Does Walking Build Muscle? Trainers Weigh In

Reported by Women's Health Magazine.

Walking has earned its cultural rehabilitation. After years of fitness culture worshipping at the altar of HIIT and bootcamp-style punishment, low-impact movement is finally getting its due — and the science backs the shift. A 2023 study in GeroScience found that regular walking increases aerobic fitness, decreases body fat, and lowers blood pressure in sedentary adults. Notably, the same research flagged that people in Blue Zones — the global longevity hotspots — consistently favor low-impact daily movement. So yes, your daily walk counts. But does it actually build muscle? The answer is more nuanced than your favorite wellness influencer will admit.

The short version: probably not, according to Women's Health Magazine. Grace Horan, a certified exercise physiologist at the Hospital for Special Surgery, is direct about it — building muscle requires progressive overload, meaning your body needs to be continuously challenged with increasing resistance or volume. Walking simply doesn't deliver enough external stress to trigger muscle hypertrophy. The deeper issue is biological: walking activates slow-twitch muscle fibers, which develop endurance and fatigue resistance, while muscle mass is built through fast-twitch fibers — the ones recruited by lifting, sprinting, and jumping. There is a meaningful exception: older adults and highly sedentary people may see modest muscle gains from walking, per 2024 research in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. But even then, resistance training remains the gold standard.

That said, walking does engage a solid roster of muscle groups. Horan identifies the quads, hamstrings, glutes, and calves as the primary movers — working in concert to propel you forward and stabilize your pelvis with every stride. Your core and lower back serve as secondary support, keeping your posture intact. It's real muscular engagement. It's just not the kind that reshapes your body composition on its own.

How to Make Your Walks Actually Work Harder

Certified personal trainer Lindsey Bomgren, CPT of Nourish Move Love puts it plainly: adding incline or a weighted vest recruits more muscle, but you still need external resistance to meaningfully build strength. Practically, that means: hit inclines (the 12-3-30 treadmill format is a proven starting point), try rucking with a weighted vest or poles for Nordic walking, and consider pausing every five to ten minutes to sneak in squats or lunges — what researchers now call "exercise snacks," which a 2024 Sports Medicine and Health Science study linked to muscle benefits in sedentary populations. Certified trainer Erica Coviello, CPT also recommends switching up terrain — sand, trails, unpaved paths — to challenge stabilizing muscles in the ankles and legs that flat pavement never touches. Horan's baseline recommendation: 30 minutes at moderate intensity, five days a week, paired with at least two days of dedicated strength training.

Walking is not a shortcut to muscle, but treated as one piece of a complete routine — not a replacement for the weight room — it becomes genuinely powerful.

Read the original at Women's Health Magazine.