This is how many steps you should be walking a day, according to a walking expert

Walking 10,000 steps a day is one of the most common fitness goals in the world. But a walking expert says this lofty goal may not be necessary to enjoy the many health benefits of regular walking.

Several recent studies have attempted to identify a daily step count that offers the best value for money, and many have landed in the 7,000 to 8,000 range.

“It’s interesting how this number is replicated in many of these studies,” says Dr. Elroy Aguiar, assistant professor of exercise science at the University of Alabama, whose recent research focuses on step-based measures of exercise. “This figure is associated with a lower risk of mortality, cancer and cardiovascular disease.

But that doesn’t mean walking 8,000 steps a day should be everyone’s goal—there’s more nuance 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 landing on 8,000 or so steps as a worthy daily goal, where does the 10,000 steps a day come from?

Its origins lie in a long-running marketing campaign for a Japanese pedometer in the 1960s, around the time of the Tokyo Olympics. The machine was called manpo-keimeaning “10,000 step meters”.

“There is evidence to suggest that the Japanese population, similar to the US and probably the UK, takes around 5,000-6,000 steps per day on average,” says Dr. Aguiar.

“Picking 10,000 is a great goal because it’s a little bit higher. If you go for a 30-minute walk, you’d probably get about 3,000 steps, so if you take your daily baseline activity and add one session of planned exercise, you’re close to that 10,000 step goal.”

This number has since become the gold standard for marking daily exercise, with countless exercisers setting it as their default goal. It has even influenced research on the benefits of walking.

“There have been many studies that have looked at whether 10,000 steps are better than less activity and this has created an artificial confirmation bias,” explains Dr Aguiar. “People think 10,000 is very sticky. It’s a round number and easy to remember, and they’ve used it in their research as a comparison.”

How many steps should you take per day?

We now know that walking around 8,000 steps a day is associated with a number of health benefits, and for many people that is probably a more reasonable goal.

Recent research from the University of Granada supports the newer goal, with a paper from the institute saying it was “the first scientific evidence of how many steps you need to take a day to significantly reduce your risk of premature death”. That number was 8,000.

Meanwhile, a 2023 meta-analysis published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology put the lower limit at 3,867 steps per day and claimed that this number was needed to see a “significant” reduction in all-cause mortality.

What both studies agree 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 to get the maximum benefit for the time you put in, then if you’ve reached 8,000 you already have most of the benefit – there are marginal or incremental gains beyond this point,” explains Dr Aguiar.

“And in terms of meeting the World Health Organization’s (WHO) physical activity guidelines of about 150 minutes a week of moderate activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, those numbers translate to about 7,000-8,000 steps a day.” It makes a lot of sense and it is in good agreement with what the new research shows.”

However, despite this denial of the 1970s goal, he doesn’t mind that the 10,000 steps a day goal is so widespread.

“Much of the early research picked up this 10,000 steps message, and that’s not a bad thing: doing more steps rather than doing less is always advisable,” says Dr Aguiar. “But if you want to be accurate with what the science shows, less than that is satisfactory.”

How to set a daily step goal

Finding a fitness routine that works for you is a highly individualized endeavor. In many cases, what works for one person doesn’t work for another, so if you’re looking to optimize your exercise routine, a personalized approach is the best way to go.

The same goes for a daily step goal – someone who already walks many thousands of steps a day will have a very different goal than a desk worker who struggles to squeeze in a lot of exercise.

“One thing we need to be aware of is setting realistic goals,” says Dr Aguiar. “If someone is taking 4,000 or 5,000 steps a day and you tell them to do 10,000, that’s doubling the amount of daily activity, which can be problematic or even demotivating.”

Instead, he prescribes a gradual increase in your daily activity, with the goal of building up over time and eventually ending up north of 8,000 steps a day. Fitness trackers and smartwatches can help with this.

“Many modern devices like Garmin and Google watches look at your current activity and then try to increase you by a certain percentage,” says Dr Aguiar. “So instead of setting an arbitrary goal like 10,000, your device would track you taking 5,000 steps a day, then it could ask you to do 10-20 percent more than that to improve volume movements you do that gradually progress.”

“In general, if you increase your baseline steps by about 2,000 a day, which for most people would equate 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 get to 7,000-8,000, and then eventually to 10,000 plus, because that’s where we know the best gains happen.”

So in short: if you’re already walking 10,000 plus steps a day, you may not need to increase this number. If you have the time and want to boost your fitness, other more intense workouts may offer bonus benefits. For example, running to increase your cardio or strength training to build muscle and strengthen your bone density.

But if you sit at a desk most of the day and struggle to find time to move, walking can be an accessible way to increase your activity level and counteract that sedentary lifestyle.

Start by tracking your daily steps for seven days, then add 10-20 percent to this to find your goal for the next week. You could achieve this higher step count by parking a little further from the office, getting off the bus or train one stop early, or going to a coffee shop for lunch rather than eating at your desk.

Slowly increase this goal over time until you reach the Goldilocks point of 8,000 steps a day or more, and enjoy walking your way to lots of health benefits in the process.

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