Interval walking has been having a moment on social media, usually under the name "Japanese walking," and for once the trend has solid research behind it. The idea is simple: instead of walking at one steady pace, you alternate three minutes of brisk, effortful walking with three minutes of easy recovery, repeat that five times, and do it four or more days a week. That is about 30 minutes a session. The method comes from a team at Shinshu University in Japan, whose studies found meaningful improvements in fitness, leg strength and blood pressure in middle-aged and older adults over five months. Here is how to do it, what the research actually found, and how it fits alongside a daily step goal.
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How to do an interval walking session
Walk at an easy pace for three minutes, then at a hard pace for three minutes, and repeat that pair at least five times. That gives you a 30-minute session, and the aim is to do it on four or more days each week. Easy means you could hold a conversation in full sentences. Hard means you can only manage a few words at a time, you are still walking rather than jogging, and you would struggle to keep it up much beyond the three minutes. If you track heart rate and want the original targets, the researchers aimed for roughly 40 percent of peak aerobic capacity on the easy intervals and above 70 percent, but below 85, on the hard ones. You do not need any of that to get started, though. The talk test captures what the protocol feels like without a lab.
The three-minute length was chosen for a practical reason. In the first large study, most of the middle-aged and older participants could not sustain the hard pace for much longer than three minutes, and they felt recovered within the next two or three. The easy intervals are part of the workout, not a sign you are slacking. Keep the hard intervals as a walk rather than letting them drift into a jog, because the whole point is that this is accessible to joints that would not thank you for running. A gentle incline is fine; a hill that turns the walk into a scramble is a different workout.
If you already hit a healthy daily step count, interval walking slots in easily: swap the flattest half hour of your usual route for a session and keep the rest of your steps relaxed. If you are a long way from any step goal, it is better to build a walking habit you can actually sustain first and then add the hard minutes later. Our guide to how many steps a day covers the question of volume. This article is about quality.
What the original study found
The study most people are half-remembering was published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2007 by Hiroshi Nose's group at Shinshu University, with Shizue Masuki among the authors. Between May and October 2004, the team followed 60 men and 186 women with an average age of 63, divided into three groups: no training, moderate continuous walking, and high-intensity interval walking. The continuous walking group was asked to walk at about half of their peak capacity and to clear 8,000 steps on four or more days a week. The interval group was asked to complete five or more sets of three minutes easy and three minutes hard, on four or more days a week, with a small accelerometer worn on the back that beeped when it was time to switch pace.
The results for the interval group were striking. Knee extension strength rose by about 13 percent and knee flexion by about 17 percent. Peak aerobic capacity improved by roughly 9 percent for walking and 8 percent for cycling. Resting systolic blood pressure fell by around 9 mmHg and diastolic by about 5 mmHg, and the drop in systolic pressure was significantly larger than in either the continuous-walking group or the group that did not train. One of the most interesting details is that the interval group did not burn more energy per day than the continuous group. They got more benefit from a similar amount of effort simply by spending part of it above the 70 percent threshold.
It is also worth knowing that not everyone stuck to the plan. The authors reported that the training target was fully met by 11 of 19 men and 31 of 68 women in the interval group. That is a reminder that four days a week of genuinely hard intervals is a real commitment, even for motivated volunteers. The useful version is doing it most weeks and not worrying about a session missed through illness or a busy week. The mechanism rewards consistency over months, not perfection in any single week.
The follow-up study, and which minutes matter
A later paper in Mayo Clinic Proceedings looked at 679 men and women, average age 65, who completed five months of the same programme between 2005 and 2008, and asked a sharper question: which part of the session is doing the work? The answer was the fast minutes. Across that group, aerobic capacity rose by about 14 percent on average and a composite lifestyle-disease score fell by around 17 percent, and the improvements increased as weekly fast-walking time increased, up to roughly 50 minutes a week, after which the benefit levelled off. Once fast-walking time was in the model, slow minutes and total minutes did not independently explain the gains.
