Walking is cooler than ever, thanks in large part to the made-famous-by-TikTok Hot Girl Walk trend. Not only is it cool, but walking is also great for your mental health and your physical health .

There are even ways to make your walks more beneficial, whether thats Nordic walking (a kind of walking that uses poles, similar to ski poles, to incorporate your upper body) or interval walking, which, according to Harvard Health , gets your heart rate up more than a regular walk.

An interval walk incorporates phases of fast and moderate walking to create a heart-pumping, challenging workout. You can mix and match the duration of each pace however you like, but generally the majority of the walk is done at a moderate pace with the quicker pace sprinkled throughout. Its common to do this workout at a 2-to-1 ratio, meaning you walk at a moderate pace for double the amount of time of a fast pace (so, walk at a moderate pace for two minutes and follow it up with a faster one-minute walk), but its really up to you how you split it up.

During the moderate walking pace, you should be at about 30% to 40% of your maximum effort, said Kate Lemere , chief instructor at Barrys Chicago. In other words, your walk should be at a pace that would allow you to hold a conversation.

During vigorous, fast intervals, she said, youll want to be around 70% of your maximum effort, a pace at which it should be more difficult to string together a complete sentence.

Interval walking is a way to add something different to your regular walk and can make it much more efficient.

Here, experts share all of the ways interval walking is good for your health.

It shortens the amount of time you need to exercise.

What does interval training do for you? It cuts down the amount of time you have to exercise to get the same benefit, said Dr. Michael Ayers , a sports cardiologist at UVA Health in Virginia.

For people with busy schedules, this is a huge benefit of incorporating fast-slow intervals into a walk or incorporating any kind of high-intensity interval training into exercise, for that matter. When you mix vigorous exercise with moderate exercise, those short bursts of vigorous exercise get you the same benefits of a slower walk in less time, Ayers said.

In other words, all of the benefits of a moderate-intensity walk can be achieved faster when you add in some quick high-intensity intervals.

Interval training definitely shortens the amount of exercise time that you have to do per week, he added.

It creates an endorphin rush.

Ayers noted that, overall, one of the big reasons his patients like interval training is how it makes them feel afterward.

Theres a big endorphin kick when you go into vigorous exercise, he said. With an interval walk, as long as you reach a vigorous pace for 30 to 60 seconds at a time, youll get an endorphin kick.

You could do a five-minute moderately paced interval followed by a fast minute-long interval, or one minute of moderate walking followed by 30 seconds of power walking. As long as you break up your slower intervals with at least 30 seconds of vigorous walking, youll be on your way to that endorphin boost.