Christopher Bergland
The Athlete's Way
Bored With Your Workout Regimen? Take a Playful 'Silly Walk'
Mimicking Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks" routine is vigorous exercise.
Posted December 27, 2022
Reviewed by Vanessa Lancaster
KEY POINTS
In the early 1970s, Monty Python's comedy troupe performed a "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch with John Cleese playing Mr. Teabag.
Mr. Teabag's "silly walk" is characterized by spontaneous high kicks, random deep knee bends, quick hops, gallops, and other quirky moves.
Silly "Teabag style" walking is vigorous exercise. Just 11 minutes per day of silly walking is enough to fulfill weekly exercise recommendations.
Every December, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) editors put together a light-hearted Chrismas issue that contains playful evidence-based scientific studies that are rigorously researched and peer-reviewed—but also meant to be fun.
Source: Aline Dassel/Pixabay
Illustrated mural of a Monty Python comedy troupe member, John Cleese, performing Mr. Teabag's "silly walk."Source: Aline Dassel/Pixabay
This year, BMJ's Christmas issue features a comedy-inspired study (Gaesser et al., 2022) on how walking in a highly inefficient style—à la Monty Python's Mr. Teabag from the "Ministry of Silly Walks" TV skit—turns people into calorie-burning machines.
The researchers found that just 11 minutes per day (77 mins/week) of silly walking—which involves randomly throwing one leg up in the air, followed by spontaneous deep knee bends or little bunny hops—fulfills the cardio portion of someone's weekly exercise needs based on the most recent physical activity guidelines (Piercy et al., 2018).
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Current physical activity guidelines recommend performing at least 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise or 150 minutes of moderate-intensity cardio per week, plus lifting weights or doing other strength-building activities at least twice a week.
Walking Like Monty Python's "Mr. Teabag" Is Vigorous Exercise
Source: Gaesser et al. 2022/BMJ Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Participant during the Teabag style walking trial while wearing the portable metabolic measurement system.Source: Gaesser et al. 2022/BMJ Creative Commons (CC BY-NC 4.0)
For this laboratory-based experimental study of silly walking, first author Glenn Gaesser of Arizona State University and colleagues at Kansas State University and the University of Virginia recruited over a dozen healthy adults without any gait issues. In the lab, Gaesser et al. measured participants' energy expenditure using a mobile calorimetry device as each person did their best to mimic Mr. Teabag's silly walking style.
"Our analysis of the energy consumed during different styles of walking seeks to empower people to move their bodies in more energetic—and hopefully joyful—ways," the authors explain in a December 2022 news release.
This video shows study participants in the lab during the "silly walk" experiment wearing red and white Santa hats as a reminder of the BMJ Christmas issue's commitment to playfulness.
Before exercise physiology testing began in the lab, participants watched a Monty Python video of John Cleese performing his absurdly inefficient Mr. Teabag walking style during a "Ministry of Silly Walks" comedy sketch. Then, each participant was instructed to mimic this silly walking style while the researchers scientifically measured calorie usage, oxygen uptake, and METs.
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