We’ve all found ourselves in fits of laughter at some point as John Cleese kicked his legs around during a Monty Python sketch.
Now researchers are urging people to join the Ministry of Silly Walks – as it could help adults meet their physical activity goals.
Over the past 20 years, the global inactivity rate has not changed, despite widespread campaigns to increase fitness and encourage people to exercise more.
But the outrageous — and inefficient — running styles of Mr. Teabag and Mr. Putey, played by John Cleese and Michael Palin in the 1971 Monty Python sketch, could be the solution, according to scientists.
Study participants were asked to recreate the walks of Mr. Teabag (left) and Mr. Putey, which they saw in the “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” video clip. Teabag’s running style consists of moving forward with slightly bent legs, punctuated with high kicks, backward jumps, and other erratic leg jerks
Relationship between energy expenditure (kcal/min) and body mass (kg) for participants’ usual walking, putey walk and teabag walk
A team led by researchers from Arizona State University set out to compare the energy expenditure of different walking styles.
They recruited 13 healthy adults between the ages of 22 and 71 with no history of heart or lung disease and no known gait disorders.
Height and body weight were measured, and each participant was shown a video of the sketch of the Ministry of Silly Walk before performing three walk attempts of five minutes each on a 30-meter indoor course.
In the first attempt, the participants walked in their usual style at a freely chosen pace.
For the next two trials, participants were asked to recreate the walks of Mr. Teabag and Mr. Putey to the best of their ability.
The Putey Walk (pictured) consists of lifting the left knee at a 90-degree angle with every alternate step. This does not require significantly more energy than normal walking
Monty Python’s silly walk is “exactly 6.7 times” sillier than a normal human walk
Monty Python’s famous “Silly Walk” by John Cleese is “exactly 6.7 times” sillier than a normal walk and that’s because of the way he bends his knees, a study found.
The gait has been studied by biologists at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who study the origin and evolution of bipedal walking.
The team, led by Nathaniel Dominy, said this is a good example of the extreme variation in walking styles possible in bipedal species.
They found that the silliness came from the knee flexion — specifically, the angle that’s bent 110 degrees compared to the normal 20 degrees.
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Teabag’s running style consists of moving forward with slightly bent legs, punctuated with high kicks, backward jumps, and other erratic leg jerks.
The Putey walk, on the other hand, consists of elevating the left knee at a 90-degree angle with every alternate step.
The researchers found that just walking with tea bags resulted in significantly higher energy expenditure – about 2.5 times that of normal walking.
The tea bag walk also elicited enough oxygen uptake to qualify as vigorous-intensity exercise.
The researchers estimate that adults could achieve the recommended 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week by walking tea-bag style for about 11 minutes a day — rather than as usual.
And replacing usual-style steps with tea-bag-style steps for about 12 to 19 minutes a day would increase daily energy expenditure by about 100 calories.
This amount of tea-bag-style walking would likely increase cardiorespiratory fitness, reduce mortality risk and require no additional time investment because it replaces the exercise adults are already doing with higher-energy physical activity, they add.
They wrote in the BMJ: “We are taking our cues from the hitherto unrecognized scientific genius of Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks.
“We’re not aware of a single study that has quantified the energy cost of walking like Teabag or Putey has done since the skit first aired.”
Oxygen uptake (left) and energy expenditure (right) during normal walking and inefficient walking of male and female participants. Black lines are responses for individual participants. The purple line is the average
They said they did not measure “minutes laughed or number of smiles” as part of their study, but noted, “Outbursts of laughter among participants were frequently noted by the supervising investigator, almost always when participants participated in the tea bag walk.”
“Half a century ago, the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch may have inadvertently touched on a powerful way to improve cardiovascular fitness in adults.
“Had the health professions taken the Ministry of silly walks to heart in the 1970s, hearts everywhere could be healthier.”
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Maybe we don’t always see the bright side of life: scientists question the theory that optimism is rooted in human nature
Monty Python advised us to “always look on the bright side of life,” but it seems optimism isn’t as ingrained in human nature as was once thought, a new study claims.
Researchers have found that people neither tend to be optimistic nor walk around with “rose-colored glasses” – a belief that may have skewed the results of previous studies.
The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Bath, University College London and Birkbeck, University of London.
Experts question previous research showing the existence of “irrational optimism” — that people naturally feel that everything will be fine.
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