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Walking 10,000 steps a day is one of the most common fitness goals in the world. But one walking expert says this lofty goal may not be necessary to enjoy many of the health benefits associated with a regular walk.
Several recent studies have attempted to identify the daily step count that offers the best bang for your buck, and many of them have come up with a number in the 7,000 to 8,000 range.
“It’s interesting how this number repeats itself across many of these studies,” says Dr. Elroy Aguiar, assistant professor of exercise science at the University of Alabama, whose recent research centers around step-based measurements of physical activity. “This number is associated with reduced risks of mortality, cancer and cardiovascular diseases.”
But that doesn’t mean walking 8,000 steps a day should be everyone’s goal — there’s more nuance to it than that. Below, we debunk the 10,000 steps a day myth and explain how to set a daily step goal that works for you.
Why is 10,000 steps a day such a common goal?
If study after study keeps coming up with about 8,000 steps as a valid daily goal, where does the 10,000 steps per day goal come from?
Its origins lie in an enduring marketing campaign for a Japanese pedometer in the 1960s, around the time of the Tokyo Olympics. The machine was called manpo-keiwhich translates as “meter of 10,000 steps”.
“There is evidence to suggest that the Japanese population, similar to the US and probably the UK, takes around 5,000 to 6,000 steps per day on average,” says Dr.
“Choosing 10,000 is a great goal because it’s a little higher. If you went for a 30-minute walk, you’d probably take about 3,000 steps; so if you take your basic daily activity and add a session of planned exercise, you will be close to the 10,000 step goal.”
This number has since become something of a gold standard in tracking daily movement, with countless fitness trackers setting it as a standard target. It has even influenced research into the benefits of walking.
“There are many studies looking at whether 10,000 steps are better than less activity, and this has created artificial confirmation bias,” explains Dr. Aguiar. “People think 10,000 is very difficult. It’s a round, easy-to-remember number, and they used that in their research studies as a comparison.”
How many steps should you take a day?
We now know that walking around 8,000 steps a day is associated with a number of health benefits, and for many people it’s probably a more reasonable goal.
Recent research from the University of Granada supports the latest target, with a paper from the institution claiming it provided “the first scientific proof of how many steps you need to take per day to significantly reduce the risk of premature death”. That number was 8,000.
However, a 2023 meta-analysis published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology set a lower limit of 3,867 steps per day, claiming this number was necessary to see a “significant” decrease in all-cause mortality.
What both research agrees on is that there is no upper limit to the number of steps you can take to improve these health outcomes. In other words, the more steps you take, the better – but there will be a point of diminishing returns.
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“If you want optimal benefits for the time invested, you will already have most of the gain if you have done 8,000 – so there are marginal or incremental gains beyond this point,” explains Dr. Aguiar.
“And in terms of meeting the World Health Organization (WHO) physical activity guidelines of about 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, these numbers translate to about 7,000 to 8,000 steps per day. . It makes a lot of sense in this and it’s lining up very well with what the new studies are showing.”
However, despite this debunking of the 1970s goal, he doesn’t care that the 10,000 steps a day goal is so widespread.
“Many early studies adopted the 10,000 steps message, and that’s not a bad thing: taking more steps rather than fewer will always be recommended,” says Dr. Aguiar. “But if you want to be accurate with what the science shows, less than that is enough.”
How to set a daily step goal
Finding an exercise routine that works for you is a highly individualized endeavor. In many cases, what works for one person won’t work for another, so if you’re looking to tweak your exercise routine, a personalized approach is the best option.
The same goes for a daily step goal – someone who already walks thousands of steps a day will have a very different target to an office worker who struggles to get a lot of movement done.
“One thing we need to be aware of is setting realistic goals,” says Dr. Aguiar. “If someone takes 4,000 or 5,000 steps a day and you tell them to take 10,000, that is doubling the amount of daily activity, which can be problematic or even demotivating.”
Instead, it prescribes incremental increases in your daily activity levels, with the goal of progressing over time and eventually ending up above the 8,000 steps per day mark. Fitness trackers and smartwatches can help with this.
“Many modern wearable devices, like Garmin and Google watches, analyze your current activity level and try to increase it by a certain percentage,” says Dr. “So instead of setting an arbitrary goal like 10,000, your device would monitor that you were getting 5,000 steps a day and then might ask you to do 10 to 20 percent more than that to improve the amount of exercise you get as a result. gradual progression.”
“Generally speaking, if you improve your starting steps by about 2,000 per day, which for most people equates to 10 or 20 percent, that’s a sufficient amount of extra activity to improve health markers like blood pressure and body composition. But obviously we want people to eventually progress to 7,000-8,000 and ultimately to 10,000+ because that’s where we know the best benefits occur.”
So, in summary: if you already walk more than 10,000 steps a day, you may not need to increase that number. If you have time and want to improve your fitness, other more intense forms of exercise can offer extra benefits. For example, running to increase your aerobic capacity or strength training to build muscle and increase bone density.
But if you sit at a desk most of the day and have trouble finding time to move, walking can be an affordable way to increase your activity levels and combat that sedentary lifestyle.
Start by tracking your daily steps for seven days, then add 10 to 20 percent to that to find your goal for the following week. You can achieve this higher step count by parking a little further from the office, getting off the bus or train a stop earlier, or going to a cafe at lunchtime instead of eating at your desk.
Slowly increase this goal over time until you reach the Goldilocks point of 8,000 steps per day or more, and enjoy the path to many health benefits in the process.
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