John Cleese’s classic ‘silly walk’ burns more calories than a regular walk

Monty Python’s famous “Ministry of Stupid WalksAccording to a new paper published in the British Medical Journal’s annual Christmas issue, skits require significantly more energy than a normal walk. This is because exercise is highly inefficient. That equates to her 75 minutes of intense, intense physical activity a week, and points to a new means of boosting cardiovascular health.

“Half a century ago, [Ministry of Silly Walks] The skits may have unwittingly exposed you to powerful ways to enhance cardiovascular health in adults,” the authors write.

BMJ’s Christmas issue is usually more lighthearted, journal maintain Articles published there “still adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability that apply to regular issues.” past few years Why 27 isn’t a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of swallowing a sword, Measurement of toxicity of the formulations brewed in Roald Dahl’s 1981 book George’s Wonderful Medicine(Very poisonous, in fact.) The most widely read was the infamous 1999Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Male and Female Genitalia During Coitus and Female Sexual Arousal” (we wrote a dissertation In 2019, we will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first publication. )

As previously reported, “Ministry of Stupid Walks” Sketch It first aired on BBC One on 15 September 1970. It begins with Mr. Teabag buying a newspaper on his way to work. This takes a little longer than usual because his walks have been “pretty silly lately.” Waiting for him in his office is a gentleman named Mr. Pewty (Michael Palin) seeking a grant from the Ministry to develop his own silly walk. Putey demonstrates his progress with a ridiculous walk-in, but Teabag is not immediately impressed. “Not particularly silly, right?” he says. “I mean, the right foot isn’t stupid at all. The left foot just does a half-turn forward in the air with each step.” claims to be possible. T-Bag eventually offers him a research fellowship on silly walks between England and France. The sketch switches to his two Frenchmen showing this “La Marche Futile”.

In 2020, two scientists from Dartmouth College did a gait analysis of the various silly walks on display. Publish your findings In the journal gait and posture. They studied both Pewtie’s and Teabag’s gait cycles in a 1970 televised video of the original sketch, as well as Teabag’s gait from his live stage performance in Los Angeles in 1980. did. They found that the teabag’s silly gait was much more variable than the normal human gait, 6.7 times more likely. On the other hand, Pewtie’s ongoing gait only changes by a factor of 3.3.

But according to the authors of this latest paper, the 2020 study didn’t measure the calorie expenditure of these silly walks. We decided to fill the research gap. The authors note that humans have evolved to “move in increasingly efficient ways,” but that “movement inefficiency may be a desirable trait” when it comes to cardiovascular health. , thought it might be possible to reduce energy efficiency by adopting a less efficient gait, thereby enhancing cardiovascular health even without prolonged periods of inactivity. We named the approach PEMPA: The Practice of Maximizing Effort in Physical Activity.

For their research, Gesser othersWe recruited 13 healthy adults (6 females and 7 males) aged 22 to 71 years. The subject completed her three walking trials on an indoor track. All subjects wore a portable metabolic monitoring system to measure oxygen uptake (ml/kg/min), energy expenditure (kcal/kg/min), and exercise intensity (MET). . And most subjects seemed to enjoy the experience.

“We did not measure the amount of time spent laughing or the number of smiles as a side effect of walking inefficiency,” the authors wrote. “Smiling during the inefficient gait test could not be observed because the facemask worn during data collection obscured the participants’ mouths. Additionally, bursts of laughter from participants were frequent, most often by the supervising investigator while the participants were participating in the tea bag walk.”

The results showed that tea bag-like walking significantly increased energy expenditure, approximately 2.5 times more than regular walking or petit-like walking, in both men and women. In fact, the teabag walk showed an energy intensity of 8 METs. This corresponds to very vigorous exercise. Plus, while it’s fun, you have to be willing to look a little silly.

“At this time, we argue that the results and general suggestions of this study may be generalized to reduce exercise efficiency to other forms of exercise such as mountaineering, water sports (excluding aqua aerobics), or urban cycling. “Inefficient dancing has been around for generations, but too often lone innovators in local nightclubs and cruise ships are the object of ridicule rather than due praise.” (Breakdancing is an exception).”

Listing image by BBC