Energy expended by adults with and without intellectual disabilities during activities of daily living.
Slow walking at 3 km/h gives adults with ID a real workout—use it as your go-to daily exercise prescription.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers measured how much energy the adults with intellectual disabilities burned during everyday tasks.
They compared them to the adults without disabilities while sitting, standing, and walking at three speeds.
Each person wore a portable oxygen mask to track calories burned in real time.
What they found
Adults with ID used a large share more energy just sitting still than typical adults.
At slow walking (3 km/h), they hit moderate-intensity exercise levels while typical adults did not.
This means a casual stroll counts as real exercise for your clients with ID.
How this fits with other research
Moya et al. (2022) showed functional exercises improve balance in adults with ID, giving you two tools: walking for cardio and unstable-surface drills for stability.
Mikolajczyk et al. (2015) found longer balance training keeps helping teens with ID even after breaks, suggesting you can combine walking programs with balance work for lasting gains.
These studies together build a simple weekly plan: slow walks on three days, balance games on two days.
Why it matters
You can now prescribe slow walking as evidence-based exercise for adults with ID. No gym needed. Start with 10-minute walks at 3 km/h and build up. Track heart rate or use the talk test—your client should be able to speak but not sing. This simple intervention meets exercise guidelines while fitting into daily routines like walking to the store or bus stop.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The aims of this study were to (1) determine the energy expenditure of adults with and without intellectual disabilities during common activities of daily living (ADL), (2) use these values to evaluate the accuracy of equivalent activity values reported in the Compendium of Physical Activities (CPA), and (3) identify ADL that may confer a health benefit for adults with intellectual disabilities when undertaken regularly. Energy expenditure was measured for adults with intellectual disabilities (N=31; 29.0±8.6 yr) and adults without intellectual disabilities (N=15; 30.4±9.6 yr) while undertaking each of seven ADL: sitting quietly (SitQ); sitting watching television (SitTV); sitting and standing while completing an assembly task (SitAT, StaAT); and walking at a slow (WalkS, 3.0 km h(-1)), quick (WalkQ, 6.0 km h(-1)) and fast (WalkF, 9.0 km h(-1)) speed, under laboratory conditions. Adults with intellectual disabilities were found to expend significantly more energy than adults without intellectual disabilities for SitQ, WalkS, WalkQ and WalkF (p<0.05). Energy expended by both populations was significantly more than CPA values for SitQ, SitTV, SitAT, WalkS, and WalkQ (p<0.02) and significantly less for WalkF (p<0.01). Walking at the speed of 3.0 km h(-1) (50 m min(-1)) was found to be sufficient to achieve moderate-intensity energy expenditure, surpassing the intensity threshold for conferring a health benefit. Energy expenditure inaccuracies of the CPA have important consequences when estimating prevalence of engagement in health enhancing physical activities among population sub-groups. The identification of slow walking as a moderate-intensity physical activity offers significant health promotion opportunities for adults with intellectual disabilities through active transport and leisure.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2010 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2010.06.022