07/28/2025
If you regularly aim to walk 10,000 steps per day but struggle to hit that mark, listen up. For a long while, 10,000 steps has been the golden number for daily step counts, with many fitness trackers building it into their devices as the ideal goal to reach. But research has shown that this number is actually quite arbitrary—chosen more for the way it sounded than any strong supportive literature at the time—and that numerous health benefits can be obtained from walking much less. The greatest benefits have been found to occur between 0 and 7,000 steps, after which they continue, but level off considerably. Age is also an important factor, as those over the age of 60 hit maximum benefits at 6,000-8,000 daily steps, and those over 70 can reduce their heart disease risk by 77% by walking just 4,500 steps daily.
Your fitness tracker might be lying to you. That 10,000-step target flashing on your wrist? It didn't come from decades of careful research. It came from a Japanese walking club and a marketing campaign in the 1960s.
