Could walking backwards be the key to taking your fitness forwards? In this episode of Healthy or Hoax, Stacey Morrison laces up her sneakers to find out.
One of the slightly bizarre new fitness trends doing the rounds is retro walking. Basically, walking backwards.
Stacey Morrison, host of RNZ's Healthy or Hoax podcast, laced up her trainers to find out if the rewards of reverse exercise outweigh the risks.
Why walk backwards?
YouTube experts and fitness gurus suggest walking backwards is a really good way to get fitter faster, to strengthen muscles and even improve brain health. But what does the science tell us?
Professor Winston Byblow, director of the movement neuroscience laboratory, says health scientists are often are looking for ways to help people move better and recover after certain types of injuries or conditions.
"Retro walking is interesting because it is really combining two elements. One is walking, which has well-known benefits. And the other one is that it prevents an additional challenge by demanding more attention. I mean, you can imagine that, if you try walking backwards, the first problem you run into is you can't see where you're going."
Is walking backwards different to walking forwards?
Pablo Ortega Auriol, a research fellow at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute, is an expert in the biomechanics of walking. He says certain aspects of backwards walking, such as how the segments of the body move, look really similar but the actual difference is in the muscle activity.
"Since we have a cognitive load in our muscles activate more with a little bit of a different timing than when we work forward."
Simply put, because you have to think about what you are doing when you walk backwards, your muscles activate more.
While he hasn't seen any long-term studies on retro walking, he says that appears to be what happens in the beginning and it seems that this actually helps to improve balance in certain population.
Retro walking in action
In order to illustrate muscle activation during reverse walking, Stacey hopped on the state-of-the-art treadmill in the movement neuroscience laboratory.
Ortega Auriol points out how when you are walking forwards, the calf muscles, or gastrocnemius, propels you forwards and you do not have to think about it.
"Most of the motor pathways involving walking are present in the spinal cord, not actually in the brain," he says…