Japanese walking: the 3-minute interval workout, explained

“Japanese walking” blew up on social media in 2025, but it isn’t a fad invented for a short video. It is interval walking training (IWT), a method Japanese researchers have been testing on hundreds of people for years. The whole workout fits in one sentence: walk fast for three minutes, walk slowly for three minutes, repeat.

The rules in 30 seconds

• One round: 3 minutes of fast walking, then 3 minutes of slow walking.
• Per session: at least 5 rounds, so 30 minutes in total.
• Per week: at least 4 sessions.
• Fast intervals: genuinely hard. The studies aim for more than 70% of your peak aerobic capacity for walking.
• Slow intervals: recovery, at roughly 40% on the same scale.

That adds up to at least 60 minutes of fast walking a week, which, as you will see below, is right where most of the measured benefit shows up.

How fast is “fast”?

Without a lab test you can’t know your 70% exactly. In practice, the fast intervals should feel clearly quicker than your normal pace, with your breathing picking up noticeably. The slow intervals are where you get your breath back.

If you like numbers, count steps. In adults aged 21 to 60, 100 steps per minute marks moderate intensity and 130 steps per minute marks vigorous intensity. Keeping your fast intervals above 100 steps a minute is a solid starting point. There is more on this in our brisk walking and cadence guide.

What the studies found

The original trial: 246 people

In a 2007 study by Nemoto and colleagues, 246 people did either interval walking or continuous walking. Those doing interval walking saw:

• peak oxygen uptake (VO2) for walking up 8–9%,
• knee extension strength up 13% and knee flexion strength up 17%,
• a larger drop in systolic blood pressure than the continuous walkers.

679 people and the question of “how much?”

A 2019 analysis of 679 people by Masuki and colleagues found peak VO2 up 14%. The more useful finding is the dose-response curve: the benefit grew with fast walking up to about 50 minutes a week, then levelled off. You don’t need hours of hard walking; a few regular sessions do most of the work.

It held up in type 2 diabetes

A Danish trial in people with type 2 diabetes reported maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max) up 16% with interval walking.

Study	Participants	Gain in aerobic capacity
Nemoto, 2007	246	8–9%
Masuki, 2019	679	14%
Type 2 diabetes, Denmark	—	16%

The real challenge is sticking with it

The method is easy. Keeping it up is not. Long-term adherence is described as the main challenge for interval walking, and one study found that adherence halved over the summer months.

A few things that help:

• Pick your days. “Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday” beats “four times a week”.
• Walk around the heat. In summer, go early in the morning or in the evening. On very hot, humid days, shorten the fast intervals or skip the session.
• Don’t let one missed day end it. Pick up where you left off the next day.
• Let something else keep time. Watching a clock for three-minute blocks gets old fast. A timer with voice or vibration cues makes it effortless.

A four-week starter plan

The research protocol calls for at least five rounds a session. If you haven’t walked regularly for a while, build up to it. Here is what we suggest:

Week	Rounds per session	Sessions per week	Fast walking per week
1	3	4	36 minutes
2	4	4	48 minutes
3	5	4	60 minutes
4 onward	5	4–5	60–75 minutes

Start each session with a few minutes of easy walking and use the last slow interval as your cool-down.

How many calories does it burn?

It depends on your weight, speed and terrain, but the 2024 Adult Compendium of Physical Activities gives a rough guide: walking at 3.5–3.9 mph (5.6–6.3 km/h) is 4.8 METs, and walking at about 2.5 mph (4 km/h) is 3.0 METs. One MET is roughly one kilocalorie per kilogram of body weight per hour. By that estimate, a 30-minute session split evenly between fast and slow comes to about 130–140 kcal for a 70 kg (154 lb) person. Watches and apps often overestimate calories, so treat any number as a ballpark rather than a target.

Who should check with a doctor first

The fast intervals push your heart harder than ordinary walking. If you have heart or blood vessel disease, high blood pressure or diabetes, or you have been inactive for a long time, talk to your doctor before you start. Stop at once if you get chest pain, severe breathlessness, dizziness, or start to stagger.

Japanese walking in Durma

Durma has Japanese walking built in as a ready-made program: 3 minutes fast, 3 minutes slow, five rounds. Voice cues and haptics tell you when each interval changes, so you never have to look at a clock. You can set your own intervals, track your weekly minutes of fast walking, and start the program from your Apple Watch or Wear OS watch.