World Cup stars prove slowing down can yield better results

Pacing yourself is the new black in fitness — just ask World Cup top scorers Erling Haaland and Lionel Messi

For Erling Haaland, slow walking and recovery jogs, rather than fast sprinting, often preceded a goal.

Anyone who witnessed Norway’s top scorer Erling Haaland play his World Cup matches may have clocked how it wasn’t always top speed sprinting that led to him scoring, but slow walking and recovery jogs that preceded a goal.

Argentina’s Lionel Messi is another impressive example of the power of taking it slow on the pitch. According to Fifa, the striker has so far spent 63% of his World Cup walking.

Most of us live by the mantra that we need to go harder and faster to get fitter at the gym. Progress is judged on sweat levels, improved metrics on a fitness tracker, and the number of reps we manage to clock up in an hour. But what’s the hurry? Scientists are encouraging us to take a leaf out of Haaland and Messi’s books and perform at least some weekly exercise at a snail’s pace.

Argentina's Lionel Messi has spent 63% of his World Cup walking. Picture: Tony Gutierrez

Ken Nosaka, professor of exercise and sports science at Edith Cowan University in Australia, is one of a growing number of academics on a mission to get us to slow down. He says that when it comes to resistance training, slowing down is better for us.

“There is a misconception that all exercise must be exhausting or painful and that slower exercise is not good for us,” Nosaka says. “It is holding people back as they think it [exercise] is pointless unless you are going full throttle.”

He has amassed plenty of evidence to prove that slow exercise works. When it comes to resistance training, for example, he says that a focus on lowering weights slowly, rather than lifting them with ferocious speed, enables people to work for longer.

“Muscles don’t fatigue as quickly when you focus on prolonging the lowering part of a weights exercise,” he explains. “This means that ultimately you can perform more repetitions than if you put all of your efforts into the lifting phase.”

Doing plenty of aerobic exercise — swimming, cycling and running— at a slower pace is also important for building a strong cardiovascular system. Niall Moyna, professor in the School of Health & Human Performance at Dublin City University, says that low-intensity cardio exercise is one of the best approaches to improving your health.

“You do not need to be going flat out all the time,” he says. “Try to make at least some of your weekly exercise at a moderate pace that raises your breathing rate but not so much that you cannot hold a conversation, and over time, your fitness will improve.”

Here’s the low — or slow — down:

How slow should you go?

Measuring your heart rate with a fitness tracker can be a useful guide — lower intensity exercise is at 50-70% of your maximum heart rate — but it is prone to inconsistencies. What you have eaten or drunk beforehand can affect heart rate, as can a lack of sleep. Elite athletes will measure heart rate in combination with blood lactate measurements. For most of us, self-measurements such as judging whether we could hold a conversation are enough to gauge whether we are speeding up too much.

Lower weights to a count of five for stronger muscles

Slower weight training extends the amount of time our muscles are held under tension. When Nosaka looked at the effects of a dumbbell biceps curl in which the weight was lifted and lowered in different ways, he found that slowing down brought improvements. One group lowered the weight slowly for a count of five (which equates to three seconds) from the shoulder, another group lifted the weight upwards at the same pace, and a third held the weight in place with the elbow at right angles for the same duration.

The findings, published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports, showed that all participants had stronger biceps after four weeks, but those lowering the weight slowly had the biggest gains.

Their upper arm muscles were an average 11.5% stronger compared to a 6-7% improvement among other participants.

“If you lower a weight slower than a count of five, or three seconds, that is too slow for benefits,” says Nosaka. “You need to slow down that phase, but not by too much.”

Squat in slow motion to build leg strength

The downward motion of a squat is the most important phase for building leg strength, Nosaka says. You can start by sitting down in slow motion. Stand in front of a chair or sofa, and lower your body to a seated position to a count of five, taking longer than normal to sit down. Try this on one leg as you get stronger. Perform 10 repetitions on each leg.

“As you sit slowly, you are resisting the force of gravity,” Nosaka says. “It gets harder as you get nearer to the chair, as your leg muscles are having to work hard.”

Once your bottom hits the chair, you can power back up to the start position and repeat 10 times. “Several sets of 10 repetitions are the best approach to add volume,” he says.

Descend stairs slowly to improve your blood pressure

Powering up a flight of stairs will certainly get your cardiovascular system pumping and will engage the large muscles in your legs and buttocks. But slowing down on the descent is just as beneficial for different reasons.

Nosaka and his team asked a group of overweight women to take part in a study that involved them walking up or down six flights of stairs twice a week for 12 weeks. “They were instructed to go down each stair slowly, at a rate of no faster than one step per second,” Nosaka says. Results showed that walking downstairs led to the greatest improvements in measures of health and functional movement, including improved balance.

Swim slowly to beat stress

Swimming is renowned for being among the best whole-body workouts, but you don’t have to hammer out lengths of a pool to reap all of the benefits. Last year, a study, showed that gentle outdoor swimming in cold water induces what researcher Tatsiana Padhaiskaya of Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, describes as “a temporal slow-down effect” that reduces stress and boosts mental clarity, effects that linger long after people get out of the water.

Participants in the study were found to use techniques such as controlled breathing and slow movements in the water, “to handle the extreme nature of the experience”, Padhaiskaya says.

Also, regular cold-water swimmers said they were able to re-create the same feelings of calm and focus in everyday stressful situations. “Even a very short dip — from as little as a couple of minutes — reportedly offered participants comparable mental health benefits to, say, two hours walking in the forest,” Padhaiskaya says.

Do plenty of slower running

Slow jogging is trending on social media and has a huge following in Japan. Even top runners and cyclists do 85-90% of their training in zone 1 or 2, the lower intensities.

For beginners, slower running might also protect against injuries. But what are the benefits? Experts say that if you keep pushing hard all the time, overuse injuries, fatigue, and a lack of motivation become inevitable.

“It’s psychologically beneficial to go slowly when you start running as it means you complete a workout without too much stress or discomfort,” says sports psychologist Dearbhla McCullough. “That means you are not only more inclined to carry on, but you gain confidence and are more likely to progress than to quit.”

Do super-slow heel drops for strong bones and better walking

“Slow heel drops are an excellent way to improve calf muscle function,” Nosaka says. “And strong calf muscles are essential for posture and walking.”

Stand with your heels off the edge of a step or platform, holding on to a wall or bannister for support. Lower your heels below the level of the step for a count of five. “Aim to drop them as low as is comfortable,” he says. Push back to the start position and repeat.

Choose slow-paced routine to reduce stress and tension

A recent study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology showed that a super-slow ancient Chinese exercise routine called baduanjin can be as effective as a brisk daily walk — and almost as good as medication — for lowering blood pressure. Similar to Tai Chi, baduanjin requires no equipment and involves a series of slow, structured movements that take 10-15 minutes to complete.