According to science, the benefits of walking range from improved cognitive health and lowered depression to stabilized blood sugar and a reduced risk of coronary heart disease. However, there's a lot of conflicting information out there about how fast and how much you need to walk to reap these benefits (is 10,000 steps non-negotiable or is just 4,000 steps enough?). Now, new research into "Japanese walking" provides an answer to both of these questions, suggesting a workout that can lead to lower blood pressure, weight loss, and improved muscle strength.

RELATED: A Daily Walk Could Add 11 Years to Your Life—If You Do It for This Long.

What is Japanese walking?

Japanese walking, also known as interval walking or 3x3 walking, is a walking-HIIT (high intensity interval training) mashup that was developed in Japan.

In a now-viral Instagram post, Saurabh Sethi, MD, a board-certified gastroenterologist and interventional endoscopist, explained that the technique is simply alternating three minutes of slow walking with three minutes of brisk walking ("like you are rushing to an important meeting") for 30 minutes. "It is joint-friendly, time-efficient, and very effective," he notes.

Japanese walking was developed in the early 2000s by Hiroshi Nose, MD, PhD, an exercise physiologist at the Shinshu University Graduate School of Medicine in Matsumoto. He and his team of scientists describe the fast-walking intervals as ranking as a "6 or 7 on a scale of exertion from 1 to 10," reported The New York Times. And they recommend completing the workout four times a week.

RELATED: If You're Over 65, This Is Your Ideal Resting Heart Rate—And Why It Matters.

How does Japanese walking lead to improved health?

When Nose and his team published their first study in 2007 in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, they compared the health data of adults aged 44 to 78 who adhered to Japanese walking at least four times a week to those who walked at a moderate-intensity continuously.

Those in the moderate-intensity group walked "at approximately 50% of their peak aerobic capacity" for at least 8,000 steps per day. Those in the interval-walking group completed the half-hour workout where their low-intensity bouts were at "40% of peak aerobic capacity" and high-intensity bouts were "above 70% of peak aerobic capacity." Both groups completed their exercises at least four days per week and had their stats measured using pedometers and accelerometry.

Compared to the moderate-intensity group, the interval group exhibited the following outcomes:

A 13 percent increase in isometric knee extension and a 17 percent increase in isometric knee flexion (measures of thigh muscle strength)

A 9 percent increase in peak aerobic capacity for walking, and an 8 percent increase in peak aerobic capacity for cycling (a predictor of cardiovascular health)

A reduction in resting systolic blood pressure

In their second study, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology in 2015, Nose and his team observed the results of their interval walking training (IWT) program on middle-aged and older adults who completed the workout four times a week for 22 months. Those who stuck with the regimen exhibited the following positive changes:

A 13 percent reduction in the risk of lifestyle-related disease

A 12 percent increase in peak aerobic capacity for walking

Then, in 2018, Nose published the results of an even longer-term study in the journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). For this research, older adults (mean age of 68) completed the interval walking training program for 10 years. Their results were compared to those who dropped out of the program. In the group that stuck with it, the following benefits were recorded:

A 20 percent improvement in leg muscle strength

A 40 percent improvement in peak aerobic capacity

The study authors concluded that, over 10 years, participating in Japanese walking "protected against age-associated declines in physical fitness in older people and the effect was partially preserved even if they dropped out on the way."

RELATED: 4 Healthy Habits That Make Japan's Obesity Rate 90% Lower Than the U.S.

The key to longevity could come down to heart rate.

What is it about Japanese walking that makes it so beneficial compared to plain old walking? The answer might be found in an unrelated study that was published in 2024 in the journalProceedings of the Royal Social B.

In this case, researchers enlisted participants to walk on a stairclimber treadmill while having their oxygen levels monitored. As Best Lifepreviously reported:

"Investigators found that shorter walks and climbs—around 30 seconds—required participants to use 20 to 60 percent more oxygen than those who exercised for longer periods. Put simply, they used more energy (i.e., burned more calories) to warm up at the start of the workout than they did once they'd been walking or climbing for a bit. At that point, the body reaches a metabolically steady state."

Speaking with The Guardian, lead study author Francesco Luciano, MD, PhD, a researcher at the University of Milan explained, "We found that when starting from rest, a significant amount of oxygen is consumed just to start walking. We incur this cost regardless of whether we then walk for 10 or 30 seconds, so it proportionally weighs more for shorter rather than longer bouts."

This same logic can be applied to Japanese walking: The body uses more energy when it continuously goes from moderate walking to fast walking, leading to more calorie burn (which equates to weight loss) and improved cardiovascular health, all markers of longevity.