TikTok is generally a terrible place to find advice of any kind, including health advice. Which is why when I saw headlines announcing that something called “Japanese walking” was trending on TikTok, I pretty much ignored them.

But even TikTok influencers’ dubious hacks and sometimes outright dangerous suggestions can be right once in a while. According to actual exercise scientists, the viral trend of Japanese walking, a trendy term for intentionally varying your speed and sometimes picking up your pace, actually combines two science-backed hacks entrepreneurs can use to squeeze more health benefits out of their daily walks. The healthiest way to walk, according to science

If there is one thing I know about entrepreneurs after writing about them for 15 years, it’s that they’re almost all super busy. Which means I am always on the lookout for research-backed advice on how to exercise and generally stay healthy more effectively and efficiently. Over the course of the last year, I stumbled across two studies that both suggested small tweaks to your daily walk can significantly boost its health benefits.

First, a study published in the reputable UK biological sciences journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed that simply varying the speed at which you walk nudges your heart to work a little harder as you accelerate. Stopping and starting as you stroll leads to meaningfully larger impacts on fitness.

“When we walk for shorter bouts, we use more energy and consume more oxygen to cover the same distance,” Francesco Luciano, a researcher at the University of Milan and first author on the study, told the Guardian. “It’s like having a car that consumes more fuel during the first few kilometres than it does afterwards.”

The second study analyzed the walking habits of 450,000 Brits and came to a less than shocking conclusion — walking faster is healthier than walking slower. The more surprising finding was just how much upping the pace even a little mattered.

“A lifetime of brisk walking reduces biological age by up to 16 years compared with a lifetime of slow walking,” commented Thomas Yates, a professor who studies lifestyle and chronic disease at the University of Leicester. “An inactive 60-year woman or man was modeled to gain around an additional year of life expectancy through simply introducing a 10-minute brisk walk into their daily routine.” A catchy name for this approach? Japanese walking

To recap, varying your pace makes your walk more effective for boosting health and fitness. And so does increasing the speed you walk. (Though not to extreme speeds — the researchers are talking about a brisk but doable pace of three to four miles an hour.) Thanks to viral social media, there’s another name for combining these two insights — Japanese walking.

“Developed by Professor Hiroshi Nose and Associate Professor Shizue Masuki at Shinshu University in Matsumoto, Japan,” explains University of Hull exercise physiologist Sean Pymer on ScienceAlert. “It involves alternating between three minutes of walking at a higher intensity and three minutes at a lower intensity, repeated for at least 30 minutes, four times per week,”

Pymer insists the program isn’t just backed by influencers in gym clothes, but real research. “Participants who followed the Japanese walking approach experienced notable reductions in body weight. Blood pressure also dropped — more so than in those following the lower-intensity continuous walking routine,” he writes.

Leg strength also improved more for those who followed the Japanese walking program. While another study suggested this approach to walking might help keep people strong as they age. Time to switch?

It’s not something I write often, but TikTok actually seems to be on to something with this one. If you’re an entrepreneur with limited time for fitness, Japanese walking might just help you squeeze more benefits from the same number of minutes spent walking each day.

All you have to do to realize them is alternate between a more sedate speed for a few minutes with bouts where you pick up the pace. It seems like a small change, but real science suggests it will make your daily walk even better for your overall health.