IN THE NEWS (from Paris!): Arm Swinging While Walking

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Out on a limb: Arm-swinging riddle is answered
Tue Jul 28, 7:49 pm ET

PARIS (AFP) – Biomedical researchers on Wednesday said they could explain why we swing our arms when we walk, a practice that has long piqued scientific curiosity. Swinging one's arms comes at a cost. We need muscles to do it, and we need to provide energy in the form of food for those muscles. So what's the advantage? Little or none, some experts have said, contending that arm-swinging, like our appendix, is an evolutionary relic from when we used to go about on all fours. But a trio of specialists from the United States and the Netherlands have put the question to rigorous tests. They built a mechanical model to get an idea of the dynamics of arm-swinging and then recruited 10 volunteers, who were asked to walk with a normal swing, an opposite-to-normal swing, with their arms folded or held by their sides. The metabolic cost of this activity was derived from oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) production as the human guinea pigs breathed in and out. Arm-swinging turned out to be a plus, rather than a negative, the investigators found. For one thing, it is surprisingly, er, "'armless" in energy costs, requiring little torque, or rotational twist, from the shoulder muscles. Holding one's arms as one walks requires 12 percent more metabolic energy, compared with swinging them. The arms' pendulum swing also helps dampen the bobbly up-and-down motion of walking, which is itself an energy drain for the muscles of the lower legs. If you hold your arms while walking, this movement, called vertical ground reaction moment, rises by a whopping 63 percent. Should you prefer to walk with an opposite-to-normal swing -- meaning that your right arm moves in sync with your right leg and your left arm is matched to the motion of your left leg -- the energy cost of using your shoulder muscles will fall.

The downside, though, is that opposite-to-normal swing forces up the metabolic rate by a quarter. The study, headed by Steven Collins at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, says we should give the thumb's-up to arm swinging. "Rather than a facultative relic of the locomotion needs of our quadrupedal ancestors, arm swinging is an integral part of the energy economy of human gait," says the paper.

It appears in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the biological research journal of the Royal Society, Britain's de-facto academy of sciences.
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Thought some might find this interesting. For those of you who "forget" to move your arms when you walk, does this give any insight to human locomotion?

Wow, I got all excited when I saw this thread, because I was hoping that it would explain why my son swings his arms ALOT when he walks!

Oh well . . . .

A call to arms topic

I started swinging as a kid because I thought a person was supposed to, like a rule. Now it is a habit.

My NT son does not swing his arms when he walks. When I asked him why, he said he thought it looks silly.

I've never swung my arms when I walked. It feels extremely awkward to me to do so. Its probably why I never took up jogging. The thought of my arms swinging like that feels pretty stupid.

On my good "NT" days, which are more often than "asperger days" (as I've gotten older), I swing my arms. But when I was younger, and nowadays when I'm having a bad day, I have an awkward gait. My brothers used to tell me to walk "properly" because I was embarassing them in public. That really made me mad inside. I was walking the way I walked. You might as well have told me to change my voice (people did make fun of me for that but at least they didn't tell me to change it).

I thought that one's arms swing because of the laws of inertia.

swinging your arms is a natural motion from walking but it is also good for your pulmonary system. try running with your hands in your pocket sometime. your heart has to work harder without the help from your swinging arms.


fun things you learn in the army.


that and the part about your colon being very absorbent.

who needs to know these things?!?

Now I'm going to have to go for a walk to see whether I swing my arms or not!

I've just walked up and down the hall, and yes I do swing my arms, but only slightly. Kind of a pendulum effect, I suppose.

What about Irish dancers then? They keep their arms straight at their sides when their dancing, don't they?

^ That is very difficult for them to do. It's considered a skill, I think.



Re: the article - I wonder why so many autistics do not swing their arms, then.
I do.

Interesting, I never thought of this.

Walking down the street my normal stance is with my hands in my pockets and I feel weird swinging my arms.

Walking on the running machine I have to swing my arms or I lose my balance.

Vanilla_Slice

That'll stop me bouncing!

Weird. I don't swing my arms. I hold them up in the air or out in front of me most of the time.

I only tend to swing my left arm. I used to get in trouble in the air cadets because when I conciously tried to swing both arms I would end up moving the arm and leg at the same time, having a kind of tick-tock/robot effect.

I've always swung my arms while walking. I never understood how someone could not swing their arms, it's uncomfortable and makes me feel like I'm off balance. Not trying to be an ass, it's always been natural to me.