I’ve always wondered, if walking involves more movement and presumably more energy, why does standing in one place feel more exhausting than walking for the same amount of time? How does our body differentiate between the two, and what’s happening in our muscles and circulatory system that makes standing still feel so much more tiring?
In: Biology
Because our muscles are constantly contracting when we’re standing, it becomes painful after a while. When walking, your legs have periods of contraction and relaxation.
When you’re standing it might sort of seem like you’re motionless and so your legs aren’t really doing anything, but your body is not naturally that well balanced and your upper body is typically moving around and constantly shifting your center of balance. Even a slight breeze can shift your body weight enough that your legs need to do work to compensate. So your legs and the muscles in them are having to constantly make tiny adjustments what they’re doing in order to maintain that balance.
Our brains are generally really good at doing this work, so we don’t have to consciously think about it, so you often don’t even notice it happening. But it’s still occurring, and it means the muscles in your legs are constantly working, even if you’re just standing in place.
When you’re walking, that movement is typically “forceful” enough to counter-act a lot of those smaller body shifts, so the ways your muscles move is much more predictable and your body has to waste less energy reacting to external forces.
Kind of like how balancing on a bike is much easier when the bike is moving forwards, compared to trying to balance on a bike that’s sitting in place.
Because standing uses the same muscles constantly in the same way. Walking uses a lot of different muscles in a bunch of different ways, with each muscle spending more time resting than activated.
That means each muscle gets tired less quickly.
To some degree walking is controlled falling and for small moments of taking a step different muscles get to take a break. When you stand still, many smaller stabilizing muscles have to remain engaged and become fatigued.
Your muscles get tired because of a build up of waste material.
Standing still contracts the muscles which lowers blood flow and causes build of up waste in your muscles which can make them sore/tired.
Moving will cause the blood to pump and clear waste and prevent soreness.
When you walk, each leg is getting to relax half the time, when your weight is on the other leg. When you’re standing, your weight is on your legs the entire time. It’s like holding a heavy box for an hour or getting to put it down for thirty mins, which would make you more tired?
After back surgery, I asked my physical therapist what the best position for my back was and she said the next one.
Our legs are so efficient at walking/running that the simple act of doing so pumps blood through the legs to make them feel fresh longer.
Thinking about it evolutionarily, ancient humans had to do a lot of walking to hunt for food. So it makes sense human bodies would be good at walking, whereas there is not much selection pressure to be able to stand in one place for long periods
Similar to the reason that taking deep breaths and holding them isn’t hard, but holding a single breath is. When your legs pump you’re moving blood around and using all of the structure of your leg equally. When you stand still you’re locked on certain muscles and they never get a chance to “take a breath”.
Here’s an interesting note for people: If you ride a bicycle the seat should be high enough so that your leg extends almost completely straight when you pedal the bike. If the seat is too low your legs will only bend a little bit, which tires out your leg muscles much faster. Same concept, your legs aren’t “taking a full breath” so to speak.
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