Although the 10,000 steps a day recommendation has been widely acknowledged as an arbitrary number, experts agree that walking more is good for your health and may decrease your risk of premature death.
But a new study suggests that your walking pace may be as important as the number of steps you take in lowering your mortality risk.
The study, which is published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that for those who took fewer than 5,000 steps a day, increasing walking pace to more than 80 steps per minute when they did walk was as effective as walking more than 5,000 steps at 60 steps per minute.
“The wider message coming from this study is behavioral flexibility. Step targets need not look identical for everyone, and people who cannot walk far, or cannot walk quickly, still have a route to lower risk. This is observational work, so it should be read as an association rather than proof that changing peak-30 cadence, the indictor of stepping intensity we used, lowers mortality.”
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— Emmanuel Stamatakis, corresponding author on the study, professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
The researchers analyzed data from 103,684 participants in the UK Biobank, who were ages between 40 and 69 at enrolment in the study (2006-2010). All participants wore an activity tracker for 7 consecutive days between 2013 and 2015 to monitor the number and intensity of daily steps they took.
Step intensity was assessed using peak 30-min cadence — the average steps per minute recorded for the 30 highest, but not necessarily consecutive, steps in a day and averaged over the monitoring time frame.
Researchers followed up participants until November 2022, recording all-cause and cardiovascular mortality over a mean tracking period of 8 years. They excluded participants with missing data, a history of cardiovascular disease or cancer, or who died in accidents during follow-up.
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In total, 64,743 participants were analyzed for all-cause mortality, of whom 1,697 died during follow-up, and 70,075 for cardiovascular mortality (502 deaths).
People who achieved between 7,500 and 10,000 steps a day had the lowest risk of dying early. However, people who achieved fewer than 5,000 steps a day, but at a higher pace, had a lower risk of early death than those who achieved 5,000 to 7,500 at a lower pace.
“Both step counts and stepping intensity matter, and the combination that works is the one a person can sustain. Accumulating 7,500 to 10,000 steps a day, roughly in line with current step-based recommendations, was associated with the lowest all-cause mortality risk in our sample. For the many adults well below that, walking some of the steps they already take briskly enough was associated with a risk in the same region as that of people taking considerably more steps at a more leisurely pace.”
— Emmanuel Stamatakis, corresponding author
Kevin Shah, MD, board certified cardiologist and Program Director of Heart Failure Outreach at MemorialCare Heart & Vascular Institute at Long Beach Medical Center in Long Beach, CA, not involved in the study, explained why greater intensity of exercise might lower mortality risk:
“More movement or, in the case of this study, more intense movement, can help improve blood pressure, support healthy weight, boost insulin sensitivity, and lower overall cardiometabolic risk.”
And Stamatakis said he was not surprised by their findings:
“These findings were in line with previous studies emphasizing the important role of intensity in the activities our days already involve. We had perhaps not expected the association to be steepest among the least active adults, those accumulating fewer than 5000 steps a day, nor that two quite different stepping patterns would be associated with a similar level of risk.”
“Their importance lies in the flexibility they suggest. Most middle-aged and older adults face barriers either to walking far or to walking fast, and either route appears viable,” he told Medical News Today.
Experts agree that short bursts of activity done regularly can also have health benefits. Shah further advised:
“The biggest health gains often come from going from no activity to some activity. Even a few minutes of movement a day can start to improve your overall health and longevity. Focus on taking that first step then build from there. Over time, those small efforts can lead to meaningful, lasting change.”
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“You don’t have to carve out a full hour at the gym to make exercise count. Small bursts of activity throughout the day can add up. A quick morning bike ride, a walk after dinner, taking the stairs, or even short movement breaks between meetings all contribute. The goal is to build movement into your routine in a way that feels doable. Consistency matters more than doing everything perfectly.”
— Kevin Shah, MD
Stamakis also underscored the importance of consistency.
“The body responds to habitual patterns rather than to occasional effort, so near-daily consistency over months and years matters more than any single walk,” he told MNT,cautioning that “Anyone with cardiovascular risk factors should speak with their doctor before increasing intensity.”
