

How to Make Walking Actually Worth Your Time

Not all steps are created equally, researchers discovered. Here are the kind that bring you serious benefits.

Runner feet running on road closeup on shoe.
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  • Even if you exercise regularly, you can still reap some extra exercise minutes by simply walking throughout your day—but the speed at which you do so matters, a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests.
  • Walking at 100 or more steps a minute counts as moderate-intensity physical activity, while 130 or more a minute crosses into vigorous physical activity.

    You might be counting your steps, but are those steps really counting as exercise? How you walk might mean more than you think: Not all steps are created equally, according to a recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

    In the study, researchers set out to determine whether the steps you take each day actually “count” as your exercise minutes for the day. They measured the cadence, defined as the number of steps per minute, of 76 participants ranging from 21 to 40 years old.

    They discovered that a cadence of 100 steps per minute corresponds to the threshold for moderate-intensity physical activity. This pace is equivalent to about 2.5 miles per hour and will help you achieve about 3 METs, or metabolic equivalent of task, which measures how much energy someone is expending doing a certain activity.

    If you quicken your pace? Their findings indicate that a person walking at 100 to 129 steps per minute are likely achieving between 3 and 5.9 METs. That still counts as moderate intensity physical activity, but if you pick it up a little more to 130 steps per minute, you’ll hit the threshold for vigorous intensity (at least 6 METs).


    The U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines recommend that adults log at least 150 minutes to 300 minutes moderate-intensity activity each week, or 75 minutes to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. The time you spend on the bike obviously fits the bill. But the findings of this study can help you determine whether your non-formal physical activity can help you add to your exercise minutes tally—especially since the new guidelines also abolished that activity had to be done in at least 10-minute increments to count.

    “Running is an excellent mode of physical activity that often corresponds to vigorous-intensity activity. These recommendations should not be taken as an alternative to running, but rather complementary,” Scott Ducharme, Ph.D., postdoctoral research associate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told Runner’s World.

    So keep your walking speed in mind, even on a rest day, like when you’re in the office taking another trip to fill up your water bottle. Plus, walking at a faster cadence may help mitigate the negative effects of sitting can have on your training.

    Many wearable trackers provide real-time cadence reports. But if you don’t have one, you can simply calculate your steps during a timed bout of walking. This can be performed intermittently during a walk to verify that your cadence is above a desired threshold, Ducharme explained.

    “Walking is the most commonly reported type of physical activity. However, for those who are ambulatory and engage in running, bicycling, or any other form of physical activity, their day still likely includes additional bouts of walking,” Ducharme said. “Adding walking to your day will likely be beneficial for overall health for most people, even for those who already engage in other types of physical activity.”

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