Anyone who walks like British actor John Cleese in the famous Monty Python sketch “Ministry of Silly Walks” (from 1970) uses 2.5 times as much energy as someone who walks normally.
Moving around like a fool is therefore an excellent form of exercise, write American researchers in the Christmas issue of the prestigious British Medical Journal.
The researchers equipped six women and seven men with sensors to measure their oxygen consumption, among other things, had them walk a 30-meter course three times and filmed it.
The first time they had to walk as they normally do, the second time as John Cleese does as the head of the ministry, and the third time as his colleague Michael Palin, whose beginner walk takes longer, but does not require more energy.
Related News
- UK nationwide strikes: Army to be deployed in care and border control
- Boris Johnson pulls out of Conservative leadership race
- Liz Truss resigns as UK Prime Minister
Cleese’s method of “inefficient walking” is considerably more strenuous. Cleese moves alternately upright and rigid like a heron, then hops a few steps, swings one leg stretched up like a marching Russian soldier or twists it at an impossible angle, does a pirouette and walks a bit with his knees turned inward.
All in all, this way of walking is so inefficient that doing it for 11 minutes daily is as strenuous as 75 minutes of vigorous exercise, according to the researchers. Both men and women benefit.
If the silly walk had been widely embraced in the 1970s, we would be a lot healthier today, the researchers argue. The British Medical Journal publishes a number of curious studies each year in its Christmas issue that are scientifically based.
