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| Introduction: Techniques of Running/Walking: Should you model yourself after Professional Runners? NO! |
Running/walking suffers from a myriad of misconceptions
that not even champions or their coaches will be able to identify, much less
explain. A large part of the misconception lies in the disparity of goals between you and the these professional athletes: YOU want to burn as many calories as possible in a given amount of time. The athlete wants to CONSERVE calories, for the long haul. Thus, the last person you want to listen to is a professional runner! You want to "WASTE" , or expend, every calorie you can with every step, which most often comes from "POOR" technique. Technique is thus totally irrelevant for the normal exercising adult! |
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| Preparations: Warming up, Stretching and Surfaces |
You commonly see runners doing their runner's stretch before they run. It is becoming more and more the opinion that this is wrong! Stretching should be done AFTER warming up! How do you warm up? Run slowly! This is true for any aerobic endeavor. It is actually aerobics that are used for warming up for ANaerobics! A very important consideration in running/walking is to wear well-padded sneakers, and/or to run on a very soft surface, because of the extreme forces generated (4 x your bodyweight for walking, up to 15 x bodyweight for running!). But the effects of the two are different. Not only does the soft surface protect your feet and joints, it makes running and walking more difficult, therefore causing more calories to be burned. Sneakers generally reduce the calories expended by acting as springs, and storing elastic energy. |
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| There are two issues: Comparing running to
walking over a fixed distance, And comparing running to walking in a fixed time. |
Now, here is the answer to the debate about running and
walking: which one burns more calories. The answer is not simple. But, if I dispel but this ONE myth about walking and running, God's work will have been done. IT IS NOT TRUE THAT TRAVERSING THE SAME DISTANCE BURNS THE SAME CALORIES, REGARDLESS OF HOW YOU DO IT--WALKING OR RUNNING. When you increase the speed of walking to the point where you feel like breaking into a jog, you will burn LESS calories traversing that mile in a jog. From that speed onward, you will burn more calories walking than running! Up to the point where you can't walk any faster. Soon, running, because you can go faster, will outpace walking in burning calories. Another way of putting it is that at fast paced walking, compared to the same paced jogging, walking will burn more calories. |
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| Running vs. Walking: Fixed Time | Ultimately, running will burn more calories per minute
than walking. But not always. As you increase your walking pace, you are burning less calories per minute than running at that speed, UNTIL you feel the urge to run. That is the breakeven point. If you continue to walk fast, you are actually burning more calories than running at that speed! But eventually, running overtakes race walking, and the calories per minute become among the highest of any endeavor. Thus, if two forms of travel at the same velocity have different energy expenditures per minute, then the fixed distance will have a defferent total energy expenditure. |
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| Running vs. Walking: Fixed distance | To burn the LEAST amount of calories for a given distance, walk at a leisurely stroll. To traverse that mile and burn the MAXIMUM number of calories, racewalk! Remember, one has the urge to eventually run above a certain speed because it is the more efficient form! Racewalking is the least efficient. | |
| The Bottom Line | Leisurely walking? Good for digestion (and diabetes)
after dinner.
Exercise? Fast Walking, or jogging/running. The best? Fast walking, slow jogging with Heavy Hands! |
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| Algebra and the Self selected step | For those of you who remember your advanced algebra of
conic sections, the above is described by this algebra. It is really quite
elegant. When I can dig up the article that described these results, I will
post it. The energy considerations discussed above embrace a notion from this lost paper called the "self-selected step", which means basically that the most comfortable stride is the most efficient stride. How convenient! |
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Are walking and running calisthenic exercises? |
They can be. To the extent that someone's muscle is not up to walking and running, forcing yourself to do so will in fact force the muscle to get stronger. After that, walking or running acts as a maintenance exercise, as do regular calisthenic exercises. | |
What about running marathons? |
It is my opinion that running a 26 mile marathon is one of
the silliest, most damaging things one can do to the human body--as bad for the
body as sitcoms are for the mind. Excellent athletes lose bladder AND bowel
control (you know what that means), urinate blood for days afterward, and often
take weeks to recover, often from internal organ damage (kidneys, spleen,
liver). It is my personal estimate, from loosely considering the estimates of other habits on life span, that every marathon run takes off about 3 months off your total lifespan, as well compromising the quality of life, by damaging joints, organs, bone, and possibly compromising the immune system by introducing an unhealthy type of stress. The human body actually thrives on a certain type of stress, perhaps challenges. But a 26 mile run goes 'way beyond a challenge. And for what?? Maybe I'm just out of touch! |
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| Jogging vs. Sprinting | Two totally different endeavors. Just look at the builds of sprinters vs. marathoners. Sprinters are thickly muscles, often even in the upper body. | |
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