18/10/2025
Well said
I have to reiterate something I’ve said in the past: walking is not exercise.
Walking is one of the best things you can do. I think people should walk every single day as much as they can. You should integrate walking into everyday life so that you end up accumulating over 10,000 steps a day, although I’m not saying you need to track them. Walking is a fundamental human activity. But it’s not exercise.
Exercise is, by definition, a stressful endeavor that provokes a training response. It’s something that pushes you beyond your comfort levels, throws you out of homeostasis, and requires a compensatory response to prepare you to handle the same load more easily next time.
Walking doesn’t qualify. Walking is, by nature, supposed to be effortless.
The one exception is when someone is so out of shape that walking becomes stressful. If you go for a walk around the block and get winded, then sure, that’s exercise. When I was recovering from my hip surgery, walking was provoking an adaptive response, so in that respect, for that small period of time, walking was exercise for me.
I’m also not talking about rucking with 40 pounds on your back or going on a hard hike up a mountain or backpacking through the Sierras. That’s walking-like activity that qualifies as exercise because you’re provoking an adaptive training response.
But my point is, I want you to get out of the mindset of thinking that something has to be exercise to be worth doing. I want you all walking as much as possible, but I don’t want you to think that it’s exercise.
Humans are obligate movers. We amble around, we meander, we fidget, and walking is the greatest expression of that quality. Humans start to get antsy if we stand in place for more than a few minutes. It’s easier for us to just walk than to stand in place. That’s exactly how you know the foundation of being human is walking.
