Japanese Walking Method | 20-Minute Low-Impact Interval Walk (Bullet Trains & Bidets) | 58

The Japanese Walking Method sounds intense. It’s not. Each round is just three minutes, and the stories make this 20-minute low-impact interval walk fly by.

3 minutes brisk.
3 minutes easy.
Repeat 3 times.
Done.

That’s it.

This is a fun walking workout that builds some stamina, boosts cardiovascular fitness, and gives your heart a little challenge without numbing your brain. It’s great for beginners and those who want a stronger push. You’re in charge of the  effort. The structure keeps you moving. How cool is that?

You can do this walk inside at home on a treadmill or walking pad, or outside in the fresh air.

If you’re outside, you’ll hear a bell halfway through so you know when to turn around.

And we’re not staring at a clock for 20 minutes (tik… tok).

While we switch between brisk walking and recovery I’m taking you to Japan with me, telling true (and slightly ridiculous) stories, including:

• Why I was hysterically crying at the Narita Tokyo airport
• The stranger who chased me down at the bullet train station and saved me from a big embarrassment
• And the high-tech bidet joke that completely bombed in my spin class. Absolute crickets. 

The Japanese Walking Method works because those short bursts of effort make your heart work harder than steady strolling. But (drumroll) they’re short enough that you don’t dread them. (“Wait… they’re over already?”)

By the end, you’ll probably say one of my favorite things:
“That went fast.”

Put on your walking shoes.
Grab your headphones.
Let’s go catch a Japanese bullet train.

If you enjoyed this walk, tap Follow so next week’s workout is waiting for you. And if you feel like saying hi (so I’m not just screaming into the void), you can find me on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook @yourwalkingpodcast.

And if this episode made your walk better and “funner” (not a real word), leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or a comment on Spotify helps more people find the show.

I’ll see you on the next walk.

