They wanted to see if there were consistencies between an easy-to-use number, such as steps per minute, and more technical determinations of intensity, such as respiration. They began by looking for recent, good-quality published studies that had tracked people’s walking pace and cadence, which is the number of steps they take per minute, as well as other measures of their effort, such as heart rate or increases in respiration. So, for the new study, which was published in June in a special issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine devoted to the topic of walking, she and her colleagues decided to see whether there was enough data already available to develop a more precise and useful definition of brisk walking.
“Who wants to sing when they walk?” she asks. That definition seemed impractical to Catrine Tudor-Locke, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, who has long studied how much exercise might be needed or sufficient for health. Used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other agencies in their guidelines, it defines brisk walking (and other moderate-intensity activities) as occurring at a pace at which people can talk but not sing. Even the simplest, often-cited description of brisk walking can be vague and confusing.
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