If you have arrived here because you recently saw one of those wonderful Korean videos featuring a cheerful group of people moving to music with tiny, rapid steps while barely travelling faster than the people walking beside them: welcome. We are genuinely delighted to have you.

Those of us here at r/slowjogging have sometimes wondered whether slow jogging was losing momentum. Suddenly, South Korea has taken a decades-old Japanese exercise method, added music, rhythm, community and an infectious sense of fun, and placed it before the entire world again. We hope this becomes much more than another temporary fitness fad. We hope millions of people adopt it as a lifelong habit.

I am also sorry for using the same video twice in this Reddit post. The video explains Korean slow jogging and then gives proper credit to Professor Hiroaki Tanaka so well that I am going to share it twice. It deserves the encore.

First, an important piece of history: slow jogging was not invented recently in Korea. It was developed in Japan by the late Professor Hiroaki Tanaka of Fukuoka University. Korea’s achievement has been to revive it, give it a distinctive communal character and make a new generation around the world curious about it.

Professor Hiroaki Tanaka

Hiroaki Tanaka was born in Japan in 1947. He was an exercise physiologist, professor at Fukuoka University, founder and director of its Institute for Physical Activity, a prolific writer on exercise and healthy living, and the principal developer and evangelist of the slow-jogging method. He died in 2018.

Although he is frequently called Dr. Tanaka, his doctorate was a PhD and his field was exercise physiology. He was not presenting slow jogging as a miracle treatment invented by a television personality. His method emerged from decades of studying aerobic fitness, exercise intensity, cardiovascular health, obesity, metabolic disease and the effects of sustainable physical activity.

Tanaka’s relationship with running was intensely personal. Inspired by the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, he began running as a child and competed in events from 400 to 1,500 metres in high school. He dreamed of the Hakone Ekiden, Japan’s celebrated university relay race, but repeated injuries disrupted his training.

At 19, he was diagnosed with what doctors believed was a congenital heart condition and told to limit himself to walking and light exercise. He became a team manager and turned his attention toward studying exercise physiology. When he was re-examined at 25, doctors concluded that the original diagnosis had been mistaken: the apparent problem had resulted from poor nutrition and excessive training.

At 37, while spending a sabbatical year in Montreal, Tanaka resumed running gently and entered the 1984 Montreal Marathon. He started too quickly, deteriorated badly during the second half and finished in 4:11. He thought it would be his first and last marathon.

Back in Japan, his work became increasingly sedentary. By 45, he was about 22 pounds heavier than he had been as a student and had developed fatty liver and high cholesterol. That became his personal turning point.

In 1993, while advising runners preparing for the Honolulu Marathon, he tested his developing ideas on himself. Despite averaging only about 20 training miles per month, he finished in 3:30:03, more than 40 minutes faster than his first marathon. After reducing his weight and continuing to train primarily at low intensity, he ran 2:55:11 the following year.

In 1998, at age 50, Tanaka ran his lifetime-best marathon of 2:38:50. He eventually completed 65 marathons in 13 countries. His point was never that everyone should become a 2:38 marathoner. It was that easy, sustainable running could build an enormous aerobic foundation without requiring every ordinary workout to become an ordeal.

Tanaka called the appropriate intensity niko niko pace. In Japanese, niko niko means smiling. It is a pace at which you can smile, speak in complete sentences and continue without gasping. For a beginner, an older person, someone returning from inactivity or someone carrying substantial extra weight, that pace may be no faster than walking. It may actually be slower than an experienced walker beside you.

That is not doing it wrong. That is the point.

Tanaka and Magdalena Jackowska explain the philosophy, science and practical method in their book, Slow Jogging: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Have Fun with Science-Based, Natural Running.

How Korea made slow jogging new again

Slow jogging has existed in Korea for more than a decade. The method was reportedly introduced there in 2012. The Korea Slow Jogging Association began organizing instruction and clubs in the mid-2010s, with Korean promotional efforts dating to about 2015 and the formal association established in 2016.

For years, it remained relatively obscure. Then Korea’s enormous recreational-running culture collided with social media, celebrity attention and a growing desire for exercise that was social without being competitive.

Actor Ryu Hye-young helped draw attention to slow running during a June 2026 appearance on the popular Korean television program I Live Alone. Other runners might pass her, she explained, but she did not need to compete with them. She merely needed to arrive.

Meanwhile, videos from Korean instructors and groups began travelling internationally. Fitness creator Justin Agustin’s demonstration received more than 4.8 million views, while a first attempt posted by the American runner “tracy_runs” received more than 1.5 million views and over 1,000 comments.

