It’s 9 p.m., and my mom has just messaged to tell me she’s doing laps of her lounge again. Not because she’s bored, and not because the weather’s bad, but because it’s 9 p.m. and, according to her watch, she hasn’t hit her step goal yet. And look, I’m not judging. Walking has changed my life for the better: parkrun on Saturdays, a hiking club, even moving to a complex where I can safely walk in the evenings. (Ten laps, if you’re wondering. Apparently it runs in the family.) But I also spend long days at a desk, and I know the small sting of checking my phone at bedtime and seeing how far short I’ve fallen. So when did walking become another number we have to hit before we can call it a night? And why 10,000 steps, anyway? To find out what that number really tells us about our health, I dug into its surprising history and spoke with doctors and other health and fitness experts about what the science shows, what else is worth paying attention to, and whether there’s a better way to measure our walking. Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo) We’ve long been told that 10,000 steps a day is the global standard for optimal health. The number is so entrenched that it feels like a clinical recommendation. But this magical, round figure wasn’t established by scientific research, and the origins of the goal we’ve all been striving (or striding) toward are surprisingly hard to pin down. What we do know is that it started in Japan in the 1960s. Tokyo was preparing to host the 1964 Olympics, and the country was modernizing fast. Escalators, elevators, cars and richer food were, as Leo Lewis, writing for the Financial Times, put it, “wonderful symbols of economic rise, but hell on the waistline.” At the same time, awareness was growing that regular exercise could help fight lifestyle diseases. Walking was the obvious choice. Almost anyone could do it, and you didn’t need a coach, a trainer or any special equipment. In 1965, Japanese clock and instrument maker Yamasa Tokei Keiki released a small, waist-worn device that let people count their steps throughout the day. Widely regarded as the first commercial pedometer, it was a forerunner of the wearables some of us are so devoted to today. They called it the Manpo-kei (万歩計). Man means 10,000, po means steps, and kei means meter. Put that all together and you get: the 10,000-step meter. Some sources say the idea came from Tokyo physician Dr. Iwao Ohya, who suggested to engineer Jiro Kato that people could counter the effects of a more sedentary lifestyle by walking 10,000 steps a day. But the details are scarce. Both Ohya and Kato have since died, and a Yamasa spokesperson has apologized for the company’s lack of information on where the number came from. Japanese researcher Dr. Yoshiro Hatano, sometimes credited with inventing the target, actually began studying it only in the late 1970s, linking 10,000 steps to the calories needed to help protect the heart. What’s clear is that the target itself wasn’t based on research. At the time, “There were no actual studies that had looked at ‘10,000 steps,’” Harvard epidemiologist Dr. I-Min Lee told Popular Science. “It was a made-up number in the sense that 10,000 sounds good, it’s easy to remember.” It didn’t hurt that the Japanese character for 10,000, 万, looks a bit like a person mid-stride, which Lee says gave the name extra “pizazz.” Yamasa sold the device with a slogan built around walking 10,000 steps a day, and as walking clubs sprang up across Japan, the idea took off. It took a while to go global. In the US, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop’s Shape Up America! campaign began promoting 10,000 steps in the mid-1990s, and when Fitbit launched its first wearable in 2009, 10,000 was the default goal. As step-counting devices multiplied over the past 20 years, 10,000 became an unofficial target that more and more people noticed and adopted. These days, some corporate wellness programs even tie rewards to how many steps employees log. But if that magical number so many of us chase on our wrists started out as more marketing than medicine, how well does it hold up? Nick Page / Unsplash (not the actual photo) Whatever the number’s origins, walking itself has proven health benefits. Brisk walking gets your heart rate up and, done regularly, is good for your heart, weight and mental well-being. There’s even a rough logic to the 10,000 figure. As cardiologist Dr. Christopher Labos explains, someone who doesn’t exercise regularly might take 6,000 to 7,000 steps a day just going about their routine. Add a 30-minute walk, roughly 3,000 to 4,000 steps, and they’ll land somewhere near 10,000. That 30-minute walk, five days a week, is one way to meet what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends: at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, such as brisk walking, each week. The World Health Organization sets the same minimum. Notably, neither recommends a daily