Debunking the 10,000 Steps Myth: How Many Steps Do You Really Need?

Back in 1965, a Tokyo-based pedometer manufacturer, Yamasa Tokei Keiki Co., came up with the idea to market a pedometer called ‘ManpoKei,’ Japanese for ‘10,000 steps meter’. The name was purely a marketing tool, since the Japanese character for 10,000 looks a bit like a man walking.

Is there any science behind the magic number of 10,000 steps per day that anyone with a pedometer feature on their smart watch strives for? Turns out, the answer is ‘no’.

Thankfully, there is science behind how many steps you should actually walk per day to improve your health and decrease your risk of premature death. Because it’s best to base health habits on science, not spin doctors.

A group of researchers across the United States recently set out to investigate the ideal number of steps per day required to reduce the risk of premature death. The study, led by Amanda Paluch, an Assistant Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, followed more than 2000 adults aged between thirty-eight and fifty for two years. Participants wore an accelerometer (a device that measures the vibration or acceleration of motion) and researchers checked back in with them ten years later.

Dr I-Min Lee, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, was also interested in whether the 10,000 steps idea was simply a myth. She led a study involving more than 16,000 older women and measured the number of steps they took for one week.

Four years later, she then followed up with these women to see what happened to their health. Compared to sedentary women (who averaged 2700 steps per day), those who averaged 4400 daily steps had a 41 per cent reduction in mortality. A big result for fewer than 2000 additional daily steps.

But what is particularly interesting is that Lee found that there was a magic number, where after hitting that step count, increased mortality rates started to level off. That number was 7500 steps per day.

Another study that examined the impact of steps per day on mortality recruited nearly 5000 adults living in the United States aged over forty (a mean age of fifty-seven years old). Participants wore an accelerometer for six days and were then followed up a decade later. There were some stark differences when the researchers compared those who walked fewer than 4000 steps per day against those who walked 8000–12,000 steps per day. Compared to those who walked more than 8000 steps per day, those who walked less than 4000 steps daily were seven times more likely to have passed away at the ten-year mark. In addition, they were ten times more likely to have died from heart disease.

I must confess: I used to be a 10,000-steps-a-day kind of gal. More often than not, I would hit this goal, despite having moved my office to my home back in March 2020 (and reduced my daily commute to an arduous 20 steps from my bedroom to my study).

Back when I used to catch the train into Melbourne’s city centre to go to work, I would easily clock up 4000–5000 steps a day without even trying. I’d reach this number from the incidental exercise of walking to the railway station, walking to the office from the station, walking to get a coffee or grab some lunch, and walking around the office to chat to my teammates.

Since shifting to working from home 100 per cent of the time, I’ve had to be more deliberate in how I incorporate movement in my day. One of the strategies I put in place to achieve this was my phone rule: if I have a phone meeting or impromptu chat where I don’t need to write notes or be at my computer, I walk. If the weather is nasty, I do laps of my living room. If the weather is good, I’ll do laps of my block.

My Monday afternoons often have a lot of meetings with various members of my team. I find that on those days, I’ll easily clock over 10,000 steps without deliberately carving out time for ‘exercise’.

Before researching this topic, I used to mentally beat myself up if I didn’t hit 10,000 daily steps. But now I can end the day feeling like a winner if I ‘only’ clock up 7500.

Put it into action

1. Remember the classic management advice: what gets measured gets managed. If you don’t currently wear a watch that counts your steps, you can pick up a pedometer for less than $10 online. It’s money well spent to be able to track something that has such a big impact on your health.

Forget about the 10,000 steps a day rule, which for many can feel intimidating or unattainable. (Also, don’t trust mar- keteers to set your movement goals.)

Instead, try to walk 7500–8000 steps per day. A short 10-minute walk around the block will typically net you around 1000 steps, depending on the size of your block. If you aim for around five short block-walking breaks and include steps from incidental activity such as going to the bathroom or walking around the supermarket, you’ll probably get to around 7500-8000 steps pretty easily.

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