Walking vs running: nearly the same health payoff if you walk twice as long

Running burns about twice the energy of brisk walking for every minute you do it. Yet when researchers followed about 49,000 runners and walkers who spent the same total energy, the authors called their drops in risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes similar.

So the better pick is the one you’ll still be doing six months from now. Before anything else, take a 10-minute talk test. Head out for a walk and push the pace until you can talk in full sentences but couldn’t sing a song.

The 10-minute talk test

The talk test comes from the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, published by the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS.

As a rule of thumb, a person doing moderate-intensity aerobic activity can talk, but not sing, during the activity.

Walk easily for 2 minutes. Then speed up until singing a line of a song leaves you short of breath, while talking still feels fine. Hold that pace for the other 8 minutes. If you can still sing, lengthen your stride or find a hill. If you can only get out a few words between breaths, you’ve crossed into vigorous effort, and HHS counts each of those minutes double.

After 10 minutes, note the distance. Half a mile means you walked 3 mph, and HHS counts 2.5 mph or faster as moderate.

A fit younger adult may sing right through a brisk walk. If that’s you, running deserves a look.

Effort, measured in METs

Researchers score exercise in METs, where one MET is the energy you burn sitting still.

The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, the standard reference list, rates a brisk walk at 3.5 to 3.9 mph at 4.8 METs. Running starts at 6.5 METs for a 13-minute mile and reaches 9.3 at a 10-minute mile, which is 6 mph.

HHS draws its line at 6 METs. Anything from 3 to 5.9 counts as moderate, and 6 or more counts as vigorous. A brisk walk lands in the first group, and nearly every run lands in the second, even a slow jog.

If your phone or watch shows pace, check it against that line. A walk at about 15 to 17 minutes a mile sits at 4.8 METs, and a jog at a 13-minute mile or faster is vigorous.

Calories and minutes side by side

Using the Compendium figures, a 155-pound adult burns about 169 calories walking 30 minutes at 3.5 mph and about 327 running 30 minutes at 6 mph. Heavier people burn more at either pace.

Example: the same 155-pound adult, walking at 3.5 mph or running at 6 mph.

Effort and calories from the 2024 Compendium, weekly minutes from the federal guidelines.

The federal guidelines ask adults for 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity a week, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity. They count each vigorous minute as about 2 moderate ones, and you can mix the two in any proportion. Two 20-minute runs count as 80 moderate minutes, so adding three 25-minute walks puts you at 155, past the minimum.

Each Sunday, add up your week and check it against 150 walking minutes or 75 running minutes.

Same energy, nearly the same payoff

In 2013, an American Heart Association journal published a head-to-head comparison by Paul Williams of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Paul Thompson of Hartford Hospital. They tracked 33,060 runners and 15,945 walkers for 6.2 years and summed up the result this way.

Equivalent energy expenditures by moderate (walking) and vigorous (running) exercise produced similar risk reductions for hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes mellitus, and possibly CHD.

It was a study that followed runners and walkers, not an experiment. CHD is coronary heart disease. The study counted exercise in MET-hours a day, and one MET-hour is about 12 minutes of brisk walking or 6 to 7 minutes of running at 6 mph. To see where you’d sit, divide your daily brisk-walking minutes by 12.

For each daily MET-hour, walkers’ risk of high blood pressure fell 7.2% and runners’ fell 4.2%. The chart shows the other three conditions, including heart disease, where the drop was possible but least certain.

Twice the minutes for walkers

Per MET-hour, walkers’ drops were as large or larger on all four conditions, with diabetes nearly even. The authors still called the two groups’ benefits similar for the same energy spent. Walkers just needed about twice the minutes to spend it.

There’s strong long-term evidence for running too. A 2014 study of 55,137 adults seen at a Dallas preventive clinic found runners had a 30% lower risk of dying from any cause over about 15 years. People who kept running year after year had half the risk of dying from heart disease of people who never ran.

If a doctor has flagged your blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar, ask at your next visit whether brisk walking at your talk-test pace suits you.

How hard each step lands

A 1989 study at a Swedish lab had 12 men walk and run across a force plate at set speeds. Peak force rose with speed, from about 1.0 to 1.5 times body weight when walking and from 2.0 to 2.9 times when running. For a 155-pound adult, that’s roughly 155 to 233 pounds per walking step and 310 to 450 pounds per running step. Multiply your own weight by the same figures to get yours.

That load has an upside. HHS lists running as a bone-strengthening activity, since bones respond to impact with the ground, and walking puts far less of that load on them.

Injury odds for walkers and runners

The federal guidelines say that in the amounts adults usually do, walking has “a third or less of the injury risk of running.”

A 2000 study of 5,327 adults at a Dallas clinic found that men who walked had 25% to 36% lower odds than runners of an exercise injury that sent them to a doctor. More walking didn’t raise the risk. For men, running 30 minutes or more a day raised the odds by 52% compared with running under 15 minutes.

New runners get hurt most. A 2015 review in Sports Medicine pooled 13 studies and found 17.8 injuries per 1,000 hours of running among novices, against 7.7 among recreational runners. HHS advises raising activity gradually over weeks to months, so keep each week’s increase in running minutes small.

Does running wear out your knees?

A 2017 analysis of 17 studies covering 114,829 people found the lowest rates among casual runners. Hip or knee arthritis showed up in 3.5% of recreational runners, 10.2% of non-runners and 13.3% of competitive runners.

The authors couldn’t prove that running caused the difference, and past injuries may explain part of it. People who had run for less than 15 years had lower odds of hip or knee arthritis than non-runners.

Before your first run, try a two-day check. Walk briskly for 30 minutes on two days in a row, then notice your knees, hips and ankles the second morning. If they ache, keep walking a few more weeks before you add running. With a heart condition, arthritis or an old joint injury, talk to your doctor first.

Time, money and gear

You can walk in shoes you already own, and a walk fits into the day you already have. Under current federal guidelines, a brisk walk of any length counts toward your weekly total.

Runners need shoes built for running and, most of the time, a shower afterward. The American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine says “the typical running shoe should be replaced every 350-500 miles.” A runner doing 75 minutes a week at 6 mph covers 7.5 miles a week, or 390 miles a year. That’s about one pair.

Walkers wear out shoes too. At 150 minutes a week and 3.5 mph, you’d log about 455 miles a year, more than that runner. Note your weekly miles on a calendar so you know when a pair passes 350.

Who should pick which

Walking makes more sense if you’re new to exercise, coming back after a long break, or dealing with joint pain or an old injury. It’s also easier with a friend.

Running makes more sense if your week is short on time, or if a 30-minute brisk walk feels easy enough to sing through.

Walk-run intervals sit in between. The Compendium rates a jog-walk mix at 6.0 METs, right where vigorous effort begins. After a 5-minute warm-up walk, try this plan.

1. Jog for 1 minute, then walk for 2 minutes.
2. Repeat 6 times, for 18 minutes in all.
3. Each week, add 30 seconds to every jog and keep the walks the same.

If a week’s jogs feel hard to finish, repeat that week before moving on.

Try it this weekend

Do the 10-minute talk test on Saturday and write down the distance. If you could sing most of the way, try the 18-minute walk-run plan on Sunday. If talking took real effort, walk again on Sunday, then add 5 minutes to each walk next week until you reach 150 minutes.