Why Do We Swing Our Arms While Walking? Is It Of Any Significance?
For many years, scientists thought that the movement of the hands while walking was a wasteful process and by doing so we are just wasting our energy. So in 2009, some scientists from the University of Michigan tried to find out how swinging arms while walking affects our body. For this, they chose 10 test subjects (people) and asked them to walk a specific path in three different ways. The first method was to walk in a normal way, the second method was to walk without moving the arms or holding the arms still and the third was Synchronized Leg-Arm Movement, that is, the right arm with the right leg and the left arm with the left leg.
During this process, the energy used by their bodies was studied deeply and the result that came out was quite surprising. It was found that if someone walks without moving their arms or holding their arms still, the body uses 12 percent more energy, and it was even more at the time of Synchronized Leg-Arm Movement, which was around 26 percent.
Now you must be feeling a bit strange that how this happened. So usually what happens is that when we take our step forward, our body starts twisting or rotating from the waist side, and to counterbalance this, our hand on the opposite side moves forward, so that we can walk straight. So if we stop the hand or put forward the wrong hand, then the body will have to work even harder to walk straight, due to which more energy is spent, which is obviously not the best in terms of survival.
Now although this explanation is quite convincing, many scientists still believe that the swinging movements of our arms are actually a trait of our ancient four-legged ancestors (who walked on two legs and two arms at once like an animal) which is yet to be extinct.