Sunday Long Run: Is Walking Cardio?
I apologize for the delayed article, as this series usually goes out on Sundays and today is Monday. I had a busy travel day yesterday and faced some delays along the way with spotty Wi-Fi. Please enjoy!
The word “cardio” is being thrown around a lot right now and everyone seems to have their own definition.
In the center of all this is the debate is the simple act of walking.
“Is walking cardio?”
Well that depends, but I would say YES for an extreme % of the population.
The problem is most people view “walking” as a short 5 minute jaunt. I.g. getting up from your desk in the middle of the day, or walking around the house doing chores.
Both of these would be examples of people counting their “steps” as “walking cardio”.
But when people explicitly state walking is *not* cardio, I always question 1) How long are you walking and 2) What is your heart rate.
For me to count walking as cardio it needs to meet two pieces of criteria:
At least 30 minutes in length.
Sustain a heart rate above 100 BPM.
If both of these are met, then walking IS counted as cardiovascular output in zone 1-2. Many people get hung up on the idea of distance—thinking you must hit a certain amount of steps or miles. Your body knows time and intensity!
Here is another great chart showing how walking can be efficient: (Apologies for grainy image quality).
As you can see, around the 100-115 BPM range, your hearts stroke volume hits the efficiency curve, and it starts to plateau.
Simply walking can maximize your stroke volume, while taking *minimal* impact or strain on the body. What this does is improve the efficiency of ventricular filling. In other words, this means that the heart can fill with blood more efficiently during the short period of diastole (when the heart is between beats and fills with blood), which increases stroke volume.
By becoming more efficient at this process, and increasing stroke volume (along with cardiac output), your body is better at meeting the metabolic demands of muscle tissues during exercise. This means we can make adaptions with a very low cost. Of course, this should not be your *only* means of exercise if you *can* do more, but it is a great supplement in training, no matter your skill level.
BTR Step Protocol:
I always prescribe a walking routine to new runners who get a low amount of daily steps already.
For an easy “protocol”, you should make your step goal 7,500 consecutive steps, with 2,500 accessory steps, equaling 10,000 total.
Quality: Consecutive steps on walk/run.
Accessory: Steps added going about day.
A quality/consecutive step should only be counted if the walk/run was 3,000 steps total. This usually equals ~30min.
Some examples of a lot of steps *not* being cardio:
Example 1: You gain 10k steps walking around your house cleaning or running errands. These are simply passive steps going about your day. Short bursts of a few hundred steps throughout the day will not have the aerobic affects of a true walk/run.
Example 2: Retail/restaurant workers that are overweight or not in shape. These workers are on their feet all day, easily gaining over 10k steps a day. Except these steps are not quality/consecutive steps, they're simply short busts of steps.
Example 3: Say a runner wants to go on a 5 mile run today: Are they better off: 1) Running 1 mile every 3 hours or 2) Running the 5 miles over a 45-60min period (quality). Obvious answer here is #2, and the same applies to walking.
For runners:
In any event, runners should always be walking anyways.
If the only time you’re at an elevated heart rate and on your feet is during your 1-hour run, then you *need* more time on your feet.
Consider multiple 30-minute walks throughout the day, a standing desk, or some action to get you moving throughout the day.
Walking for runners leads to a higher adaptability to fat oxidization (walking at an elevated heart rate with depleted glycogen stores = burning fat), and added conditioned/stretched of soft tissue.
Movement = recovery.
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-BTR