At 8:42 a.m., you can see them right away on the sidewalk. They weave around strollers and tourists as if the sidewalk were a level in a video game that they have to clear. Their heads are tilted slightly forward, their earbuds in, and their bags are bumping their hips. Their legs move quickly, almost too quickly for the street to handle. If someone behind them caught up to them, it would be terrible. You feel like it’s less about getting somewhere and more about getting away from something you can’t see.
You might have called them “fit” or “disciplined” at some point.
But what if they’re just too scared to take it easy?
Why people who walk quickly look healthy but feel like they’re being chased
In the morning, you can hear the same rhythm in any city. Some people walk slowly with their phones and coffee cups, while others walk quickly, swinging their arms and hitting the ground like a metronome on double speed. They seem like the type of people who use their blenders and colour-code their calendars.
We admire them without saying anything.
But if you look closely at their faces, you’ll see something else: their jaws are always tense, their shoulders are halfway to their ears, and their eyes are already three blocks ahead.
At first, I noticed it with Lena, a coworker who everyone said was “so sporty” because she walked everywhere so quickly. She said she couldn’t walk slowly unless she was sick. She would pace during phone calls at lunch, bounce her leg during meetings and pull you into her rhythm on the way to the tube without meaning to.
She told me one day that her heart races and her mind goes through the worst possible things that could happen that day when she wakes up. She told me to “slow down” once at a crosswalk. “I begin to think.” And that’s not safe.
She wasn’t getting ready to run a marathon. She was moving faster than her own thoughts.
Some studies have found that people who walk faster tend to live longer, and that headline stuck. Do you walk quickly? It has to be better for you, right? But those studies don’t usually look at physical ability and mental noise separately. A person can have strong legs and a nervous system that is in a state of panic at the same time.
You might look fit on the outside, but you might be alert all the time on the inside. People who are restless can act out by walking quickly. You are not “anxious”; you are “productive.” You aren’t “unstable”; you are “driven.”
The body doesn’t care that we’re changing our names. It just knows it can never let air out.
How to tell if your shoes are causing you stress when you walk fast
This is a simple trick you can use the next time you walk alone: slow down by half for a full minute. Don’t change your route; just change your speed. Watch what happens in your stomach, chest, and jaw. If your brain starts yelling, “Come on, move,” that’s not your quads complaining. That’s your nervous system, which is twitchy because it’s always on.
You could also try going for a walk without your usual “armoured” gear, like your phone, a podcast, or a list of things to do. You, your steps, and your breathing. That looks so empty.
Many people who walk quickly say the same thing. They walk quickly to work, run up the stairs, switch between apps every few seconds, drink coffee, and answer messages while they cross the street. During the day, they hardly ever sit still. Then, when they get home, they power-walk like it’s a race. They crash at night, scroll again, and then wonder why they wake up tired.
One woman I spoke with timed how long it took her to get to the store in ten minutes. She was happy when she got it to seven minutes. Later, she remembered that she had never looked up at the sky in the three years she had lived there.
Her speed had made the world nothing but problems and times.
There is often a shaky core under all this rush. People who had strict parents, schedules that were hard to keep, or homes that were always changing learned early on that “moving fast” means “staying safe.” The nervous system remembers that speed as the beginning. Things feel dangerous when they move slowly.
So, as adults, they don’t stay too long, walk around, or sit in silence. They book too many things, walk a lot, make noise to fill the silence, and don’t notice stress until it gives them migraines or keeps them up at night. When you walk fast, for example, this leak of anxiety shows up in a lot of different ways.
It’s not a health issue. It has a nervous system that is always hot.
Re-learning your pace without feeling tired or weak
“Arrival breaths” are a small, almost silly thing that can change how you feel about walking. When you go through a door or step off a curb, take one slow breath in and one slow breath out. Don’t change anything else. You can keep going quickly and still get there. Let your body know that it’s okay to take short breaks.
After a week, add thirty seconds of slower walking to the beginning or end of one of your daily routes. Not even ten minutes. For just thirty seconds, let your arms swing more freely and relax your shoulders. Your body doesn’t need to change its personality overnight; it needs to try new things that are a little awkward.
The trap is turning this into another show. People who walk quickly often set “walk slower” as a goal for self-improvement. When they go back to walking quickly on a stressful day, they feel bad about it. Let’s be honest: no one really does this every day.
When you catch yourself power-walking again, don’t think of it as a failure. Pay attention to what made it happen. Was it an email? A talk? A thought? That interest is more important than the speed itself. Guilt only makes the stress you already have worse.
You don’t want to be a slow-moving monk. You just want to show your nervous system that you can get around without always being on edge.
Letting an old lady with a shopping cart pass them is sometimes the bravest thing a fast walker can do, even though it hurts their pride.
Stop at red lights instead of moving slowly like a racehorse at the gate.
Walk a route you know well once a week without headphones and write down five things you see.
“Soft focus” means that you shouldn’t just look at the next three steps. You should also look at the horizon.
Tell a close friend, “Please remind me to breathe if I’m speed-walking while we talk.”
Don’t run home at the last minute.
Maybe the real strength is not running away when you walk.
It makes sense that people who walk quickly are healthier because we like to be busy. We give prizes to people who are “busy,” we clap for people who are “productive,” and we silently rank people based on how many things they are juggling. A short walk makes it look like you are in charge of your life, not just barely getting by.
But with that fast pace, there might be a nervous system that has never learned to relax without feeling bad or be quiet without being scared. A childhood full of surprises, a job that is always in crisis mode, and a life that is mostly lived in the future.
When you slow down your walk, it’s not just about your health. It’s a quiet way to say no to the idea that your worth is based on how fast you can run. You have to cross every street as if someone is watching you. You can only feel that calm after you’ve “earned” it by doing a lot of things, days, and years.
You don’t have to be the kind of person who walks around the city like a tourist. You can take these few breaths and relax your jaw for a few meters. The world won’t end if you get there two minutes late.
You might even feel like you really made it.
Important point: What the reader gets from it
- Walking fast can help you hide your anxiety.
- Stress, not fitness, is what often makes you fast.
- It helps you think of “being productive” as a possible source of stress.
- Simple pace checks tell you how you’re doing.
- Taking a break from moving quickly shows that you are secretly restless.
- It gives you a quick way to check your body.
- The nervous system can relax with small changes.
- Taking short, regular breaks can help you form new, safer habits.
- It gives you useful tools without making you feel stressed.
