Interval walking is more powerful for exercising thighs and improving muscle endurance

Are you still doing the same old normal walking? Try Japan's innovative interval walking method, which can make your thigh muscles stronger! Professor of the Kareizure Medicine Chair at the Juntendo University Research Institute in Japan pointed out that interval walking, which alternates between fast and slow walking, can not only improve weight, body fat, blood pressure, and cholesterol, but also exercise the thigh muscles that cannot be trained by ordinary walking. When the thigh muscles become firm, you will be able to walk with more endurance.

Interval walking, which is an alternation of fast and slow walking, can not only improve weight, body fat, blood pressure, and cholesterol, but also exercise the thigh muscles that cannot be trained by normal walking.

There are many benefits of walking, which can effectively reduce weight, body fat and cholesterol

In his book "The Key to Healthy Vitality Until Age 100 Lies in the Morning," Takuji Shirasawa, professor of aging-control medicine at the Juntendo University Institute, pointed out that there is an organization in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan called Matsumoto Sports University (abbreviated as Matsumoto University), whose main purpose is to assist the health of residents in the city and surrounding areas. With the assistance of the local Shinshu University, Shuda University offers various activities in the hope of helping people develop healthy habits that are beneficial to their bodies.

One of the activities is the 10,000-step exercise every day. During the 9 years since the campaign was promoted, 1,800 people have participated in it, and about 30% of them have continued to maintain the habit of walking 10,000 steps every day over the past 9 years.

The results of this activity are quite amazing. The 30% of people who insist on walking 10,000 steps a day not only reduce their weight and body fat, their blood pressure also drops to a number lower than normal, and their high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increases, while their low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides decrease relatively, proving that brisk walking has considerable benefits for the body.

The disadvantage of general brisk walking is that it does not strengthen the thigh muscles enough

Although studies have shown that brisk walking is good for physical health, further investigation has found that even walking 10,000 steps a day does not help much with independent living abilities such as leg strength and endurance. Good leg strength not only ensures independence in life, but also prevents you from being bedridden due to falls. The most important thing in training your leg strength is to increase your thigh muscle strength. From this point of view, brisk walking is not enough to strengthen the thigh muscles.

In order to solve this problem, the research team conducted repeated experiments and finally developed a method called "Interval Walking". This walking method is inspired by "interval training" in track and field competition training. Interval training involves alternating between full-on sprints and slightly slower running to improve thigh muscle strength.

People who originally lacked physical strength saw a significant increase in muscle strength after doing interval walking.

Interval walking is so simple, 3 steps everyone can do it

The idea behind this interval training running method comes from the Czech track and field athlete Emil Zatopek, who also won three gold medals in long-distance events at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. At the time, everyone believed that he was able to set such an amazing record through interval training.

However, most people do not need to undergo rigorous training like Olympic athletes, so Shuda referred to this method and designed interval walking, which is an alternation of fast and slow walking. Interval walking is simple and anyone can do it. Here are the steps:

1. Do warm-up exercises.

2. Start by walking briskly for 3 minutes, at a speed that makes you gasp for breath.

3. Then adjust your breathing and walk slowly for 3 minutes.

The entire training process takes 30 minutes, with 3 minutes of fast walking and 3 minutes of slow walking, repeated 5 times in an alternating cycle. Finally, take a deep breath to stabilize the body. If you keep doing interval walking for 5 months, your thigh muscle strength can be improved by 10% to 15% and your endurance can be improved by 10%.

Interval walking exercises your muscle endurance to improve your physical strength

Shinshu University conducted a five-month study on three groups of people with an average age of 64 who were doing interval walking. The results found that the group that did interval walking had improvements in weight, body fat, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and glycosylated hemoglobin.

Even people whose weight, blood pressure and blood sugar were lower than normal people, that is, people who were suspected of being too thin, having hypoglycemia and low blood pressure, finally had their measured data return to normal values; even people who originally lacked physical strength had their muscle strength increased after interval walking. However, the group that engaged in general walking did not increase their muscle strength and endurance.

【Health Tips】:

From the experiment, we can see that interval walking is not only simple to practice, but also has a significant effect in improving muscle strength. It is recommended that people who want to engage in interval walking may as well give it a try. Of course, don't force yourself too much at the beginning. You can start with 10 minutes and slowly increase the time to 30 minutes. Persistent walking is the way to maintain long-term health.