Ask a room full of regular walkers what they’re optimizing for and most of them will say the same thing: step count. I’ve watched clients in gyms check their watch every few blocks like it’s a rep counter. The 10,000-step goal is burned into our heads, and honestly, it’s not a bad habit to have.
But here’s the thing. A study that came out this month in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests the number worth caring about might not be how many steps you take — it’s how fast you take them.
Researchers from Monash University and the University of Sydney looked at activity-tracker data from 64,743 UK adults, average age 61, and followed them for about eight years. The headline: people who walked at a brisker pace had a lower risk of early death, even when their daily step count fell well short of the usual targets.
And you can check your own number in one minute. No equipment. No app required. Just a flat stretch of ground and the ability to count.
How to Take the 60-Second Walking Test
Measuring walking pace in steps per minute has a technical name: cadence. Researchers have used it for years because it tracks closely with how hard your body is actually working, and you don’t need a single piece of gear to measure it. A 2018 review of 38 studies noted that you can get a reliable reading by simply counting your steps for one minute.
Here’s the protocol, the same way I’d hand it to a client:
Pick a flat route. No hills, no stairs, no crosswalks that make you stop and start. Elevation changes the length and rhythm of your stride, so a flat route is what keeps your number comparable every time you retest.
Warm up first. Walk easy for two to three minutes before you start. Your first minute out the door is almost never your real pace, and testing cold means testing your worst self.
Walk with purpose, then count. Pick up to the pace you’d use if you were a little late for something. Start a timer and count every step — left and right — for 60 seconds. Lose track easily? Count only your right foot and double the number.
Can’t hold a count for a full minute? Count for 15 seconds and multiply by four. Emmanuel Stamatakis, a professor at Monash University and the study’s corresponding author, suggested exactly this method when he talked to CNN about the research.
One more option: a lot of fitness trackers and phone apps already record cadence, usually labelled steps per minute. On most devices it sits in the post-walk summary rather than on the live screen. If yours does, you can check your number on any walk without counting a thing.
What Your Number Actually Means
The benchmarks below come from the CADENCE-Adults study, a series of lab studies led by Catrine Tudor-Locke that measured the energy cost of walking at different step rates. Intensity is expressed in METs — a measure of how much energy an activity burns compared with just sitting still.
Under 100 steps per minute. If your number lands here, don’t panic. It means your purposeful walk is below the line researchers use for moderate intensity. You’re still moving. You just have room to push.
100 to 109 steps per minute. This is the threshold. Across studies of adults aged 21 to 60, about 100 steps per minute consistently matched moderate-intensity exercise — the level public health guidelines are built around. A later CADENCE study confirmed the same threshold held for adults aged 61 to 85.
110 to 129 steps per minute. Above 100, each additional 10 steps per minute adds roughly one MET of intensity. So 110 is a little harder, 120 harder again. This is the band where brisk walking starts to feel like an actual workout.
130 steps per minute and above. In adults up to age 60, about 130 marked the start of vigorous intensity. Most people can’t hold that cadence for long. For adults over 60 the research is less settled, so treat this band as a rough guide.
Over 60? Your Line Is Probably 105, Not 100
This is the detail most coverage of the new study left out.
The 100-step benchmark measures intensity in absolute terms: the same energy cost for everyone. But the same pace feels harder to a less fit body. When the CADENCE researchers looked at adults aged 61 to 85 and measured intensity relative to each person’s own fitness, the best threshold for moderate intensity came out at 105 steps per minute or more.
If you’re over 60, 105 is a better target than 100. Same test, different finish line.
Why Pace Matters as Much as Step Count
The new study grouped participants by daily steps — under 5,000, 5,000 to 7,500, 7,500 to 10,000, and over 10,000 — and by what the researchers call “peak-30 cadence”: the average pace of each person’s 30 fastest minutes of walking in a day. Those minutes didn’t have to be consecutive.
Overall, the lowest risk of death was among people taking about 7,500 to 10,000 steps a day. But the more interesting finding was at the bottom of the range. Among people taking fewer than 5,000 steps a day, those who walked faster during their most active half-hour had roughly a one-quarter to one-third lower risk of dying during follow-up than slow walkers in the same group, according to co-author Nicholas Koemel. Their risk ended up similar to people taking 5,000 to 7,500 steps at a slower pace.
In plain terms: if you can’t walk more, walking faster may get you some of the same benefit.
Two caveats keep this honest. The study was observational, so it shows a link between pace and lower risk, not proof that speeding up causes it. And the evidence isn’t unanimous — an earlier large US study found that once total daily steps were accounted for, pace was no longer significantly linked to mortality. Step count and pace both appear to matter. This study just adds weight to the pace side.
