If your goal is to lose weight and improve your health, what's going to be better for you, walking or running? Like most fitness-related questions, this one takes me back to a joke I heard in third grade: What weighs more: a pound of feathers or a pound of bricks? Just as you may be tempted to shout "bricks!" (as I would often do right up through eighth grade, when the subtleties of this riddle and "no soap radio" were finally explained to me), you may be tempted to assume that running is the greater "burn" of the two exercises. And, like all questions in fitness, I remind you that nothing is ever as simple as it seems. Let's break it down. Calorie burn is based on energy consumption over a period of time, and the best way to gauge that energy consumption is by monitoring your heart rate as you exercise. But heart rate itself is based on oxygen consumption. In other words, as your body increases its need for oxygen due to exertion, the heart has to pump more oxygen rich blood to the extremities and the heart rate goes up. One of the main reasons that the heart rate is elevated in running is that, every time your foot hits the ground, that little bit of impact puts pressure on the diaphragm, the main muscle that controls respiration, making it slightly harder to take a full breath. So as your foot strike knocks a little bit of wind out of you, the heart is trying to play catch-up and pumps harder to get the oxygen to the muscles that need it. Plus, depending on your running style, that repeated impact can lead to injuries down the road. [youtube]WNJHQfRiYyY[/youtube] Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/micha...king-vs-running-which-is-better_b_926819.html
