What your step count says about your fitness levels

While 10,000 steps per day has become a standard target, even as few as 4,000 daily steps can offer significant health benefits for those with a sedentary lifestyle

A study published last December, based on data from around 100,000 people, found that doing 7,000 steps per day gives you a 31% lower risk of depression, compared with less than 5,000 steps.

Almost every smartphone, smartwatch, or wearable worth its salt now has a built-in step counter.

With experts warning that ‘sitting is the new smoking’, and organisations such as the Health Service Executive (HSE) and Sport Ireland devising campaigns to encourage the public to be more active, monitoring our total number of daily steps has become part of our lives.

But how many should we really take? While the 10,000 steps per day target has become one of the most ubiquitous pieces of health advice in the past century, up there with ‘five a day’ and ‘eight hours of sleep a night’, more recent research has begun to call this number of steps into question.

“It’s clear that 10,000 isn’t the magic number, it’s just a memorable number,” says Cailbhe Doherty, assistant professor at UCD’s School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Sports Science.

Though ingrained in the popular imagination, the number doesn’t originate from any scientific study.

Instead, it penetrated the mainstream consciousness through a 60-year-old marketing campaign devised by Japanese company Yamasa, which attempted to capitalise on the success of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics by promoting the world’s first-ever wearable step-counter, called a manpo-kei. Because the device’s name translates quite literally to a ‘10,000 step meter,’ the figure stuck.

While this target has prompted many people to monitor their physical activity, Niall Moyna, professor of clinical exercise physiology at Dublin City University, believes it can also dissuade inactive members of the population, as it can seem like an overly ambitious goal.

“Some people say, ‘Well, I don’t have time to get 10,000 steps in, so I’m not going to bother,’” says Moyna. 

“But in reality, the people who can get the most bang for their buck from exercise are the ones who go from doing nothing to 4,000-5,000 steps a day. They can get enormous benefits for their health, but that message gets lost.”

Step-count boost

Hardly anyone takes zero steps in a day unless they are bedridden.

Moyna says that the majority of people living a sedentary life will take around 2,000 steps.

“If you’re at home, doing nothing more than going to the bathroom, making a cup of tea, and performing the activities of daily living, you’re going to take around 1,500 to 2,000 steps,” he says.

However, research has shown that these people also have the most to gain from boosting their step count. Moyna says they can experience some of the most dramatic improvements simply by taking a few hundred more steps per day.

“Begin by walking 500 steps from your house and 500 back,” he suggests. “You’ll get a huge benefit from those extra 1,000 steps, and then build that up over time to around 5,000 or 6,000, which should be your minimum per day.”

He points to a 2023 study led by an international consortium of cardiologists, which found that if sedentary individuals simply increased their average daily step count from 2,000 to 2,517 steps per day, they could reduce their short-term risk of dying from any cause by 8%.

Going from 2,000 to 2,735 steps daily reduced their risk, specifically of cardiovascular disease, by 11%.

The benefits increase even more if people go from 2,000 steps to somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 steps per day. The same study showed that upping step count from sedentary levels to 7,126 steps can lead to a 51% reduction in cardiovascular disease risk, while going from 2,000 steps to 8,763 steps per day reduces short-term risk of any disease by 60%.

Reaching and exceeding a 4,000-5,000 daily step count can help reduce your risk of cognitive decline, through improved blood flow to the brain, an increase in brain chemicals which stimulate the growth of new nerve cells, and better metabolism of glucose in the brain.

Reaching and exceeding a 4,000-5,000 daily step count can also help reduce your risk of cognitive decline, through improved blood flow to the brain, an increase in brain chemicals which stimulate the growth of new nerve cells, and better metabolism of glucose in the brain.

In 2022, a study of more than 78,000 middle-aged British people showed that 3,800 steps appears to be the minimum daily dose of exercise required to preserve cognition, with people who managed this number of daily steps being found to have a 25% lower risk of dementia compared with those who did less. While doing more exercise is always beneficial, once you cross 8,000 steps, the rewards for every additional 500-1,000 steps begin to level off. Avid exercisers who do 16,000 steps per day only reduce their risk of short-term illness and death by 5% more than those who do 8,000 steps.

“Of course, the more you do, the better it’s going to be, but the extra reward is nothing compared to what you get if you go from doing 2,000 steps to 7,000 steps — that’s where all the benefits are,” says Moyna.

He encourages sedentary people to set “realistic” targets. “Begin by walking 500 steps from your house and 500 back. You’ll get a huge benefit from those extra 1,000 steps, and then build that up over time to around 5,000 or 6,000, which should be your minimum per day.”

Why does the region between 2,000 and 8,000 steps seem to be the “magic zone” for improved health, as Moyna puts it, particularly cardiovascular health?

He explains that while the realities of modern life mean most of us spend the majority of our days in sitting or reclining positions, our muscles are designed for regular movement. It turns out that 7,000 to 8,000 steps seems to be the optimal dose for triggering muscle cells to release chemicals called myokines, which stimulate other organ systems in the body to work more efficiently.

“Your muscles are metabolically active organs,” he says. “We know that even going for a five to 10-minute walk causes them to release an array of chemicals called myokines, which influence everything from the brain to the liver to the kidneys. And if you do that on a regular basis, the body will adapt. The heart will become a more effective pump, the immune system improves, and blood pressure lowers.”

This increased production of myokines is also thought to be one of the reasons why reaching 7,000 steps per day seems to make a significant difference for mental wellbeing. 

A study published last December, based on data from around 100,000 people, found that doing 7,000 steps per day gives you a 31% lower risk of depression, compared with less than 5,000 steps.

Intensity matters

When it comes to step counts, two things are essential: consistency and intensity. Doherty says that finding a regular routine involving a certain amount of daily activity is better for you than sporadically doing 10,000 steps a day.

For wider physiological benefits, such as improving your insulin sensitivity or the oxygen capacity of your lungs — a metric of physical fitness — trying to do more steps at a brisk pace is essential.

Dr Cailbhe Doherty: “A lot of people do not engage in exercise, because they think, ‘There’s no way I can get 30 minutes a day."

“Volume of steps is king when it comes to broad overall health outcomes like mortality risk or heart disease,” he says. “But for fitness, metabolic health, and things like lowering diabetes risk, trying to do 30 minutes of exercise daily at a brisk pace still makes a big difference.”

Some researchers have attempted to separate ‘incidental steps’ such as pottering around the house, from more ‘purposeful steps’ — the kind we take during a brisk walk, working out, or playing sport.

A 2022 study showed that this makes a big difference — taking more than 6,000 purposeful steps per day reduces dementia risk by 60% compared with sedentary living.

Whatever the level of intensity, Moyna says that overall, it’s crucial to promote the message that anything is better than nothing, adding that the HSE’s recommendation to get 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day isn’t possible for everyone.

“A lot of people do not engage in exercise, because they think, ‘There’s no way I can get 30 minutes a day’,” he says. “But they’re not realising that even if they did some form of exercise, 15 to 20 minutes, whether that’s incidental or purposeful steps, they’re still getting enormous benefits.”