Transcript

0:00

I was at the airport in Narita, Japan, and I was crying my eyes out. I had left my phone in the pocket of a jacket I'd borrowed from a guide because it was January and I was cold, and I'd just been in Thailand. I was on a layover So once I settled down and stopped hysterically crying, I messaged the guide from my laptop, and sure enough, he came back and gave me my phone and all was well.. We're going to start walking at a warmup pace. You can do this walk inside on a treadmill or walking pad or outside. And if you're walking outside, there'll be a bell at the halfway point so you know when to turn around. Take a deep breath in through your nose as you're walking. And exhale through your mouth. before we get started with our first little brisk interval, I'm going to explain a little bit what Japanese walking is. Just hang onto your pace right now. It's steady, still warming it up. Japanese walking is a simple interval walking method. It's three minutes of brisk walking with three minutes of easy recovery. And you repeat that for three cycles. So by brisk, I mean you can talk, but only in short sentences. You're working, but you're not dying. It's like you're late, but you're not sprinting. And then when we recover, you're doing an easier pace. You can tell a full story, you can breathe normally, and this type of recovery makes the next brisk pace possible. And why this works is it wakes up your heart, wakes up your lungs, lets them recover over and over. So it's like go, go and slow. Go. Go and slow. And then your body adapts faster than an all same pace walk. Nothing wrong with an all same pace walk. But today we're going to do the Japanese interval walking. First, we're going to relax our shoulders, natural arm swing, roll through the foot, going to settle into a rhythm. So a quick overview, three minute brisk walk. We can talk in short sentences, three minute easier recovery. You can tell a story. We're going to repeat that three times. It's simple and it's intentional. Okay, get ready. We're going to hit our very first brisk walk. Pick up that pace now. Three minutes. It's quicker steps. Drive those elbows backwards. Tall posture and you're slowly increasing your pace here because you see the bullet train up ahead of you at the station, but you don't want to run 'cause that's uncool. So you're going fast towards it. You can hop on that very last car, the one closest to you. Stay with it. It's urgency, but it's composed. It's not flailing. You're going to keep your breathing going, keep your posture tall, and if you need to shorten your steps, you can do that. That helps you walk faster. Relax your stomach when you breathe in. Stay focused on getting that train. When we change the intensity up, when we alternate it like this, it really does more for your heart than just that steady strolling. So that's what we're doing right now, giving it a push. But it's not a stressful push. Oh, you know that train is leaving soon. Gotta pick up a little bit of pace still, but you're one of the cool kids. You're not going to run. Use those elbows, use those arms. Follow the beat. The beat's going to be fast enough for you to catch this train. I know we started early with the effort. You're like, what? Why do we start so early? We usually get a longer warmup first, not today. Less than a minute left. Feel that push. 45 minutes? Nope. Nope. 45 seconds. Can you imagine a 45, 45 minute interval? You would not like me very much. I don't think you would listen to this again. Stay with it. 30 seconds. Now you're going even faster because you see the train is getting ready to pull away. If you're on a treadmill and you have an incline, you can bring the incline up a little bit. If you don't want to go too fast. And if you don't feel comfortable going this fast, just pump your arms. Okay? 10 seconds, go. And now you're going to slow it down. It's not going to be too extreme, just enough to recover your heart rate. And you can also back it off like we built the speed, you can back off your speed too. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. See, now we're awake. Much easier pace. You could talk in fuller sentences. So the first time I was at the airport in Narita, japan, I've had two 11 hour layovers. Obviously it was the same flight, same airlines. And so I decided to do my own little day tour of Narita. So I take the bullet train from the airport and I stick the little ticket in, and I walk through the gate and I'm just walking towards my train. And then I hear footsteps running behind me. And I look, and there's a guy running after me and he's holding something in his hand. I don't know what he is holding, and he's like chasing me. And then it turns out that it was my ticket, because apparently you're supposed to put the ticket in when you walk through the gate and take it on the other side, or else you can't get out when you get to your final destination. So that guy pretty much saved me from, I don't know what. Keep your breathing going. Your stomach is relaxed. And since I was doing my own thing on this trip, I went to the tourist office and I got a map and I talked to them a little bit and the map had English street names. So then I walked out and as I'm just moseying down in Narita, I look around and all the signs are in Japanese, as it would be because we're in Japan. So I just decided to walk and I walked around aimlessly beause I had 11 hours to kill and I explored, and that's one of the things I like when I travel, is just looking at things and accidentally stumbling onto things. And I had $5 green tea and I also learned how to do a squatty potty in a skirt because that's the particular potty that I found. I was a little desperate. Keep your breathing going steady now. So the interval walking that we're doing improves our stamina and also our cardiovascular fitness. Okay, we just got 20 seconds of the recovery. Just relax a little bit. You're going to mentally prepare yourself for another brisk effort. And now you're leaving the little place where you sightseeing and you gotta get back on that bullet train and wouldn't you know it? You're running behind again. So here we go. Pick up your pace. Three minutes. Feel a little push. Remember, if you don't feel comfortable walking this fast, you can back it off a little bit. As long as you're going faster than during the recoveries. If you find a little bit of a hill, a little incline, you can walk up there and if you have a treadmill with an incline, you can pop it up a little bit higher. You're an efficient machine today. You know how this works. We've already done one cycle, second cycle, right here. Strong arm drive. Relax your jaw. Follow the beat. You can use your arms though to really make a big difference. And shorter steps, faster steps work. We're going to be efficient in our movements. It's control breathing. You're uncomfortable, and you can only talk in short sentences. I know three minutes can seem like a lot, pretty soon this will be over. You'll be done and you'll feel so much better. Stay with me. Shoulders are