And to be precise: your 60-second count isn’t the same measurement the researchers used. They had a week of wrist-tracker data. Your count tells you whether your purposeful walk reaches brisk intensity — which is the kind of walking the study linked to lower risk.
Where the 10,000-Step Goal Actually Came From
If 10,000 has always felt out of reach, this should help. According to Stamatakis, the target didn’t come from a scientific finding at all. It traces back to a 1960s marketing campaign for a Japanese pedometer.
That doesn’t make more steps useless — the new study found steady benefits as daily steps rose. It just means 10,000 was never a line between healthy and unhealthy. It was a slogan that stuck.
Your Doctor May Already Be Timing Your Walk
Walking speed has a long history in medicine for older adults. A 2011 study in JAMA pooled data from nine cohorts of older adults and found that gait speed was associated with survival in every single one of them. Survival rose steadily as walking speed increased.
Gait speed is measured in meters per second over a set distance, so it isn’t the same as steps per minute. But both point at the same thing: how briskly you move is a useful window into how your body is aging.
How to Raise Your Number
If your first test came in under 100 — or under 105 if you’re past 60 — here’s how I’d approach it with a client.
Take quicker, shorter steps. The instinct when trying to walk faster is to lengthen your stride. Try the opposite. Cadence is steps per minute, so the direct way to raise it is to simply take more of them. Shorter, quicker steps also keep your feet landing under your body instead of reaching out in front. Bend your elbows and keep the arm swing quick and compact.
Walk to a 100-beat soundtrack. Find a playlist at 100 to 110 beats per minute, or set a free metronome app to 100, and match one step to each beat. It takes the counting out of it. Once the rhythm feels natural, nudge the tempo up by five.
Try interval walking. Researchers at Shinshu University in Japan developed a method called interval walking training — sometimes called “Japanese walking” online. The protocol alternates three minutes of fast walking with three minutes of slow walking, repeated at least five times, on four or more days a week. In their original five-month trial, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2007, middle-aged and older adults who walked in intervals improved their aerobic fitness and thigh strength more than those who walked at a steady moderate pace. The fast intervals are a natural place to practice your target cadence; the slow ones are your recovery between pushes.
Protect your brisk half-hour. The study measured each person’s 30 fastest minutes of the day. So one brisk stretch of walking a day is the target, and the rest can happen at whatever pace suits you. A practical way to do that: pick one walk you already take — the walk to the train station, the loop around the block after dinner — and make that your fast one.
Make one walk longer. A separate study published in Annals of Internal Medicine in October 2025 looked at how people gathered their steps. Among less active adults, those who took most of their steps in walks of 15 minutes or longer had lower risks of death and heart disease than people whose walking came in bursts of under five minutes. Combine the two findings: one longer walk, at a brisk pace, may be the most efficient walk of your day.
Retest every two weeks. Write down your number and the date, then take the test again on the same route every couple of weeks. The same route matters. A different stretch of sidewalk, a windier day, or a gentle incline you barely notice will all move the number for reasons that have nothing to do with your fitness.
Cadence is a health number you can move yourself — for free, without a clinic appointment. Watching it climb over a few months is a good enough reason to keep going.
When to Add Steps Instead of Speed
Walking faster isn’t right for everyone. Stamatakis noted that for people with a bad knee, poor balance, or a fear of falling, being told to walk faster can be unhelpful — adding steps at a comfortable pace is the sensible alternative.
He also offered a simpler way to judge pace than counting. At a brisk pace, your breathing should get noticeably heavier, and you should feel warmer, but you should still be able to talk in short sentences. That’s the practical version of “moderate intensity” you can feel in your own body.
If you have a heart condition, high blood pressure, or any other health concern, talk to your doctor before increasing the intensity of your walks. And if you feel sharp chest pain, dizziness, or unusual shortness of breath, stop and see a qualified professional before continuing.
The Science, Simplified: Most people think of walking as a step-count game, but the latest research says pace matters just as much. About 100 steps per minute is moderate intensity for most adults — and about 105 if you’re over 60. A study of nearly 65,000 adults found that walking faster was linked to lower risk of early death even when the total step count was low. You can measure your own number in 60 seconds with nothing but a stopwatch, and if it’s under target, quicker shorter steps and a fast-slow interval pattern are the fastest ways to raise it.
Here’s what I tell my clients: start with one walk. Count your steps, write the number down, then nudge it up over the next few weeks with shorter steps or a faster beat. If speed isn’t comfortable for your body, add steps at a pace that is. Either route counts — and the one you’ll actually stick with is the one that works.
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