A new research study has looked into the benefit of taking 10,000 steps a day. This is what they discovered.
You’ve likely heard by now that taking 10,000 steps a day is good for your mental and physical health. Many wearable fitness trackers set goals of 10k steps per day as default goals, and reward that movement milestone with congratulatory messages.
Exercise is obviously good for you, and 10,000 steps seems like a solid, scientific number. Except it isn’t. Up until this point, there was absolutely no research to support that number, and in fact, it was chosen arbitrarily for a Japanese marketing campaign designed to sell fitness products. Somehow, from there, it became adopted as a global movement goal.
It turns out that 10,000 steps is just a number. Researchers were able to determine that as expected, getting more exercise is good - 5,000 steps beats 4,000 steps when it comes to positive outcomes. Movement is always good. That said, they were able to calculate that 7,000 steps is more of the magic number. 7,000 daily steps reduced the chances of premature death by a factor of 50-70%.
If your goal is to live longer, and lose weight 7,000 steps will get you there. If your goal is more aggressive weight loss, then the more you walk each day, the more calories you will burn - so aiming for longer walks will be more effective.
Shorter exercise durations make fitness more accessible and achievable for beginners. If you haven’t purposefully exercised in years or even decades, the goal of hitting 7,000 steps per day is 30% more achievable than 10,000 steps per day, and for a beginner that is struggling to break their way out of a sedentary lifestyle of very little movement, bringing the bar down by 30% makes the health benefits of walking that much closer to achieving.
More and more research is coming out that is proving that it doesn’t take that much movement and exercise to make incredible things happen. Our 30 Day Beginner Bootcamp workout series is just 10-12 minutes per day, and it’s more effective than a 45 minute jog when it comes to weight loss and strengthening and toning up your body. 10 minutes at a beginner level is achievable for people that haven’t exercised in years and it delivers life changing results.
Everyone has to start somewhere - but you don’t have to start way above what you are capable of to start to make a huge difference in your weight and overall health. Starting with 7,000 steps and 10 minutes a day of exercise is enough - and way, way better than doing nothing. Make it your goal to get in your daily 7,000 steps and come and train for us for 10 minutes each day - it’s absolutely bloody miraculous what can happen. You can find our Beginner Bootcamp, and all of our other beginner level programs on our fitness streaming service BodyRockPlus.com (think our version of NetFlix.com but for workouts). Today we are offering a full year of unlimited access to our Beginner Bootcamp workout series for just $69 with code NY22. 10 minutes a day - you’ve got this.
A great way to add the benefits of strength training to your walk, and significantly up your calorie burn is to simply snap on one of our BodyRock weighted vests. These vests add hands free resistance, are designed for a woman’s body, and optimize every move you make for fat loss. Take one on your next power walk!