to exist for Japanese walking … yet,' he continued.
'So is this walking trend really the be-all and end-all? Or does it matter less about what exercise you do and more about how often and how hard you do it? The answer is likely to be the latter … We should focus on ensuring we perform regular moderate to vigorous physical activity and make it habitual. If that activity happens to be Japanese walking, then it's a worthwhile choice.'
Some scientists, however, suggest the original Japanese study may have been skewed by the decision to only monitor the high-intensity group with accelerometers, not the moderate intensity group.
Dr Helga Van Herle, a cardiologist at the University of South Carolina, has said this may have triggered the Hawthorne effect — participants walking faster than they otherwise would have because they knew they were being watched.
Even so, experts generally agree that vigorous bursts of activity, even for short periods, are likely to be beneficial.
Compared with more classic forms of high-intensity interval training, interval walking is more approachable for some groups, especially those who haven't exercised in a while or who are recovering from injuries that make activities such as running difficult.