Walking and running are popular cardiovascular activities that both offer potential benefits. While running burns more calories, walking also supports cardiovascular (heart-related) health and is a lower-impact option. Which one is “better” depends on your personal abilities and goals.
Walking offers many benefits. Here are some highlights:
- Low-impact: Walking can stimulate your heart without affecting your joints like running does. This is because the mechanics of walking involve a more gradual weight transfer with each step.
- Promotes endurance: Walking stimulates your slow-twitch muscle fibers to burn fat as fuel, improving your endurance (long-duration) aerobic capacity while you burn calories. Aerobic capacity is how well your body uses oxygen during exercise. Higher aerobic capacity allows you to do more intense physical activity.
- Improves blood sugar regulation: It causes your muscle fibers to contract, increasing glucose clearance, which is how well your body uses glucose (sugar). This improves average blood glucose levels over time, helping prevent diabetes and even reverse it.
- Promotes cardiovascular health: Walking stimulates your heart muscle, enhances circulation, and helps lower blood pressure over time.
- Less vigorous than other cardio activities: Walking may be more appropriate for those sensitive to high-intensity exercise (e.g., people with injuries or limited mobility).
Running has many similar benefits to walking. Its higher relative intensity provides more cardiac stimulation than walking, which challenges your heart to work harder and leads to greater adaptations (changes), including improved:
- Heart efficiency: How much blood your heart pumps in relation to the amount of oxygen the body needs
- Cardiac output: How much blood the heart pumps in one minute (in liters)
- Circulation: How efficiently blood moves throughout the body
- Glucose clearance: How well your body uses glucose
- Aerobic capacity: How well your body uses oxygen during exercise
Running also requires more energy and helps you burn more calories in a shorter period.
Walking:
- Pros: Causes less stress on your joints.
- Cons: Doesn’t stimulate your heart as much because it’s lower-intensity and requires less muscle recruitment. Because of this, walking doesn’t lead to as much improved aerobic capacity and is less efficient at burning glucose and calories.
Running:
- Pros: More efficient, allowing for more adaptations in a shorter time frame.
- Cons: Can be incredibly taxing on your joints, particularly if you already have orthopedic (bone- or muscle-related) conditions. It involves a moment of flight where both feet leave the ground, which increases the force on your joints when you land.
Choosing between running and walking depends on your unique goals, overall joint health, and personal preferences.
If you have arthritic hips and knees, running isn’t the best choice for the longevity of your joints. You can still stimulate your heart vigorously, but you might need to choose lower-impact cardiovascular activities and modify them as needed. Here are some ideas:
- Walk on an incline, which is more challenging than walking on a flat surface
- Use an exercise bike and pedal with a high-power output, which will increase your heart rate but likely cause fewer aches and pains than high-impact running
- Experiment with treadmills, varying the pace to keep it interesting and challenge yourself
No matter which form of cardio you choose, you can always increase or decrease the intensity to make it work well for you.
It’s also important to consider personal preference. For example, if you hate running but love going on long hikes with your friends on the weekend, you might consider the latter. You’ll probably be more likely to stick with it because you enjoy doing it.
When starting a new exercise endeavor, it’s essential to start slowly and gradually build up. Even lower-impact walking can cause overuse injuries if you jump into too much too soon. Begin with less than you know you’re capable of and see how your body responds, then gradually increase your exercise intensity.
It’s perfectly normal to feel some soreness when beginning a new exercise routine, but it shouldn’t leave you unable to walk the next day. If you need more recovery between sessions, you might be overdoing it. Try reducing the training volume (how much or how long you exercise) and/or intensity and see if that helps. After some experimentation, you’ll figure out what works best for you.
Contact a professional if you are unsure where to start. Physical therapists (PTs) and qualified fitness coaches can help. Some fitness professionals specialize in running and may offer more specific tips for your situation. They can also provide information on effective footwear.
Running and walking are efficient ways to stimulate your heart and improve your health. While they require very little start-up equipment, it’s important to consider how each can affect your body.
Start by assessing your goals and what you are trying to accomplish. Given your unique exercise history and health status, decide whether walking or running would be better for your body. You can always experiment with a combination unless you have injuries or other limitations that prevent running.
