Is Walking as Good for You as Running?

Minute for minute, running does more for your health than walking. Burn the same amount of energy, though, and brisk walking lowers your risk of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes about as much as running does.

The cost is time. At a brisk walk, you need roughly twice as many minutes to burn what a runner burns.

Which one suits you comes down to your week, your joints and how new you are to exercise.

How hard each one works your body

Exercise scientists measure effort in METs. One MET is the energy you burn sitting still, and a 5-MET activity burns about five times that.

The 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities, the reference researchers use to put numbers on exercise, lists walking at 3.5 to 3.9 mph on flat ground at 4.8 METs. That’s a brisk pace of roughly 15 to 17 minutes per mile. Running at 6 mph, a 10-minute mile, comes in at 9.3 METs.

The federal Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans draw the line at 6 METs. Anything from 3 to 5.9 METs counts as moderate activity. Anything at 6 or above counts as vigorous.

Slow your run to 4 mph, a 13-minute mile, and the Compendium still rates it at 6.5 METs.

If you push your walk to 4.0 to 4.4 mph, the Compendium’s very brisk pace, it rates 5.5 METs and still falls short of vigorous.

The weekly target, in minutes

The second edition of the guidelines, published by the Department of Health and Human Services in 2018, asks adults for at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity. You can mix the two, since the guidelines treat one vigorous minute as worth about two moderate ones.

That gives you an exchange rate you can use. A 30-minute run on Saturday counts as 60 of your 150 moderate minutes. Brisk walks cover the other 90 minutes over the rest of the week.

Both numbers are floors. The same guidelines say more benefit comes with up to 300 moderate or 150 vigorous minutes a week.

The two targets line up on energy, too. Multiply the minutes by the Compendium values and 150 minutes of brisk walking comes to 720 MET-minutes, while 75 minutes of running at 6 mph comes to about 698. The guideline asks for a set amount of work and lets you choose how fast you do it.

What happened when walkers matched runners

The best head-to-head evidence comes from Paul Williams of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Paul Thompson of Hartford Hospital. In 2013 they published a study in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology that followed 33,060 runners and 15,945 walkers for about 6.2 years.

They compared the two groups by energy spent instead of minutes. For each MET-hour of exercise a day, runners’ risk of a new high blood pressure diagnosis fell 4.2 percent and walkers’ fell 7.2 percent. For high cholesterol the drops were 4.3 and 7.0 percent. For diabetes they were nearly identical, at 12.1 percent for running and 12.3 percent for walking.

Participants reported their own diagnoses and exercise on questionnaires, so the study shows a link, not proof of cause.

Don’t take the bigger walking bars as a sign that walking beats running. The authors called the risk drops roughly equivalent for equal energy.

They also found that the runners burned more than twice as much energy as the walkers, on average, and so got more benefit overall.

Impact is where running costs you

Running is harder on the body in the most literal sense. A 1989 study of ground forces in the journal Acta Physiologica Scandinavica measured each footfall at about 1.0 to 1.5 times body weight when walking and 2.0 to 2.9 times body weight when running.

Injuries follow the force. A 2015 review in the journal Sports Medicine, led by Solvej Videbæk at Aarhus University in Denmark, pooled 13 studies and found 17.8 injuries per 1,000 hours of running among new runners. Recreational runners with more experience came in at 7.7.

For a beginner, that’s about one injury for every 56 hours of running. At the guideline’s 75 minutes a week, you’d reach 56 hours in about 45 weeks.

The review didn’t cover walking, and it gives no walking figure to set beside those numbers.

With roughly half the force on every step, walking is the gentler choice for your joints.

Walking and running side by side

The table uses the Compendium speeds above, and the mileage is simple arithmetic from those speeds and your weekly minutes.

	Brisk walking	Running
Pace	3.5 to 3.9 mph	6 mph
MET value (2024 Compendium)	4.8	9.3
Intensity	Moderate	Vigorous
Minutes to meet the weekly guideline	150	75
Miles a week at that target	8.8 to 9.8	7.5
Force per footfall	1.0 to 1.5 times body weight	2.0 to 2.9 times body weight
Injury rate	No pooled figure	17.8 per 1,000 hours for new runners
Gear	Supportive shoes	Running shoes
Shoe life	300 to 500 miles	300 to 500 miles

Gear cost is close to a wash. The American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine puts the life of a walking or running shoe at 300 to 500 miles, and either routine puts 7.5 to 9.8 miles a week on your shoes. That works out to about 7 to 15 months per pair.

The runner’s shoes may even last a little longer, since 75 minutes at 6 mph covers fewer miles than 150 minutes at a brisk walk.

Short on time? Run, or mix

Running wins when minutes are the scarce thing. Three 25-minute runs meet the weekly guideline, while walking needs five 30-minute outings for the same credit.

You don’t have to commit to one for good. A weekday walk to the train and a weekend run both count toward the same 150 moderate minutes, as long as you count each running minute as two.

Ink and halftone illustration of the silver-bearded man in a navy track jacket walking upright along a tree-lined riverside path, arms low at his sides, while a young man with dark curly hair, a white tank top and black shorts runs past him on the right. Patches of yellow sunlight fall on the paving, a yellow sun sets behind a city skyline across the water, and a small brown bird perches on top of a lamp post beside a park bench. — *A walk and a run on the same path both count toward the same weekly total, with each running minute worth two walking minutes.*

New to exercise or sore joints? Walk first

Walking is the better start if you haven’t exercised in a while or if your knees, hips or ankles complain on impact. New runners in the Videbæk review got hurt at more than twice the rate of experienced ones, and a month on the sidelines with a sore shin is a month of no exercise at all.

Walk first, and add short running stretches later only if you want them.

Plenty of people never do, and the Williams and Thompson data suggest they give up little as long as they put in the extra time.

When to check with a doctor first

Most healthy adults can start walking without a checkup. The American College of Sports Medicine loosened its screening advice in 2015 because the older rules sent many people to a doctor who didn’t need to go.

The exception is if you don’t exercise regularly now and you have heart, kidney or metabolic disease such as diabetes. The ACSM counts regular exercise as at least 30 minutes of moderate activity on 3 days a week for the past 3 months. If you fall short of that and have one of those conditions, get your doctor’s clearance before you start either one.

The same goes for you if you get chest pain, unusual breathlessness or dizziness with exertion.

Before your first outing, pick a flat route near home and a time of day you can repeat each week, and carry your phone.

Once you’re moving, one sign can’t wait. The American Heart Association says chest discomfort that lasts more than a few minutes, or goes away and comes back, can mean a heart attack.

If you feel that on a walk or a run, stop, and don’t wait more than 5 minutes to call 911.