Incline Walking vs Running: Which Is The Better Workout?

Walking and running are both excellent workouts, each with its own benefits as well as a large overlap of shared benefits. 

In most cases, running is a better workout than walking in terms of being more demanding for the body, resulting in a higher number of calories burned per minute, greater improvements in cardiovascular fitness, and yielding more significant increases in bone density and muscular strength.

But, what about incline walking vs running?

Once you add the challenges of walking up an incline, the metabolic, cardiovascular, and muscular demands of walking increase significantly.

So, will you get a better workout walking on an incline vs running, or is running better than incline walking?

In this article, we will discuss incline walking vs running, comparing how these two different types of exercise stack up, and factors to consider when deciding whether incline walking or running is a better workout for you.

We will cover: 

• Incline Walking Vs Running: Which Is The Better Workout?

Let’s jump in!

Incline Walking Vs Running: Which Is The Better Workout?

Although every type of exercise has some unique benefits, most of us want to choose the “best“ workouts.

“Best” is really the operative word because even in the case of comparing incline walking vs running, one type of workout isn’t necessarily better for everyone than the other in any sort of definitive way.

For example, even though running may burn more calories per minute than walking on an incline, if you have arthritic knees or some other joint issue, incline walking is likely going to be better than running for you because you will be able to still get a great, high-intensity aerobic workout with less impact on your joints.

On the other hand, there are circumstances where running is obviously a better workout than incline walking, such as in the case of someone training to run a 5k.

Therefore, it’s important to keep an open mind when looking at a comparison of running vs incline walking and really think critically about how the two different types of exercise stack up and which factors are most important to you based on your own fitness goals and needs.

Incline Walking vs Running: Cardiovascular Fitness

Both running and incline walking can provide a great aerobic workout, increasing your heart rate and strengthening your heart in the process. 

Numerous studies have found that aerobic exercise reduces the risk of many lifestyle diseases, such as heart disease, obesity, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, and certain cancers. 

As long as you are increasing your heart rate into the “moderate intensity” aerobic zone, either incline walking or running can be a great way to improve your cardiovascular health and fitness.

According to the American College of Sports Medicine, to qualify as a moderate-intensity “cardio” workout, your heart rate should be in the range of 64-76% of your maximum heart rate, while vigorous-intensity cardio is associated with a heart rate of 77-95% of your max.

To meet the guidelines for physical activity for adults set forth by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the British Heart Foundation, you should aim to accumulate either 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity cardio exercise per week.

In general, running is better than incline walking for improving VO2 max (aerobic capacity), which is a measure of how efficiently your body takes in, delivers, and uses oxygen during exercise to produce energy.

Most people are able to get their heart rate higher running vs incline walking.

However, this isn’t an absolute rule. Some people find running to be prohibitively uncomfortable or fatiguing, such that you can only jog slowly or run for very short periods of time without needing to stop or throw in the towel on the workout altogether. 

If you can perform longer incline walking workouts than you can run, and you’re able to push the intensity higher walking on an incline treadmill than jogging on a level one, your aerobic fitness and cardiovascular endurance will improve more with walking on incline vs running. 

Incline Walking vs Running: Calories Burned and Weight Loss

In most cases, you will burn more calories running than incline walking, but your calorie burn in either workout will depend on the intensity and duration of your workout. 

You will likely burn more calories per minute running, but if you can do a longer and fairly intense incline walking workout, your total caloric expenditure between the two workouts may be similar.

Incline Walking vs Running: Muscle Strengthening

Although resistance training exercise is certainly more effective for building muscle, aerobic exercise can certainly help strengthen your muscles, and in fact, there’s evidence to suggest that aerobic workouts—when done right—may also help you build muscle (hypertrophy).

For example, research has found that aerobic exercise can indeed result in muscle hypertrophy (an increase in size) by triggering muscle protein synthesis. Aerobic training can also increase muscle strength, function, and efficiency.

The key to building muscle with aerobic workouts like incline walking and running is to increase the intensity of the workout. For example, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts may help trigger more muscle growth.

Both running and incline walking are technically total-body exercises, but the movements mainly target the muscles of the lower body, such as the quads, hamstrings, calves, and glutes.

When it comes to the muscle-strengthening benefits of incline walking vs running, in most cases, as long as the incline is at least moderate, incline walking trumps running. 

Incline walking is essentially a form of resistance training because walking up an incline requires contending against the force of gravity. The gradient will help target the muscles of the posterior chain, especially the glutes, hamstrings, and calves. 

The higher the incline you set, the more powerful the muscle-building stimulus and greater potential gains in strength will be.

Incline Walking vs Running: Impact and Injury

One of the primary differences between walking on incline vs running is that incline walking is a low-impact activity, whereas running is considered a high-impact exercise.

When you are walking, whether on level ground or up an incline, one foot is in contact with the ground at all times, meaning that there is no “flight“ phase in which you are completely off the ground. As such, you are never landing on your feet from an airborne position.

In contrast, running is a high-impact activity because you do land on your foot at ground contact from an airborne position, which increases the magnitude of the impact stresses because the acceleration due to gravity is added to your body weight.

High-impact exercise, such as running, is often thought to have its negative side because the greater the impact, the higher the stress on your bones, joints, tendons, ligaments, and muscles. This can increase the relative risk of injury compared to performing a low-impact exercise, such as walking.

However, there are also benefits of performing high-impact exercise, mainly in its ability to help increase bone density. Bone responds to the stresses placed upon it, so adaptations occur with consistent running training that increases the mineralization of your bones. This can reduce the risk of osteoporosis and subsequent fractures.

Incline walking is a weight-bearing exercise, so it does have the ability to help increase bone density. Plus, because it can strengthen the muscles in your lower body, and stronger muscles pull more forcefully on the bones (which, in turn, increases bone density), incline walking can increase bone density. 

However, in most cases, running will be a better form of exercise for improving bone density.

Therefore, if your goal is to build stronger bones, running is better than incline walking.

On the other hand, if you have arthritis or joint pain, the high-impact nature of running can exacerbate your condition. Incline walking will reduce stress on your bones and joints and can be more comfortable and safe.

Studies have found that incline walking can actually improve the health of your knees, helping to reduce knee pain, improve cartilage health, and decrease the risk of osteoarthritis of the knees.

If you already have osteoporosis or low bone density, incline walking can also be a better choice because it puts you at less risk of stress fractures. This is because the impact will be less while still affording your body the ability to strengthen your bones.

Overall, incline walking and running both require very little equipment, so the barrier of entry is low, and both forms of exercise are accessible to most people. You can get a good aerobic workout walking on an incline or running, and both forms of exercise burn calories and can strengthen the muscles in your lower body.

Picking the best workout will depend on your own fitness goals, preferences, and needs.

For more benefits of incline walking and running, check out our guides:

26 Awesome Benefits of Running

8 Benefits of Incline Walking + Helpful Tips To Get Started