Running vs. walking on incline

There are many articles & studies that show incline training to be far superior to running on a flat surface.

http://woman.thenest.com/incline-training-weight-loss-14190.html

Freemotion.com has a pdf about incline training & the science of how it engages more muscles & burns more calories.

Jillian Michaels not only advocates incline training but uses it herself.

Try it & see. I love it and see FAST results! In my opinion 6 calories burned per minute is far better than 2!!!

I appreciate your enthusiasm for incline walking. However, none of the references you cite really support your assertion that "incline training (is) far superior".

The first reference was not a study, but an article that made a number of false comparisons.

The first:

For example, a 160-pound person walking at a brisk 3.5 mph would burn about 314 calories per hour, while the same person would burn 657 calories walking on a stair treadmill. The reason for the increased calorie burn is the amount of energy required to propel your body up a slope. It’s a tougher battle against gravity compared to exercising on a flat plane.

This statement is not comparing apples to apples. Walking at the same speed up an incline will ALWAYS burn more calories--because it is a higher intensity activity. Running 6.0 mph burns more calories than walking 3.5 mph also--for the same reason. This is the classic infomercial technique of lying by only telling partial truths.

The second:

Inclined training burns a significant number of calories, and it also has an anaerobic effect. Ramping up the incline helps challenge your leg muscles far more than flat-plane exercise. While flat treadmill exercise activates about 20 percent of your leg muscle tissue, exercising at a 15-percent grade recruits about 75 percent of your leg muscle tissue. Muscle tissue naturally burns more calories compared to fatty tissue, so increasing the lean mass in your legs can help turn your body into a more efficient calorie burner. This leads to weight loss over time.

They obviously got their information from the study commissioned by Free Motion. This statement is basically a word salad that randomly combines fitness concepts without any understanding of what they mean. There is no "anerobic effect" (whatever that is). Recruiting more muscle fibers does nothing to "increase the lean mass" unless you are working those muscles to fatigue in a few repetitions--which you cannot do when performing thousands of repetitions walking. Any 'strength" gains achieved from walking up an incline are due to neuromuscular facilitation, not increased "mass".

The third:

Exercising at an incline is one of the best ways to target and burn fat calories rather than your body’s main source of energy, carbohydrates.

The fuel substrate used during exercise has NO effect on stored body fat. If someone burns more fat calories during exercise, they will burn less the rest of the day so that, after 24 hours, there is no difference is total fax oxidation whether you do a "high carb" or "fat burning" workout.

The only honest/useful statement in this story is this one:

a 2010 study conducted at Colorado State University found that slower-paced inclined training was as effective at helping people lose weight as faster-paced exercise on a flat surface. Inclined training was also found to be easier on the lower-body joints, knees, tendons and muscles.

This is the key benefit for incline walking, but that is because you performing exercise that is at a similar intensity as running, not because of any magic property of incline walking.

The second reference is primarily an advertisement for FreeMotion. They do reference one university study that Free Motion commissioned. There was no reference to whether that study had been published in a peer-reviewed journal. The results were interesting, but I would have to look at the actual study itself to determine exactly how the study was conducted and the results measured. However, the results that were reported (increased "fat burning", increased EMG activation) are irrelevant for either weight loss or muscle building.

There is no need to discuss the third reference.

There are benefits to incline walking - the two most important are: ability for higher-fit people to work at a high intensity and burn a lot of calories without the high-impact of running; less impact means less pounding/fatigue for the legs which means that it is often possible for persons without a lot of running endurance to engage in the higher-level activity for a longer duration or more frequently.

These two benefits are plenty--there is no need to make overstated, hyped-up and ultimately misleading claims of "superiority" for incline walking. The laws of physics still rule--which state that exercises done at the same intensity (i.e. oxygen uptake) will burn equal calories independent of modality.

Running is also bad for your knees. Go to any hospital and you will find several people who have received knee or hip surgery from running.

Yes, u can hurt your knees or w/e running. Or u can learn 2 do it right and carefully. Outside in the fresh air, saying g'morning to people, watching the sun rise or set, watching the scenery change. So if ur gonna run, learn how 2 do it right.

