John Cleese's Classic 'Silly Walk' Burns More Calories Than a Normal Gait, Study Finds (arstechnica.com) 81
Walking like John Cleese's character, Mr. Teabag, in Monty Python's famous "Ministry of Silly Walks" skit requires considerably more energy expenditure than a normal walking gait because the movement is so inefficient, according to a new paper published in the annual Christmas issue of the British Medical Journal. From a report: In fact, just 11 minutes a day of walking like Mr. Teabag was equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week, presenting a novel means of boosting cardiovascular fitness. "Half a century ago, the [Ministry of Silly Walks] skit might have unwittingly touched on a powerful way to enhance cardiovascular fitness in adults," the authors wrote. "Had an initiative to promote inefficient movement been adopted in the early 1970s, we might now be living among a healthier society."
The BMJ's Christmas issue is typically more lighthearted, though the journal maintains that the papers published therein still "adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue." Past years have included papers on such topics as why 27 is not a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of sword swallowing, and measuring the toxicity of the concoction brewed in Roald Dahl's 1981 book George's Marvelous Medicine. (It's very toxic indeed.) The most widely read was 1999's infamous "Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal."
The BMJ's Christmas issue is typically more lighthearted, though the journal maintains that the papers published therein still "adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue." Past years have included papers on such topics as why 27 is not a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of sword swallowing, and measuring the toxicity of the concoction brewed in Roald Dahl's 1981 book George's Marvelous Medicine. (It's very toxic indeed.) The most widely read was 1999's infamous "Magnetic resonance imaging of male and female genitals during coitus and female sexual arousal."
A normal gait is the most calorie efficient walk (Score:2)
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It is kinda interesting, isn't it? Nature spent millennia to ensure that we can do what we want to do with the least expenditure of calories possible - and we are desperately seeking ways to expend as much as we possibly can.
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Nature didn't account for us to turn into a completely sedentary set of fat slobs wasting away countless hours sitting on chairs and couches absorbing content and send emails with as little physical movement as possible. Give it another couple of thousands of years of this and humans will look very different.
We're not seeking ways to expend as much as we can, we're seeking ways to maintain the status quo with what nature intended by our evolution while also ... maximising the fuck-all we so much love doing
Nature didn't account for us to live past 40 (Score:2)
Maybe in a few hundred thousand or million years.
Re: Nature didn't account for us to live past 40 (Score:2)
Rsilvergun is self aware that he is a spineless coward?
Santa gave me exactly what I wished for this year!
Re: Nature didn't account for us to live past 40 (Score:2)
I'm getting a kick out of reading this while still laying horizontal in bed at 11am on a Friday. ðYââ(TM)ï
Why would we look different? (Score:2)
Why would we end up looking any different? Evolution typically doesnt happen unless there is some sort of pressure on a specifies preventing parts of the species with old traits from breeding as well as those with new ones. Since "fat slobs" can still very easily reach an age to both make babies and raise them despite their shortened life span there's no reason people would just magically change.
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It's a bit hard to say that there's no selection pressure there. Yes, the spine issues usually happen after the production of offspring is in the rear view mirror, but don't discount the fact that humans are social animals. The need to care for the elderly is something that creates a potential burden for the young, consuming resources (time, money, etc.) that otherwise could be used for offspring, potentially reducing the number of offspring in those who have elders with back issues. This could cause subtle
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Evolution typically doesnt happen unless there is some sort of pressure on a specifies preventing parts of the species with old traits from breeding as well as those with new ones.
That's not entirely the case. Evolution is a negative pressure trait, it doesn't push for change, but rather keeps undesired mutations in check. You can see this in nature where defects are quickly weeded out of the gene pool. However one situation's defect is another situation's don't-give-a-fuck. You can see that in some caves where lizards share an almost identical genetic makeup with those found elsewhere, except have no eyes. There's no evolutionary pressure to not have eyes, and based on their ancestr
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You lizard scenario was compelling so I looked into it some. Turns out eyes use a lot of energy so at some point food became scarce for these cave lizards and a rare mutant few were thus better suited for their environment and so were better at surviving to breed much as in this example with fish https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com].