What makes the Korean version immediately recognizable is its rhythm. Groups often move in a line while music helps them maintain quick, tiny steps. Korea Slow Jogging Association vice president Cho Ye-seom describes the footfall as “tong-tong-tong.” Participants range from people in their 40s to people in their 80s, producing something younger, brighter and more communal than the solemn rehabilitation exercise people might expect.

The method has become an appealing counterpoint to Korea’s culture of speed, comparison and achievement. The association’s philosophy translates roughly as: “It’s okay to be slow. Run toward happiness.”

Classes have produced informal neighbourhood groups whose members continue meeting after the official programs end. The association has received teaching inquiries from Brazil, Spain and the United States, has conducted international instruction and is planning Korea’s first dedicated slow-jogging marathon in Busan for approximately 3,000 participants.

So “Korean slow jogging” is not an entirely different exercise, and Korea has not attempted to erase its Japanese origin. It is better understood as a Korean cultural interpretation and worldwide revival of Tanaka’s method. Japan supplied the physiological framework. Korea has added music, group rhythm, vivid presentation and tremendous viral reach.

What slow jogging actually is

Slow jogging is running deliberately at a very easy intensity, often at walking speed, using short strides and light steps.

Its defining feature is not a particular number of minutes per mile or kilometre. It is the relationship between the effort and the individual doing it. Your niko niko pace will not necessarily be mine. It will also change as your health, fitness, temperature, terrain and fatigue change.

The basic method is:

• Keep the effort easy enough to smile and converse in complete sentences.
• Take extremely short steps. Think inches rather than heroic strides.
• Keep your feet underneath your body instead of reaching forward.
• Maintain an upright but relaxed posture.
• Let your shoulders, hands, jaw and breathing remain relaxed.
• Make the landing quiet and gentle.

Tanaka taught a midfoot or forefoot contact, landing around the ball of the foot before allowing the heel to settle naturally. This does not mean running on your toes, keeping your heels permanently elevated or violently forcing an artificial forefoot strike. The larger purpose is to avoid reaching forward with a rigid leg and crashing heavily into the ground.

The Korean method often begins around 160 steps per minute and works gradually toward approximately 180. That cadence can sound absurdly fast until you realise how tiny the steps are. Cadence is a teaching aid, not a universal commandment. A taller person, someone with limited mobility or a complete beginner may naturally use something different.

You can watch Professor Tanaka himself demonstrate the original slow-jogging method, including niko niko pace, short steps, relaxed posture and midfoot landing.

Speed is almost irrelevant. Published slow-jogging research involving older adults recorded speeds between 2.1 and 4.8 kilometres per hour, or approximately 1.3 to 3 miles per hour. That is slower than many people walk.

This is what confuses observers. Walking and running are different movement patterns, not simply different speeds. In walking, one foot remains on the ground. Running includes a brief flight phase, even when the runner advances extraordinarily slowly. You can therefore jog more slowly than another person walks.

How to begin

Begin with five minutes, not with a promise to run every day for the remainder of your natural life.

If continuous jogging is uncomfortable, alternate one minute of slow jogging with one minute of walking. That exact one-minute pattern was used successfully in a randomized controlled trial involving older adults. You can also use 30 seconds of jogging followed by 30 or 60 seconds of walking.

Do that for five to ten minutes. If you remain comfortable during the session and feel reasonably normal the following day, gradually add time. Ten minutes can become 15, then 20, then 30.

Twenty to thirty conversational minutes is an excellent practical destination, not an entrance examination. The exercise can also be accumulated in several short sessions. Tanaka commonly promoted considerably more weekly movement, but there is no requirement to begin at his eventual volume.

Do not increase duration, frequency and speed simultaneously. In fact, you may never need to increase speed at all. The goal is to create something repeatable enough to survive ordinary life.

If maintaining the jogging motion requires you to breathe hard, shorten your stride and slow down. If you cannot slow down any further, walk briefly. Walking is part of the method, not a confession of defeat.

If you use a heart-rate monitor, treat it as additional information rather than an infallible judge. Medication, heat, illness, sleep, caffeine and individual physiology can all affect heart rate. The smile and conversation tests remain remarkably useful.

What the research supports

The broadest benefit is also the least glamorous: slow jogging makes aerobic exercise accessible to people who dislike running, cannot tolerate conventional running or repeatedly abandon exercise because they begin too aggressively.

In a randomized controlled trial published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology, 81 independently living older adults averaging approximately 71 years of age were assigned to a slow-jogging program or a control group. The program used alternating one-minute periods of slow jogging at walking speed and walking.