That 50-minute figure lines up neatly with the basic recipe. Five hard intervals is 15 minutes, four days a week is 60 minutes, and real life trims that towards 50. It is a surprisingly small amount of hard effort for the results reported, and it is a much smaller number than the 10,000-step target most people carry around in their heads. The slow intervals still matter, because they are what make the hard ones repeatable, but they are not where the physiological change comes from.
How interval walking fits with a step app
Most apps that pay you to walk reward volume. A 30-minute interval session produces a fairly modest pile of steps compared to a long, slow wander, and a coin balance will not notice that you worked harder. That is a limitation of the apps rather than of the walk. If you enjoy the game of it, keep the game for your easy days and let your interval days be about the pace. Fitcoin's effort score is designed to recognise harder sessions rather than raw step count alone, which is closer to what these studies rewarded, but you do not need any app for this. A watch buzz, a cheap kitchen timer or a familiar stretch of road that takes about three minutes is all the equipment required.
For a sense of pace, a brisk cadence of around 100 steps a minute, which public-health guidance often uses to define "moderate," is a good picture of the easy-to-moderate end. The hard intervals should feel clearly above that: still walking, slightly ridiculous if someone is watching, and over before you have time to bargain with yourself. If you have chest pain, are in the middle of changing a blood-pressure medication, or have a joint that objects to faster walking, it is worth a conversation with a clinician before you start. The blood-pressure results in the research are one of the reasons the method is interesting, but they are findings from a study, not a prescription for an individual.
Start on a flat loop you know well. Three easy, three hard, five times, and then stop, even if you feel you could manage a sixth. The studies ran for five months, and that is the timescale on which this works. One good Tuesday will not move your aerobic capacity any more than it would move the VO2 max estimate on a smart ring. The point is that the hard minutes are short enough that you will happily do it again on Thursday. If you want a gentler starting point, our walking workout guide is the place to begin, and if you are planning sessions around a busy schedule, when the gym is quietest has some useful timing data too.
Sources: Nose and colleagues, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2007, on high-intensity interval walking training in middle-aged and older people, and the later Mayo Clinic Proceedings analysis of fast-walking time in 679 participants who completed five months of interval walking. Figures in this article match the results reported in those papers. This is general fitness information, not a training plan for a medical condition.
Alongside this: how many steps a day, a simpler walking workout, apps that pay you to walk, when the gym is quietest.
Frequently asked questions
What is interval walking?
Interval walking alternates three minutes of brisk, hard walking with three minutes of easy walking, repeated five or more times for a roughly 30-minute session, done four or more days a week. It is often called "Japanese walking" online because the method was developed by researchers at Shinshu University in Japan.
Where does interval walking come from?
It comes from research by Hiroshi Nose's group at Shinshu University, first published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2007. The team studied middle-aged and older adults in Matsumoto, Japan, over five months and compared interval walking to steady-pace walking and no training.
What did the interval walking study find?
In the 2007 study, the interval walking group improved knee strength by 13 to 17 percent, raised peak aerobic capacity by about 8 to 9 percent, and lowered resting systolic blood pressure by around 9 mmHg, with larger blood-pressure improvements than the steady walking group despite similar total energy expenditure.
How many minutes of fast walking do I need?
A follow-up study of 679 people found benefits increased with weekly fast-walking time up to about 50 minutes a week, then levelled off. Five hard three-minute intervals on four days a week gives you 60 minutes, so the standard recipe comfortably covers it.
Is interval walking better than 10,000 steps?
They measure different things. Step counts measure volume, while interval walking is about intensity. The research suggests the hard minutes drive the fitness and blood-pressure gains, so adding intervals to whatever steps you already take is likely to help more than simply walking further at the same easy pace.
About the author: Harris Khan is the co-founder and CTO of Fitcoin, a UK fitness-rewards and health-insights app that reads Apple Health and Health Connect.