As far as I've ever understood evolution doesn't happened unless there's some sort of pressure that effects an animal's ability to propagate for a variety of reasons such as being
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Crap, my citation is pay walled. Here's the quote from the article that Google gave me on my searching that supports what I'm describing.
"Damian Moran, who led the study, says vision is costly because “of energy-hungry photoreceptive cells and neurons.” As underground caves are often poor in food and oxygen, natural selection “would favor individuals with reduced visual capacity,”
Sorry about that.
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It's important to differentiate evolution driving to perfection and evolution simply weeding out something.
In situations where a clear evolutionary advantage exists the mutation becomes dominant over time. But that doesn't preclude other mutations occurring and staying if there's no evolutionary pressure to weed them out. Think of a simple trait like eye color. There's no pressure for one of the eye colours to disappear from the gene pool other than whether that gene survives reproduction with another compe
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Well, "Nature" wanted to make sure we wouldn't starve and didn't foresee the technological advancement that allowed Pizza Hut to put over 300 calories in a single slice of pizza.
Re: A normal gait is the most calorie efficient wa (Score:2)
Bro, do you even lift?
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Weightlifting is when people push stuff over their head that sane people get a forklift for.
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Re: A normal gait is the most calorie efficient wa (Score:3)
I've also found it interesting that walking speeds are so standardized. I'm sure this has been studied ad nauseum but it's neat that Earth's gravity plus your leg length essentially defines your natural walking speed.
I'm assuming the gravity part, because efficient walking would involve you letting gravity swing your legs rather than you forcing them to swing. Could be wrong about that.
Re: A normal gait is the most calorie efficient w (Score:3)
I've found that the frequency of my steps is roughly constant (legs are like pendulums after all), so the way to walk faster or slower is to take longer or shorter steps. I naturally walk pretty fast, and it's hard to get myself to just "walk slower" to match pace with slower people. But if I focus on taking shorter steps, that does it.
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That's because intelligence turned out at the endpoint to be so ridiculously overpowered that it broke the game completely.
Re: A normal gait is the most calorie efficient wa (Score:2)
Yeah weird put in more effort (goofy silly walk) burn more calories. Also get more injuries.
So... (Score:2, Offtopic)
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Actually, it says that 77 minutes per week is equivalent to 75 minutes of *vigorous* exercise per week. So in the end, silly walking is vigorous exercise.
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Re: So... (Score:2)
I think they were trying to be silly with the 75 minutes per week number. But in the Ars article they say Teabag-style silly walking is 7.5 METs of expenditure, equivalent to vigorous exercise (and 3-4x more than regular walking).
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Yeah, I noticed the extremely misleading comparison of minutes per day with minutes per week, too.
But the comparison was with "vigorous exercise", not "walking in the standard way".
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77 minutes of walking silly per week burns more energy than walking in a more standard way for 75 minutes per week...got it...
From TFS: "equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity per week"
If you consider walking a standard way to be intense physical activity, SEE A DOCTOR!
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The question is, how fast are you walking?
For some of us, walking is not just a means of exercise, its a means of transportation
therefore we walk as fast as possible. (Don't want to spend any more time outside than necessary when the windchill is -40)
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Unless you are going into a business meeting at the Ministry of Silly Walks, in which case your lack of a credible silly walk will ensure you don't get government funding. You did see the skit, did you not?
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That is 11 minutes.
You may want to change your browser font. Or there was an update
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Please ignore what I just said.
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That's not what they said. They said 77 minutes of walking silly per week burns more energy than 75 minutes of "intense physical activity" per week.
No study required (Score:2)
Just something else to file in the "we needed a study to tell us this?" department.
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Oh? You knew the outcome before the study did you? Why not try this then: Tell us what the energy expenditure in kcal/kg/min is for doing the silly walk. Without clicking on the study you claim you don't need that is.
Heck I bet you may even have read TFA and still can't answer the question. Yes we know moving more burns more energy, that's not what the study is about.
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It was a waste of time and money. No one does or will do the silly walk.
