Should You Prioritize Walking Farther Or Walking More Often?

It is not shocking news that walking is good for the health.

See for example: Top 8 Habits Of The Top 1% Healthiest Over-50s ← walking is #3 on the list!

And a lot of research has been done into how many steps per day are important. Of which, the general consensus is:

• Under 5,000 steps = bad; one needs to walk more than this if possible
• 5,000 to 8,000 steps = good, with more being better than fewer
• Over 8,000 steps = also good, but with diminishing marginal returns

Some research has even been done with regard to when it is best to get these steps in!

See: The Japanese Health Initiative That Lowers Blood Sugars

But today we’ll look at the question: is it better to get many short walks, or a few long ones?

The road goes ever on and on

The above heading is a nod to a line from Tolkien, and while it’s not necessary to walk all the way to Mordor for good for health (in fact, we recommend against walking to Mordor specifically; famously risky for the health), as it turns out, one long walk may be better than many short ones.

Researchers (Dr. Borja del Pozo Cruz et al.) examined whether step accumulation patterns—not just total steps—affect long-term health in low-activity adults (defined as walking fewer than 8,000 steps per day).

How these were sorted: 33,560 adults averaging 5,165 steps daily were followed for 9.5 years, grouped by typical walking bout length from under 5 minutes to 15 minutes or longer.

What they found, in few words: people who bundled steps into longer, uninterrupted walks had substantially lower risks of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease than those whose steps came in short, scattered bursts.

There was a clear dose-dependent gradient to this; all-cause mortality risk fell steadily as walking bouts lengthened, from 4.36% in bouts under 5 minutes to about 0.8% in bouts lasting 15 minutes or longer. In other words, more than a 5x difference in mortality!

Not only that, but cardiovascular disease risk (not just mortality, but any CVD incidence) showed a steep decline too, dropping from 13.03% with under-5-minute bouts to 4.39% with walks of 15 minutes or longer.

If you’re on the low end of activity, there’s good news: the benefits were most pronounced among people taking fewer than 5,000 steps per day, suggesting longer walks matter most when overall activity is low.

Note: this isn’t an argument for “walk less to get greater benefits”; that’d be the opposite of the correct interpretation of these statistics. The take-away here is “longer walks matter even more when overall activity is low“.

There is an important cited limitation, namely:

❝Observational design with potential residual confounding and reverse causation❞

In other words, the results could also be at least partly explained by the alternative hypothesis “people who are healthier and have healthier hearts, walk for longer because of their good health, whereas people who are less health and have weaker hearts, walk for shorter durations only”.

However, even if this may be true, it is clear which group one should aim to be in.

You can find the paper itself here: Step Accumulation Patterns and Risk for Cardiovascular Events and Mortality Among Suboptimally Active Adults

Want to learn more?

You might like this very good book we reviewed a while back:

In Praise Of Walking – by Dr. Shane O’Mara

…and, for that matter:

52 Ways To Walk – by Annabel Streets

Enjoy!