away from your ears. Roll through that foot. Stay with that pace. Now we go to our famous 45 seconds left, not our 45 minutes, and these next 45 seconds will fly. As I like to say, super quick is a bunny. If you're walking on a treadmill or walking pad that has a bar, you can hold on with one hand to bring the other hand up above your head and then switch to the other side. As long as you're steadying yourself. Okay, get ready last 10 seconds. Here we go. Feel that push. And relax it back again. You got on the train, you're going to chill. It's a very smooth ride. That pace is slower. Catch your breath. Let's watch the scenery go by outside. You might as well stand because your legs have been pumping now and it feels better than sitting. The second long layover I had was where this phone story came from. I decided to do a day tour so I wouldn't just wander around since I'd done that before. And this was years apart from each other. And the guy who gave us a tour, he lived in Los Angeles for quite a few years, so we had a lot to talk about. He much preferred Japan and he took us to some really interesting places. We went to a temple and we were able to sit in the back and observe everything. It's really fun when you go to different countries and you can observe different cultures and you can see how people do things. Then he took us to a kimono store. I don't remember everything that we did because I was so tired.'cause of layover and the time change. and. And one of the most interesting things is it took us to a friend of his house. So there were two houses on this property. There was a big house and then there was a little small house in the back and this friend of his was quite old and he had lived in the bigger house when his wife was alive and he had been raising his kids and he moved into the back house and gave the front house, the big house to his kids. But he was kind of winding down his life and he wasn't afraid of dying at all. He was just going through the motions every day, happy, smiling, but he wanted to die in the same house where he was born. He was born in that little house before they built the big house. It was really interesting to see the contrast about how we feel often about death in Western countries and how he felt about it and it was just part of life and he was welcoming it. and I was really glad we got to see something different and experience that and it kind of really helped me shift my own perspective. I was going to go on a trip to Japan for real longer than 11 hours for my daughter's 21st birthday. And we bought our tickets, we'd reserved our hotels and we were really excited. And my daughter's birthday was in May of 2020. That's right. 2020. So by February we had to cancel our tickets and we got all the refunds. And I'm still waiting to take her because life got in the way. But as I'd like to say, life happens when you're making other plans. Going to do one more brisk effort in just a moment. Get ready and go. Slowly wind up pace. Use those arms. The Japanese walking method doesn't require perfect conditions. You can do it wherever you are. It's three minutes on. Three minutes off. Repeat three times. Push it. Last bullet train. You're heading back to the airport. Even though I already said that with the previous effort, you went out again and then you came back again. Let's just go with that story' cause you don't want to miss your flight. Strong, steady pace. Follow the beat. Quick feet. Stay tall. Stay intentional. Feel that push now. You might be a little tired during this interval because we've already done two of them. And the tiredness seems to build after each interval. But that's okay. We're almost there on it's short and you're going to feel amazing afterwards. Keep breathing, keep pushing.' You've gotta get to that train heading going to sit on the plane forever. You might as well get a move on right now. Stay with it. Strong and fierce, as I like to say. However you feel you should be moving right now. That's what you're going to do wherever you need to be. Everybody's different. Use those arms. Roll through the feet. Okay, last minute. Intentional and strong. Feel how good it feels to move. I think that needs to be my slogan because I say it all the time. Stay with it. Be glad your body can do what it can do. It can walk intervals with you and together we can make the time fly. Okay? Less than half a minute."Let's go. Let's feel that push. I'm just making up songs that don't exist." Strong, steady, quick steps. Use those arms. We've got a last 10 seconds. That's it. Here we go. Push. And slow it down. You did it all three cycles. You can also do two cycles if you want. It's just fun to do something different. Slow it down to a point where you could talk in fuller sentences. Might as well take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale with your mouth. Now roll those shoulders. We're not cooling it down. We're just recovering from the effort. Big rolls. Big rolls.'cause if you're like me, when you're working hard, you tend to bring your shoulders higher and higher up to your ears. And then roll 'em back or forward whichever opposite way that you just did. It's a lighter pace. So when I went through Japan the first time I was teaching spin, and when I got back I was telling them all about my trip, you know, during the recovery. So it's kind of like we're doing here and they had these really cool high tech bidet seats, which we didn't have here for years and years later. And I was telling them that it has rinse cycle and then it had a blow dry. And I thought I was being really clever, so I said "Yeah, and I got a cut, color and blow dry, and nobody laughed. It was crickets. I'm like, but I thought that was such a brilliant joke and everybody thought I was weird, but okay. So sometimes a joke lands and sometimes it doesn't. Okay, a little bit slower. Keep your breathing going. Japan tends to run on rhythm, and this method tends to run on rhythm. So whenever you do this walk, you're going to run on rhythm. You just need some structure, a little timer maybe. It's nice because it's not a full on high intensity interval training, so you don't get so exhausted. You tend to have more energy after these kind of walks. And I would love to hear how this worked for you, what you thought. On Instagram and threads, and also Facebook it's yourwalkingpodcast, so you can hit me up there and tell me how you did and what you thought. You can also leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or comment on Spotify. That would be awesome.'cause the more you interact with the podcast on Spotify or Apple, wherever you listen to it, the more people will actually learn about my podcast. So it's a win-win. Plus I get to hear from you so I'm not screaming into the void. Okay, slow it down a little bit now. Take a deep breath in through your nose. And exhale through your mouth. A little bit slower. Feel for any tense spots in your body. And then do a little bit of stretch on your own. It's always good to stretch after you walk, and I'll see you next time.