Re: No study required (Score:2)
Someone thought this was interesting enough to put in the time to do it. Someone thought it was interesting enough to pay for. The volunteers enjoyed doing it and a fair number of people enjoyed reading about it and even learned something from it.
By those measures it was "needed" or at least worthwhile. It may not comport with your sense of what is "needed", but that's how life goes sometimes. We don't all have to do what you want.
Re:No study required (Score:4, Funny)
Ministry, the UK has ministries for defense, social security, health, housing, education, silly walks and studies done on the ministry of silly walks.
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You forgot the Ministry of Sound.
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Just something else to file in the "we needed a study to tell us this?" department.
From the summary:
The BMJ's Christmas issue is typically more lighthearted, though the journal maintains that the papers published therein still "adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigor, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue." Past years have included papers on such topics as why 27 is not a dangerous age for musicians, the side effects of sword swallowing, and measuring the toxicity of the concoction brewed in Roald Dahl's 1981 book George's Marvelo
lobbyists (Score:2)
The irony isn't lost on me (Score:5, Insightful)
What I mean is that the skit was supposed to lampoon frivolous government spending - and that someone got paid to examine this.
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What I mean is that the skit was supposed to lampoon frivolous government spending - and that someone got paid to examine this.
Per TFA, specifically Arizona State University employees.
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and that someone got paid to examine this
And that's good so. We understand pathetically little about our bodies. Human movement studies provide value even if the premise was made on a joke.
I mean provide value to normal people. Slashdotters would be more interested in studies on lack of movement and how to remove cheeto dust from beards.
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Yeah this was probably done in spare time. Having spent a decade in academia its pretty clear that its *harder* to get funding for frivolous stuff than it is in private industry. And since academics do enjoy this kind of study (for the same reason I enjoy noodling around with 3D stuff) for the novelty value, its likely this was done someones sparetime off the boss's dime.
Water also found to be wet (Score:1)
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While I understand the need for research that also confirms the obvious, not sure why it's news.
For nerds. It is news for nerds.
MoSW-Pun:Even science has gotten more silly .. (Score:2)
.. recently, hence the speed of realisation of that fakt.
Only understandable to those who know MoSW in and out.
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Worse than I thought: https://www.express.co.uk/cele... [express.co.uk]
Eh, that strikes me as a newspaper trying to build a controversy.
People can be difficult to work with.
People can also be gay.
Sometimes, people can be both.
Also, remember in the 70s homosexuality would have been waaaay more controversial. It had only just been decriminalized and just 20 years before they were throwing Alan Turing in jail [wikipedia.org]. If Chapman's coming out to the rest of the cast was completely comfortable and uneventful they would have been shockingly open minded and progressive for the time.
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What's more disappointing is victimisation by association. Cleese support for JK Rowling's is far removed from support of the underlying idea you disagree with and mediated by many years of professional and personal friendship.
JK Rowling is a thundercunt for her bigoted viewpoints. ... well... can you point to him specifically sharing those viewpoints first hand? If not, there are so many more different mediating factors to "supporting" someone than sharing their same viewpoints.
Cleese is
Idiotic comparison (Score:3)
11 minutes of exercise per day is equivalent to about 75 minutes per week of exercise. Someone run the numbers on 11 minutes times 7 days, would you please?
A simpler and better comparison would be to simply state that the silky walk is roughhouse equivalent to vigorous exercise - assuming thatâ(TM)s the case and that the summary didnâ(TM)t have an error. But silliness like that disinclined me against clicking further to find out.
And the IG Nobel Prize winner is... (Score:2)
Really? Doing a weird walk and engaging more muscles burns more calories? Who would have thought?!
What I want to know is... (Score:3)
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MRI machines fit an average American so they should very easily fit 2 people from Europe, and possibly even 3 from Asia. ;-)
I'm more interested in how the guy stayed hard. You need to remain very still for MRI images to retain their sharpness. The usual sex move of "think about the cricket scores from tomorrow" would get turned on its head completely.