BroScience strikes again.

I sometimes hold onto the handrails when I am gasping for breath after the sprint interval component of HIIT.

proof is in the pudding. If it works for you fine, but incline walking is amazing on the largest muscles of your body, quads. Also, I use Mark Lauren's "you are your own gym" to build more muscle and find that I no longer need expensive memberships. Mark has trained 1000s of special ops, and what is good enough for our military is way good enough for me;) I can do the exercise anywhere.

I'll try and get the info on the muscles worked in yayog, and with "weights". I believe there is a difference in numbers of. Denise

Holding onto the handrails means you're supporting some fraction of your weight and stabilizing yourself with your arms rather than your legs. It decreases the intensity which is why the readout will be wrong - the machine typically calculates based on weight, incline, and speed and not heart rate.

So, if you reduce the incline and don't hold on, you will probably be close to the intensity you are now. Plus, you'll be working on your stability more

Sure.

If you're walking at a steady pace, constant incline, then HR is a good relative indicator of intensity, particularly for the same workout or for workouts in a pretty short timeframe. It doesn't do so well at intervals - heart rate lags behind intensity changes and then doesn't recover as fast as intensity drops.

Here's a couple of points where you need to be careful with HR because changes aren't always reflective of intensity changes:

• HR starts a slow steady increase about 5min into a workout even if intensity doesn't change. It's called cardiac drift.
• HR increases with increased temperature, stress, lack of sleep, pain, dehydration.
• HR decreases for the same intensity as you get more fit (up to a point), so it's best not to use it to compare intensities week to week - use the incline, speed, etc for that. You can use it to see your fitness improve for the same work, though.
• You probably won't use it for this, but by the same token, don't use it to compare intensities between people. Fitness matters and so does the range from min-max HR which can vary hugely. Because that range varies, be sure to calibrate your HRM if you want to use it for workout HR zones.

kerriknox wrote: »

The body burns a higher percentage of calories from fat in the fat burning zone (60-65% of maximum heart rate) or at lower intensities.
At higher intensities (70-90% of your maximum heart rate), you burn a greater number of overall calories.

I had a personal trainer a few years ago who introduced me to walking on an incline. She said it was the best for fat burning. I set my treadmill to the highest incline possible (15%) and walk at a pace of 3.5 It really gets your heartrate up there and easier on the knees.

Running is not hard on your knees.........runners suffer no more arthritis etc than the general population, in fact there is a growing body of evidence that running may, in fact, protect your knees.

OP generally speaking running burns approximately twice the calories that walking does (race walking above 5 mph burns more due the mechanical inefficiency of maintaining that pace while always keeping one foot in contact with the ground) walking at higher inclines probably narrows that gap (I have yet to find a reliable calculator). If your goal is weight loss running works better. If your goal is fitness running works better.

If you hate running walking is good.

As to the whole "fat burning zone" that's really only important if you're training to for endurance events, even a skinny marathoner will have gar more calories available by way of stored fat compared to glycogen.

chrismansa wrote: »

Thank you stealthg for your answer. I do not use the monitor on the machine. I follow the my heart rate on an HRM that I wrap around my chest. If the heart rate is up, doesn't that mean I am at high intensity regarding of holding hand rails or not? I heard that I would be working different muscles if I hold the hand rail, but I don't care about that. I only care about my heart rate intensity, which I thought would tell me how hard I am working. Any thoughts about that?

I think another way to look at this is, you could try: Not holding on to the rails, and walking at a slower pace and/or lesser incline. I wouldn't be surprised if your HR didn't change much from what you're doing now.

This IMO would help with your balance and posture as well- All while getting to go "easier" and not holding on!

Going up an incline is horrible for your knees so be careful on the choice you make

Intervals (alternating run-walk) are less boring than just straight walking on a treadmill, which is mental torture to me. I personally prefer running to walking, although doing anything on a trail out in nature is FAR SUPERIOR to doing it on a treadmill.