The Surprising Ways Walking Delivers a High-Intensity Workout
Speed up those steps to boost longevity and burn more calories
4 min
Intensifying your fitness routine could come from the simplest change possible: how you put one foot in front of the other.
Walking with more intensity can burn as many calories as higher-impact activities such as running or even HIIT classes, experts say. That could mean incorporating weights, hills, intervals or a faster pace without breaking into a jog.
Reba Dodge always thought she needed to spend money on trendy workouts from spin to hot yoga to get fit. But the Maui, Hawaii-based floral designer and mother of two says she gets the best results from walking.
Over the past eight years, Ms. Dodge, 46, has experimented with ways to turn her daily fitness walk into a serious workout, including walking up a steep hill near her home, walking backwards and carrying 2-pound hand weights.
“The weights force me to engage my core more,” she says. “I’m even considering buying a weighted vest.”
Walking as a workout can provide stress relief and improve heart health. It is also one of the easiest ways to achieve the weekly physical activity—150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity—recommended by the World Health Organization.
“Lack of time is the number-one excuse people give for not getting enough physical activity,” says Thomas Allison, director of the Sports Cardiology Clinic at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
He recommends people focus on the quality versus the quantity of their steps. The latest science suggests that we don’t need to take 10,000 steps a day (about 4 to 5 miles) for improved health or longevity.
Taking an 11-minute brisk walk daily will also lower your risk of stroke, heart disease and a number of cancers, according to a study from the University of Cambridge published in February.
Faster tempo
Speed up those steps and research suggests you can boost longevity. Plus, you can get the same—if not greater—calorie burn on a 20-minute walk where you incorporate intervals at a brisk pace as you would from a 40-minute walk at a leisurely pace, Dr. Allison says.
Katie Breden, 42, tries to always keep a pair of sneakers in her car. The mother of two grade-school-aged boys likes to have a backup plan for when she can’t fit in her Peloton workout. She will briskly walk laps around the field during their hourlong sports practices, or walk the perimeter of the park while they play.
“So many parents sit on the bench on their phones,” says Ms. Breden, a pre-K teacher based in Point Pleasant, N.J. “This is an easy way to squeeze in a workout, and I don’t get as sweaty as I would running or spinning, so I can go on with my day.”
Get moving
Scoring fitness gains from walking can be as easy as putting a little extra spring in your step. A study published in the British Medical Journal in December found that the lurching “silly walk” made famous in the British TV show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” increased energy expenditure in adults by about 2.5 times compared with their usual walking style.
The researchers don’t expect people to start walking down the street high-kicking like John Cleese’s character, Mr. Teabag, says Glenn Gaesser, one of the study’s co-authors. He just hopes the study shows that you don’t need to spend a ton of money or time to burn more calories. Tiny changes in your routine can add up, especially when one is just getting back into shape.
“Upping the energy expenditure of your current movement or activity by taking higher steps a few times throughout the day can raise your metabolic rate,” says Dr. Gaesser, a professor at Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions.
But for those looking to lose weight: Along with making healthy diet choices, you need to increase the intensity of your exercise. If jogging or running is uncomfortable on your joints, Dr. Allison suggests power walking, where you swing your arms, and race walking, where one foot remains in contact with the ground at all times.
Head for the hills
Incorporating hills into your walking routine is a low-impact way to challenge the muscles and heart more, says Abrea Wooten, senior national education manager for gym company Life Time Inc. Ms. Wooten walks uphill wearing a weighted vest on a treadmill to help train for ultramarathons. “It’s so much gentler on my joints,” she says. “The incline puts less stress on the knees.”
Treadmill walking got a huge boost of cool when social-media personality Lauren Giraldo’s 12-3-30 workout went viral on TikTok in 2020. The influencer says the workout, which involves walking on a treadmill for 30 minutes at the speed of 3 miles an hour on a 12% incline, helped her lose 30 pounds.
Ms. Wooten estimates that you can burn three to five times more calories a minute walking at an incline because of the extra work your quads and hamstrings put in. She advises gradually ramping up on the treadmill rather than jumping straight to a 12% incline. Start at 0.5% or 1% and add 1% to 2% every week.
Maintaining proper form is also important to get the most benefit and avoid injury. “If you need to hold on to the front rail of the treadmill, you should have slightly bent arms and keep your posture tall,” she says. “If you’re holding on for dear life and leaning back with straight arms, you need to ramp down the incline and pace.”
Leaning back disengages the core muscles, she says. Ideally you will find a pace that allows you to pump your arms.
Ms. Wooten suggests mixing up the types of walking you do every few months to keep the body challenged. On vacation, walk on the beach where the uneven sand works your stabilising muscles. Find a new route in your neighbourhood with rolling hills.
“Low-impact exercise does not have to be low-intensity,” she says.
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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High-end homeowners are choosing to upgrade rather than relocate, investing in bespoke design, premium finishes and long-term lifestyle value.
