A study shows that moving in reverse may help with short-term memory. Lost your car keys? Instead of retracing your steps, you might want to try walking backward to jog your memory.
Walking backwards can improve forward gait (how a person walks) and balance for healthy adults and those with knee osteoarthritis. Walking backwards causes us to take shorter, more frequent steps, leading to improved muscular endurance for the muscles of the lower legs while reducing the burden on our joints.
Retro-walking for 10-15 minutes, four days a week, can flex out your hamstrings and strengthen muscles that usually take a backseat when we walk forwards (looking at you, quads and calves).
The benefits of this for neurodegenerative and dementia patients in particular are obvious as memory is one of the core affected skills. Rehabilitation and injury recovery. Physical therapists are increasingly using the backwards walking technique to aid recovery in patients with gait control difficulties.
Ultimately, no, 100 steps backwards isn't equivalent to 1,000 steps forward.
“Running or jogging two and a half miles is equivalent to walking 10,000 steps,” says Chauncey Graham, CSCS, an ACE Fitness Professional at Gold's Gym in Washington, DC. Higher-intensity workouts also come with added benefits, including improvements to your cardiorespiratory system.
The gold standard of daily step counts has long been 10,000, but most experts agree that mortality benefits start to plateau after 8,000. Experts recommend individuals make small lifestyle changes, like taking the stairs and setting aside 20 minutes for a walk, to increase their daily step count.
A study shows that moving in reverse may help with short-term memory. Lost your car keys? Instead of retracing your steps, you might want to try walking backward to jog your memory.
By improving the ability to walk backwards, it may be possible to improve foot functions, increase mobility function, improve balance ability, and reduce the fear of falling and the incidence of falling. In addition, this training is easy to learn and popular, and has the advantage of being low cost.
Walking backwards is as simple as it sounds, but simple doesn't necessarily mean easy. Reach back with your big toe, and then roll through your foot towards your heel. Use your arms to reach back with each stride. Keep your torso upright and chest up.
When you walk backwards, you reach back with your toe and roll through your foot to your heel. This works the anterior tibialis (shin) muscle, as opposed to the gastrocnemius (calf) muscle, which tends to do all the work when you walk forward, says Marr.
Strengthens Spatial Awareness
Walking backwards also helps to boost his spatial awareness, which is a cognitive skill that tells us our position relative to objects around us. Exercising his reverse skills allows him to understand how his body and his body parts move about a room without bumping into stuff.
Because backwards walking uses different muscles than forwards walking, it enhances fat-burning– and balance.
Another benefit to walking backwards is the strengthening of muscles and joints. According to McNamara, when you take a step back, two of the four major muscles in our thighs tend to work a bit harder than if you were taking a step forward.
“This variation on the StairMaster can increase the heart rate and strengthen your endurance.” Thomas also notes that forward walking and stair climbing primarily use your hamstrings, glutes, and calves, while climbing backwards targets the quads.
Backward walking can improve mobility in your knees, hips, and ankles; plus, it can prevent pain and shock absorption in comparison to regular walking. Exactly why physical therapists use reverse walking to improve gait after certain injuries, surgeries, or illnesses (1).
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), healthy seniors should walk 7,000 – 10,000 steps per day. That's an average of three to three and a half miles throughout the course of a day.
When you walk backwards, the same muscle groups are involved, but their actions are reversed: The quadriceps and hip flexors lengthen, while the glutes and hamstrings shorten. This can put less stress and compressive force on the knees.
The philosopher's walk
Adults who walked for 40 minutes three times a week slowed age-related declines in brain function and improved their performance on cognitive tasks.
Brain Boost
Walking daily can increase levels of a critical protein in the brain called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Greater BDNF in the brain supports structural remodeling and growth synapses after learning, which helps to improve cognitive function and make your brain more resilient.
A new study by the London School of Economics and Political Science has found that a brisk 30-minute walk (roughly 3000 steps) is more effective at weight control than running, swimming or going to the gym.
Steps in a Kilometer
On average, it takes roughly 1,200 to 1,500 steps to walk one kilometer while it can take between 900 and 1250 steps to run a kilometer.
People who took 8,000 or more steps three to seven days a week were 16.5% less likely to die over the same period, according to the paper. The protective effect of 8,000 daily steps plateaued at three days a week, the authors found.