Japanese walking: the 3-minute interval method
Walk fast for 3 minutes, slow for 3 minutes, five times: 30 minutes, four or more days a week. Use the timer below; it beeps and vibrates at every switch.
Keep this screen on during the walk. Your phone may pause the timer if the screen locks.
Where it comes from
"Japanese walking" is the internet's name for interval walking training, developed by physiologist Hiroshi Nose and colleagues at Shinshu University in Matsumoto from the early 2000s. Thousands of local residents, mostly middle-aged and older, took part in the programme using small activity monitors.
In a 2007 trial published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (Nemoto et al.), people who did interval walking for five months gained more thigh strength and aerobic fitness, and saw larger drops in blood pressure, than people who walked continuously at a moderate pace. The fast phases push you to about 70% of your peak aerobic capacity, a level that ordinary walking rarely reaches.
How to do it
- Warm up with a couple of minutes of easy walking.
- Fast for 3 minutes: long strides, arms swinging, breathing hard enough that talking is in short phrases.
- Slow for 3 minutes: easy strolling, let your breathing settle.
- Repeat 5 times for 30 minutes. Aim for at least 4 sessions a week (the Shinshu target was 60 minutes of fast walking per week).
New to brisk walking? Start with 3 intervals, or 2 minutes fast and 4 slow. Test your fast pace with the cadence tapper: aim for 120+ steps per minute. A session adds about 3,500 steps to your daily log.
Questions people ask
What is Japanese walking?
Japanese walking is interval walking: 3 minutes of fast walking (about 70% of your peak effort, where talking is hard) followed by 3 minutes of slow walking, repeated 5 times for 30 minutes, at least 4 days a week. It was developed by Hiroshi Nose and colleagues at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, Japan.
Does Japanese walking work?
In studies of middle-aged and older adults, 5 months of interval walking improved thigh strength, aerobic fitness (peak VO2) and blood pressure more than continuous moderate walking did (Nemoto et al., Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 2007).
How fast should the fast part be?
Hard enough that you could speak only a few words at a time, around 7 on a 1 to 10 effort scale. For many people that is 120 to 130 steps per minute or more. The slow part is an easy stroll to recover.
How many steps is a Japanese walking session?
Roughly 3,300 to 3,800 steps in 30 minutes, depending on your cadence: about 125 steps per minute in the fast parts and about 95 in the slow parts.
Is Japanese walking better than 10,000 steps?
They do different jobs. Interval walking targets fitness and strength in less time; daily step totals capture overall movement. Many people do Japanese walking for part of their steps, which covers both.