DENVER — Brisk walking appears to place significant stress on knee joints, especially in obese individuals, and that may contribute to musculoskeletal injuries, Ray Browning, Ph.D., reported at the annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine.
Walking at 1.5 m/sec (3.4 mph), obese people have about 50% more torque at the knee joint than normal-weight individuals. That increased torque disappears when obese people walk at 1 m/sec (2.2 mph).
Dr. Browning, a physiology researcher at the University of Colorado, Boulder, cited data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that about one in four obese patients suffer a musculoskeletal injury when they first start walking for exercise, and that 25% of those injured patients never return to exercise. Prescribing slower walking speeds to obese patients may, in part, alleviate this problem.
The study involved 10 obese patients with a mean BMI of 35.5 kg/m