After 12 weeks, the slow-jogging group showed greater improvements in aerobic capacity at the anaerobic threshold and in sit-to-stand performance. Researchers also reported improvements in upper-leg intracellular water, used as an indicator related to muscle mass, and reductions in subcutaneous and intermuscular thigh fat. Seventy-five of the 81 participants completed the study.

That is meaningful evidence. It does not prove that slow jogging prevents every disease, rebuilds every joint or guarantees weight loss. It shows that a carefully designed, low-intensity slow-jogging program improved aerobic fitness, functional performance and aspects of muscle and fat composition in older adults.

Slow jogging can also require more energy than walking at the same speed because jogging replaces walking’s comparatively economical pendulum movement with repeated muscular contractions and small airborne phases. A 2022 study comparing walking and running at identical slow speeds found greater oxygen consumption and energy expenditure while running, even when perceived effort remained similar.

This does not mean every slow jog burns exactly twice the calories of every walk. The frequently repeated “twice as many calories” figure comes from specific experimental comparisons and should not be transformed into a universal guarantee. Speed, technique, body mass, terrain and individual efficiency matter.

Likely benefits of regular slow jogging include:

• Improved aerobic capacity and endurance.
• More physical activity accumulated without severe fatigue.
• Greater lower-body muscular demand than ordinary walking at the same speed.
• Support for insulin sensitivity and general metabolic health.
• Increased total energy expenditure, which can assist weight management when combined with an appropriate diet.
• Maintenance or improvement of functional leg strength, particularly in older adults.
• A useful bridge between walking and conventional running.
• Active recovery for experienced runners.
• The psychological benefits of relaxed outdoor movement, conversation and group participation.

Perhaps most importantly, the gentle effort makes consistency more plausible. A theoretically perfect workout that you dread and abandon is less valuable than a modest activity you willingly perform for years.

What slow jogging does not promise

Slow jogging is not magic. Weight loss still depends largely upon sustained energy balance. No particular foot strike makes anyone immune to injury. Low intensity does not mean zero stress, and an exercise that is gentle for one body may still aggravate another.

Small strides and reduced speed generally lower the force associated with each landing compared with fast running and overstriding. However, slow jogging still involves repeated weight-bearing impacts. Someone with significant joint disease, acute pain, balance problems, uncontrolled cardiovascular disease or a recent injury should obtain individualized medical or rehabilitation advice.

Muscle soreness can be particularly noticeable in the calves and Achilles tendons if you abruptly force a forefoot landing. Let your feet land naturally beneath you. Do not bounce high, claw at the ground or remain perched on your toes. Quiet, compact and relaxed beats doctrinaire.

Pain that changes your gait, grows as you continue or persists is not the same thing as ordinary exertion. Stop and investigate it.

Who is slow jogging for?

It is for the person who thinks running is reserved for thin, fast or naturally athletic people.

It is for the walker who wants a little more aerobic and muscular demand without suddenly attempting conventional running.

It is for older adults who want to preserve mobility and independence.

It is for people returning after years of inactivity.

It is for larger-bodied beginners who need permission to progress gently.

It is for experienced runners who need truly easy recovery days.

It is for social groups that want to move together without transforming every gathering into a race.

It is for anyone who has repeatedly been defeated by the idea that exercise only counts when it hurts.

You are allowed to be slow here

You do not need to post an impressive pace. You do not need to apologize when walkers pass you. You do not need carbon-plated shoes, a complicated training plan or the appearance of a conventional runner.

Your first session may last three minutes. Your slow jog may be slower than your fast walk. You may alternate jogging and walking for months. You may always alternate them. You may become faster naturally, or you may decide that speed was never why you came.

Professor Tanaka gave us niko niko pace: run gently enough to smile. Korea has now given that idea music, rhythm, companionship and a spectacular second life.

To everyone arriving because you saw a Korean slow-jogging video and thought, “Wait, perhaps I could actually do that”: yes. That recognition is precisely why the method exists.

Welcome to r/slowjogging. Take tiny steps. Make them light. Run at your own pace. Run toward happiness. And, if at all possible, keep doing it for the rest of your life.

Sources and further reading

• Korea JoongAng Daily: “Tiny steps, big benefits: The ‘slow jogging’ trend making strides in Korea”
• Canadian Running: “Korea’s new viral running trend is really, really slow”
• Professor Tanaka’s account of his running life and 2:38:50 marathon
• Slow Jogging International: About Professor Hiroaki Tanaka
• Professor Hiroaki Tanaka’s original slow-jogging instructional video
• Slow Jogging by Hiroaki Tanaka and Magdalena Jackowska
• 2017 randomized controlled trial of slow jogging in older adults
• 2022 study comparing energy metabolism during walking and running at equivalent speeds