Walk fast, stroll slow: the simple routine that boosts health

Older adults don’t need a gym, a coach, or a squad to get fitter. A new perspective highlights interval walking training, which alternates a few minutes of brisk walking with a few minutes of gentle walking, as an easy routine to follow at home that most people can maintain. The headline: this rhythm improves fitness, strengthens legs, and nudges key health markers in the right direction.

The twist is how it helps blood sugar. In people with type 2 diabetes, the benefit isn’t just from better insulin sensitivity; it also seems to come from the body getting better at handling glucose on its own what scientists call glucose effectiveness, a fresh angle backed by clamp studies. The perspective in Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism lays out that case in plain terms. (APNM article).

Who conducted the study?

The article was led by Kristian Karstoft of Copenhagen University Hospital, with collaborators across Denmark, the UK, and Japan. You can trace his publications and contributions via his ORCID profile.

Co-authors include Shizue Masuki and Hiroshi Nose, whose group in Japan helped shape the original walking-based approach. Their early work set the table for today’s real-world training programs. (Nose et al., Journal of Physiology, 2009).

What the researchers did

The team synthesized evidence from trials in healthy older adults and in people managing chronic conditions, especially type 2 diabetes. A typical session uses at least five cycles of three minutes fast walking and three minutes easy paced walking, adapted to each person’s fitness level with simple tech.

They also compared interval walking head-to-head with steady, continuous walking matched for time and energy. In these matchups, total effort rhythm was not the main thing that changed. (Nemoto et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2007).

What they discovered

After months of training, healthy older adults who used the fast-slow pattern saw roughly a tenth-step bump in aerobic fitness, stronger knees, and lower blood pressure. The steady walkers had minimal impact in the same period. (Nemoto et al., 2007).

In people with type 2 diabetes, randomized trials showed that interval walking beat steady walking for improving free living glucose profiles and body composition, even when weekly time and calories were matched. Mechanical work tied those gains to glucose effectiveness. (Karstoft et al., Diabetes Care, 2013; Karstoft et al., Diabetologia, 2017).

Why is it important?

If better glucose control required big weight loss or long waits, many people would give up. By improving how the body handles sugar directly, interval walking offers earlier gains that can keep folks motivated. That is important for daily life when having diabetes.

There are hints beyond metabolism, too. After cancer treatment and after hip replacement, interval walking has helped people rebuild capacity and leg strength in small trials. (Christensen et al., J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 2019; Morishima et al., PLOS ONE, 2014).

Who pioneered the approach

The roots run to community programs in Japan that used a simple beeper worn on the waist to keep walkers on target intensity. Those field studies showed older adults could stick with the plan for months and see real gains. (Nose et al., 2009).

Longer projects linked to higher adherence with larger improvements in risk factors and aerobic capacity. The message was clear: when people keep showing up, the benefits stack. (Masuki et al., Journal of Applied Physiology, 2015).

Safety notes

Interval formats once raised eyebrows for people with chronic disease. Today’s evidence shows they are generally safe when prescribed and progressed appropriately even for people with heart disease and diabetes. (Wewege et al., J Am Heart Assoc., 2018; Hwang et al., Experimental Gerontology, 2019).

Interval walking also runs at lower absolute intensity than many gym-style interval workouts and stays largely aerobic, which helps older or deconditioned walkers ease in without drama. That’s one reason it fits real life settiings.

The adherence hurdle

In tight, supervised studies lasting weeks to months, adherence ranges from eighty to one hundred percent, and the results look great. But in real-world settings especially for people who are overweight or type 2 diabetes sticking with it gets harder.

A Danish rollout used a smartphone app to guide intensity and offer coaching. Downloads soared, but sustained use lagged, and average interval-walking for minutes decreased after the first three months. (Thorsen et al., JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2022).

The tech twist

Apps such as InterWalk personalize brisk and easy targets using a short walking test and phone sensors, then encourage users with prompts and goals. That lowers barriers by turning any sidewalk into a training lane. (Brinkløv et al., BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation, 2016).

Engagement with goal setting, brief calls, group walks, and timely reminders seem crucial. People get more of the “medicine” that interval walking provides; without them, plans drift away.

Warnings to keep in mind

Most studies ran under careful supervision and tracked surrogate outcomes like fitness, glucose profiles, and blood pressure. We still need longer follow-ups in everyday settings to learn whether interval walking can influence factors such as hospitalizations and complications.

And while safety signals look good so far, clinical trials often exclude the highest-risk patients. That means caution and personalization must be common practice.

What’s next

The task is clear: testing interval walking at scale in communities, building in adherence support, and measuring outcomes are crucial to patients and health systems. If the gains seen in labs and clinics hold up in the wild, this could be a cost-effective backbone of active aging.

The routine is as simple as walking at a fast pace, walking at an easy pace, and repeating. But it might give millions a practical path to better health, one city block at a time.