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At 76 years old, Judy Fog is one of the fittest people her daughter knows. Take, for instance, her VO2 max — a common fitness metric that measures how much oxygen one can absorb while exercising.

“She has a VO2 max that’s not too far off from a Nordic skier, and they’re considered peak of the peak,” said Robyn Fog-Wiltse, a physiologist and physical trainer. Her mother’s secret? Daily walks.

Over the past couple years, the world has significantly changed its relationship to walking, with millions of people strolling their neighborhood sidewalks or local trails hoping to boost their fitness, sense of community and mental health. Studies have shown that walking at least 30 minutes per day is enough to reap significant physical and emotional benefits.

But circling the same humdrum sidewalk for thousands of steps can quickly turn from a daily treat into a repetitive chore. There are dozens of ways to change it up and put the sizzle back into your saunter, if you’re willing to think outside the box.

Try Nordic walking.

Originally developed in Finland as a way to train cross-country skiers during the off-season, Nordic walkers use specially designed poles with rubber tips to grab the pavement and help engage the arms and core muscles, turning a simple walk into a full-body workout.

Trekkers who can stomach the goofiness of city walking with sticks will see, on average, a 22 percent increase in calorie expenditure and will consume 23 percent more oxygen. The more oxygen your body can consume, the more effectively it can generate energy during workouts.

 

It can be hard to find time to exercise daily, even though it is an important activity for maintaining one’s health. For some, it is easier to carve out a bit of time each day, while others find that longer periods of exercise once or twice a week are more doable. A question to be asked is whether the two approaches are equally beneficial.

A new study from researchers at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia, and Japan’s Niigata University and Nishi Kyushu University found that they are not.

The researchers found that small amounts of exercise five days a week improved muscle more than a single extended weekly exercise session.

The corresponding author of the study, Dr. Masatoshi Nakamura, told Medical News Today:

“We believe if you’re just going to the gym once a week, it’s not as effective as doing a bit of exercise every day at home.”

“It is also good to keep up a hard workout at the gym. However, I think it is a hurdle for many people,” Dr. Nakamura added.

The gains were the result of a single set of six eccentric resistance exercises, performed each weekday.

Strength training exercises usually include three phases: a concentric phase, an isometric phase, and an eccentric phase.

The concentric phase focuses on shortening the target muscle, reaching its peak contraction to overcome gravity or some other form of resistance load. The isomeric phase corresponds to the transition point of an exercise in which the muscle is stationary following the concentric phase. Finally, the eccentric phase follows the isometric phase, in which the muscle is lengthened under load to return to its starting position.

Eccentric training focuses on lengthening your muscles under tension, usually by slowing it down as a means to increase the intensity and illicit certain benefits.

Whether you’re burning them or consuming them, most people are aware of calories and their role in weight management, but have you ever wondered which exercise burns the most calories? Could a sweaty session on one of the best treadmills be the answer, or hitting the yoga mat for a HIIT workout? Unsurprisingly, it’s more intense workouts that use several different muscle groups that will ultimately burn more calories – like cycling – but the key is finding the right solution for you, and understanding what you’re trying to achieve.

As such, first it’s important to understand what a calorie actually is, how calorie burn is measured, and the factors that will determine how energy-intensive a given activity is. 

For the answers, we spoke to Dr Javier Gonzalez, an associate professor in Human Metabolism at the Department for Health at the University of Bath. 

WHAT IS A CALORIE?

While we can find calories everywhere we look, from the best fitness trackers to the back of food packets, the actual definition of the term is often lost in translation. 

A 2006 article on the “history of the calorie in nutrition”, published in The Journal of Nutrition, details how the calorie began as a unit of heat in France during the 19th century. 

“A calorie is a unit of energy,” says Dr Gonzalez. “Specifically, a calorie is the amount of energy required to heat one gram of water by one degree celsius (at a standard atmospheric pressure).”