Lifestyle

Health Benefits, Safety, Treadmill Tips

Fitness influencers emphasize the many physical and cognitive rewards of retro walking.

Improves Balance and Coordination

Research suggests that walking backwards helps with balance for a few reasons. For starters, because walking backwards requires you to stand more upright, it helps improve posture, which is closely related to balance.
Walking backwards can also strengthen muscles in your legs and core that you don’t use as much in regular walking, such as hamstrings, calves, and glutes, which can improve balance.

“This is not only helpful for older adults to help with balance and fall prevention — it’s good for middle-aged adults, too, because then you can get ahead of that steady decline that happens in balance,” says Oakley.

Promotes Joint Health

Backwards walking is a joint-friendly exercise, making it especially helpful for those with arthritis or joint pain.

“What physical therapists have found is for some people — take someone with osteoarthritis of the knee, knee pain, or even low back pain — when you change the way the feet come in contact with the ground from a forward to a backwards moving direction, it changes the way that forces are applied throughout the body,” says Chris Gagliardi, MS, an ACE Certified Personal Trainer and medical exercise specialist in El Cajon, California.

For some people who have pain walking or doing any weight-bearing exercise, incorporating some backwards walking may help, he says.

“The pain won’t go away immediately or completely, but it can be reduced over time if you keep it up,” says Gagliardi.

Engaging and strengthening different muscles and practicing different movements may help with injury prevention as well, he adds.

Gives Your Brain a Boost

Walking backwards isn’t just a workout for your body; it also gives your brain a boost. Because it’s an unfamiliar movement, retro walking requires more concentration and mental focus, which may boost neuroplasticity, or the brain’s ability to change and adapt over time, says Oakley.

Any type of physical activity increases blood flow to the brain, and adding movements that you aren’t used to create new neural pathways. Walking backwards, then, may give you more bang for the buck as far as brain health goes, Oakley says.

Burns Calories

Walking backwards provides a more intense workout than walking forward, Oakley says. Backwards walking has a higher metabolic equivalent of task (MET) — a measure of exercise intensity — than moderate walking. The higher the MET, the more calories burned.

Moderate walking (about 3 miles per hour, or one mile per 20 minutes) is about 3.5 METs, while retro walking at the same pace registers at 6 METs.

However, if you’re trying to build cardio fitness by exercising at a moderate-to-vigorous intensity, walking backwards alone won’t do that, says Oakley.

“Most people won’t be able to safely walk backwards fast enough to count for aerobic conditioning,” she says

Strengthens Leg Muscles

Walking backwards engages many of the same leg muscles as regular walking. However, the mechanics of walking in reverse activates these muscles differently. This helps strengthen the glutes, quadriceps, and hip flexors in addition to the hamstrings and calves, all of which contribute to improved posture, Oakley says.