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I'm more interested in how the guy stayed hard. You need to remain very still for MRI images to retain their sharpness. The usual sex move of "think about the cricket scores from tomorrow" would get turned on its head completely.
The time you spend in an MRI is usually to get a series of different scans at the highest quality. By turning down the resolution and allowing more noise, they can go faster. The first machine they used in 1991 could do a poor scan in about a minute. The newer, better machines in 1996 could do good quality scans in about 15 seconds. Viagra became available there in 1998, and was used to improve the process as well. The subjects could also move in between the scans.
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The subjects could also move in between the scans.
So ... having sex in time with the world's loudest metronome?
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... how did they fit two people in the MRI machine cavity for that 1999 study?
They recruited relatively small test subjects, and removed the table from the machine to make more room.
Typo? (Score:2)
Ig Nobel (Score:2)
Rarely is research so award-focused.
I suspect lobbying campaign from (Score:2)
...chiropractors
No it doesn't! (Score:2)
Maybe I am in the wrong room.
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You want room 12A, next door. This is abuse.
Another case of (Score:2)
- I know that was clickbait for more humor but - (Score:3)
There is a serious conclusion to TFS. As infants, we work hard to learn how to walk normally. It really is a complex behavior. You have forgotten that unless you have children, but you can remember the similar difficulty of learning to ride a bicycle. I have gone beyond that to learn tai chi, which similarly is complex and difficult. After many years, I can still find myself unsure during a slow movement and I fumble a move. I like that this particular activity can never be perfected.
The ultimate outgrowth of our steady refinement of behavior is that we become more efficient. When fully mature, we have learned thousands of routines that were once a bit difficult. We brush our teeth without thinking, for example. Try that tomorrow using your other hand. Not so easy when the routine is broken, right?
A large proportion of our daily routine is -- routine! The way we answer the phone, tie our shoes, speak to our associates, prepare a meal, the route we choose to go to work, the planning and timing of a shopping trip; all very efficient. Plus, over time we accumulate products that enhance our productivity saving ourselves time and energy.
And back to TFS, we are so efficient that we expend little energy doing the things that a young person would sweat over. Our bodies deteriorate. So we join a gym or buy some equipment to compensate for our efficiency.
Silly walks and other inefficiencies could improve our health.
In other news... (Score:2)
In other news from the Department of Understanding Humans (DUH), flailing your arms madly while jumping burns more calories than standing still.
In other news (Score:2)
Thanks for the study, but (Score:2)
I'm going to file this under: "Duh".
The math checks out (Score:2)
11 minutes a day of this is equivalent to 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week? Given that 11*7=77, that doesn't appear to be a time savings, and so the only surprise is that it is comparable.
Comparing a daily thing to a weekly thing seems highly disingenuous. It makes it look like silly walks are significantly better than vigorous exercise, and not roughly equivalent. .
Brought to by... (Score:1)
This crack analysis was provided by the Ministry of Silly Studies.
Why would anyone need a study (Score:2)
to confirm this? Geez.
Unbelievable (Score:1)
I can't believe that 77minutes of silly walking per week can be as effective as 75 minutes of vigorously intense physical activity.
It is absolutely shocking.... ....and silly.....
The beleaguered masses as one replied (Score:2)
No shit, stupids.
So dancing is exercise? (Score:2)
~11 minutes per day of silly walking is equivalent to ~11 minutes per day of exercise. Can anybody watching the video not tell this is just a ridiculous form of dancing? And anybody that has danced knows it is exercise. But unlike normal dancing, silly walking does not look fun and does appears to be full of uncontrolled movements that would likely be injurious. (Though I hope the actual performance was carefully choreographed and practiced.)
If this looks even remotely fun, imagine how much better it would
Guy Steele document this over a decade ago (Score:2)
Guy Lewis Steele Jr. wrote a paper on this decades ago.
He wrote a paper for a technical writing course at MIT in which he analyzed the physics efficiency of silly walks to reveal that this was the determining characteristic of just how silly a walk is.
It was a lark of a document but it hit the mark and fulfilled the assignment requirements. Brilliant! Kudos the him.
Sadly, I can no longer find a link to the on-line document.