Many fitness experts consider a brisk walking pace to be 100 steps per minute or 3 to 3.5 miles per hour.
For a person with excellent fitness, an approximate moderate walking pace: 15 minutes per mile (4 miles per hour) 9 minutes per kilometre (6.4 kilometres per hour)
Beginner walkers can try out a speed of 5 km per hour to start the habit of going for a walk everyday. Intermediate-level walkers can take on anything from 6 to 6.5 km per hour. Try this for at least 40 minutes a day with one or two days of slightly longer durations.
In a new study, which looks at activity tracker data from 78,500 people, walking at a brisk pace for about 30 minutes a day led to a reduced risk of heart disease, cancer, dementia and death, compared with walking a similar number of steps but at a slower pace.
Speed Matters When Walking for Fitness
If you're walking for your health, a pace of about 3 miles per hour (or about 120 steps per minute) is about right. That's a 20-minute mile. To walk for weight loss, you'll have to pick up the pace to 4 miles per hour (or 135 steps per minute), a 15-minute mile.
Average walking speed by age:
20-29 years: 3.00 mph (4.83 km/h) 30-39 years: 2.82 mph (4.54 km/h) 40-49 years: 2.82 mph (4.54 km/h) 50-59 years: 2.75 mph (4.43 km/h)
You might start with five minutes a day the first week, and then increase your time by five minutes each week until you reach at least 30 minutes. For even more health benefits, aim for at least 60 minutes of physical activity most days of the week.
Walking is a form of low impact, moderate intensity exercise that has a range of health benefits and few risks. As a result, the CDC recommend that most adults aim for 10,000 steps per day . For most people, this is the equivalent of about 8 kilometers, or 5 miles.
What does 10,000 steps look like? Ten thousand steps equates to about eight kilometres, or an hour and 40 minutes walking, depending on your stride length and walking speed.
Walking is a moderate-intensity exercise that can be easily incorporated into your daily life. Simply walking more often can help you lose weight and belly fat, as well as provide other excellent health benefits, including a decreased risk of disease and improved mood.
Many runners complete a 5K in 30 to 40 minutes, and many runners are satisfied with their time if it's around this benchmark. The average walker finishes a 5K in 45 to 60 minutes.
Research shows the optimal fast walking speed to increase calorie burning efficiency is 7 km/h. The results of a recent study have shown that walking consumes more energy than running if you can maintain a speed of at least 7 km/h.
Walking for 30 minutes at a brisk pace covers a distance of 2.0 to 2.5 km and burns about 125 calories (520 kiloJoules). This amount may not seem like much, but if you walked five days a week within one year you would burn over 32,000 calories which would burn off more than 5 kg of fat.
The World Health Organisation and the National Heart Foundation of Australia recommend 10,000 steps (approximately eight kilometres) per day to improve general health and reduce the risk of chronic disease.
Distances and Common Times
Kilometer: A kilometer is 0.62 miles, which is also 3281.5 feet, or 1000 meters. It takes 10 to 12 minutes to walk at a moderate pace.
Common walking paces are: Easy walk: 20:00 minutes per mile (3 mph) or 12:25 minutes per kilometer or slower. Moderate to brisk walk: 15:00 to 20:00 minutes per mile or 9:19 to 12:25 minutes per kilometer. Fast walk: 15:00 minutes per mile or 9:19 minutes per kilometer or faster.
Since cadences were only measured for 3 MET (slow) and 5 MET (fast) walks, 122 steps/min is a mid-way estimate for a 4 MET walk. This produces an estimate of 3,660 steps in 30 minutes and 7,320 steps in 60 minutes.
That's anywhere between 3,000 and 3.750 steps for that 30 minute walk. You can estimate about 3,300-3,500 steps as a good proxy for 30 minutes walking.
How many steps is a 5k? A person of average height can expect to take around 6250 steps over a 5k distance (based on an estimated stride length of 2.1 to 2.5 feet).
Generally, older adults in good physical shape walk somewhere between 2,000 and 9,000 steps daily. This translates into walking distances of 1 and 4-1/2 miles respectively. Increasing the walking distance by roughly a mile will produce health benefits.
There is no set number of miles that is considered too much (or too little) for all walkers. However, it is wise to start with shorter walks and gradually increase mileage as fitness goals are met.
THE BENEFITS OF WALKING TWICE A DAY
Being sedentary for long periods of time during the day can lead to problems associated with obesity, heart disease, and other health-related illnesses. For this reason, adopting a routine that involves multiple walking sessions per day instead of just one can be beneficial.
Walking 1 hour each day can help you burn calories and, in turn, lose weight. If you'd like to lose a substantial amount of weight (more than 5% of your body weight), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends getting at least 300 minutes of moderately intense physical activity weekly.
An hour a day is also a widely recommended goal for more advanced walkers. Health organizations usually recommend a minimum of 30 minutes of walking per day, but note that increasing your walking to 60 minutes daily gives even more health benefits.
A brisk 20-minute walk each day could be enough to cut your risk of early death – even if you are obese, according to new research published Jan. 14. The study of more than 334,000 European men and women found that twice as many deaths may be attributable to lack of physical activity as to obesity.