The answer that comes to mind is probably “yes, duh,” but hear me out.
There’s a half-mile walking trail next to my office that’s shaped like a lopsided ring encircling a hilltop; my coworkers and I walk it every afternoon for exercise and stress relief. The entrance to the trail from my office is at the lowest point on the trail. Walking around it in a counter-clockwise direction, you walk uphill at a steady angle for about 4/5ths of the trail, and conclude with a rapid descent. Going clockwise, you begin with a steep climb, then go steadily downhill for the rest of the walk.
Office parlance refers to the counter-clockwise direction as “the Easy Way”, and to the clockwise as “the Hard Way”. They are so named because the climb at the beginning of the Hard Way can be tough, while there’s nothing particularly difficult about the Easy Way (save trying not to bust your ass on the way down).
When we go for our walks, we almost always end up going the hard way, because three out of the five people in my department insist that we get a better workout that way. I maintain that the net energy expended is the same no matter which way you go, as long as you control for efficiency-related variables (obviously, if you sprint up the hill while going the hard way, you’re burning more calories). It seems to me that if you don’t alter your walking pattern in either direction, going the hard way just front-loads the effort and superficially increases the perception of “exercising”. Then again, there are probably variables I’m missing; my attempts to prove this with my leftover Comp Sci mathematical juju are far too theoretical to settle the matter conclusively.
So, am I way off base, or should I lobby harder to switch it up once in a while? Let’s have the straight dope!
According to my mom–who gets her exercise tips from Weight Watchers–if one always does the same thing, your body gets used to it and does it more efficiently, so it is good to change things up from time to time–and one easy change is to walk the route in the opposite direction.
I think both require the same amount of total energy to complete (much like walking 3 miles vs. running 3 miles) but the “hard” way may give the benefit of raising your heartrate for a short amount of time.
From a purely physics point of view, they both take the same energy, but they probably put different kinds of strain on your muscles. Which would be better, or if there is even a difference, I don’t know.
Why? I don’t understand. Why is jogging up the hill obviously going to burn more calories than walking up the hill?
I question your “obvious” statement only because I was recently told that jogging and walking burn the same amount of calories, as long as you go the same distance. That is, if you walk 5 km you burn the same amount of calories as if you jogged 5 km. Now I called BS on this; however, thinking about it, jogging that distance will only take you 15 minutes, but walking will take you 45(?) minutes. So the theory is that while you are getting a “better” workout jogging for 15 minutes you are getting a longer workout (if you can call it that) for 45 minutes. Can anybody tell me the SD on this?
One other factor is the stress on your joints. From what I understand, going down on steep slopes causes more strain than going down shallow ones, and either is more strain than going up. So your arthritis will probably act up less “the hard way”.
I admit I have no cite for this. My thinking was that running spends the extra energy necessary to propel your entire body off the ground in brief spurts in exchange for additional speed, as opposed to walking, where your motion is almost entirely forward. I would hypothesize that walking and jogging (i.e., “running” without taking both feet off the ground at once) would be equivalent, but sprinting, where you’re effectively adding a bit of a jump to every step, would be less efficient in terms of distance gone to energy spent.
I think part of the answer lies with what happens after the 5km. If you walked it for 45 minutes once you are done you are done. You sit in a chair and your burn rate goes back to “sitting in a chair” burn rate.
If you ran it in 15 minutes and immediately sat in chair your heart is still pumping, adrenaline going, heartrate increased for a bit. It may take you 10-15 minutes to get back to your normal “sitting in a chair” burn rate.