step count. But when researchers put the 10,000-step target to the test, it largely held up as a worthwhile goal. In two of the largest studies of their kind, published in 2022, the risk of early death, heart disease and cancer kept falling with more steps, up to around 10,000 a day. So does that mean we should feel defeated if we’re not clocking 10,000 steps a day? And should we really be doing laps of our lounges to get there? Not necessarily. Showing that 10,000 steps is good for you isn’t the same as showing that it’s the number you need. “The benefit is real, but it levels off well short of 10,000,” Dr. Robert T. O’Leary, a physiatrist who specializes in physical medicine and rehabilitation at Physicians Regional Medical Center in Naples, Florida, told Bored Panda. In 2019, Lee and her colleagues studied older women and found that those who averaged about 4,400 steps a day had a significantly lower risk of death than those who took around 2,700. The benefits increased with more steps, but leveled off at about 7,500, which Lee calls “the sweet spot.” A 2022 analysis of 15 studies found a similar pattern in a broader group of adults, and suggested that age matters. The risk of early death kept falling until about 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for people aged 60 and over, and 8,000 to 10,000 for younger adults. The reason may lie in how our bodies change. “Our biomechanics become less efficient as we age, so we expend more energy with each step than we used to. Therefore, we may need to walk less to get the same benefits,” explains Dr. Bethany Agusala, an internal medicine physician at UT Southwestern Medical Center who specializes in preventive and lifestyle medicine. A major meta-analysis published in The Lancet Public Health in 2025 went further, looking beyond early death to a wider range of health outcomes. Drawing on 57 studies, researchers found that people who averaged 7,000 steps a day had a 47% lower risk of dying from any cause than those taking around 2,000. They also had a lower risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia and depression. The benefits started well below 7,000 steps, too. Around 4,000 steps a day was linked to a 36% lower risk of dying from any cause compared with 2,000 steps. Beyond 7,000, the benefits continued to increase for some health outcomes, but began to level off for others. So is 7,000 the new magic number? Not quite. “These are observational studies, so they show an association and can’t prove that walking more is the cause,” Dr. Menooa Ebrahimi, a physician and the founder of health-tracking app PulseLoop Health, told Bored Panda. People who walk more may also have other healthy habits, or may simply be healthier to begin with. Still, the findings suggest that 10,000 steps isn’t a minimum you have to hit for your efforts to count. Pablo Merchán Montes / Unsplash (not the actual photo) Steps are a handy measure. Most of us already carry a step counter in our pocket or on our wrist, and the number is easy to understand. That makes them motivating, too. Jiro Kato, the Yamasa engineer who designed the Manpo-kei, realized early on that people get more enthusiastic about health goals when they can measure their efforts. “Nobody actually counts their own steps in their head,” his grandson Ken Kato, who has led the company since 2007, told the Financial Times. “With one of these, you know you have to get off the train one stop early and walk the rest of the way.” Because devices count steps automatically, they also tend to give a more accurate picture of how active we are than our own estimates. That’s why researchers rely on them, often tracking participants’ steps for a week and then following their health for years. But step counts have their limits. Readings from consumer trackers and research-grade devices can differ by 20% or more, and some devices miss steps at very slow walking speeds, which means they may undercount for frail older adults. Steps also miss whole categories of exercise: a long bike ride, a swim or a weights session might barely register on your watch, despite doing your body plenty of good. Then there’s effort. A step count treats a leisurely stroll and a brisk walk the same, but official physical activity guidelines specifically recommend moderate-intensity activity, which, as Labos explains, generally means walking briskly enough that you’re a little short of breath or find it slightly harder to hold a conversation. “For example, 30 minutes of brisk walking each day is not the same activity profile as racking up the same number of steps over the course of a day with trips around the house,” David Zhong, a registered kinesiologist and certified personal trainer in Greater Vancouver, told Bored Panda. A step count can also hide changes in how we walk. “The counter measures how much ground you covered. It does not measure how fast you can still cover it, and speed is the part that tracks how long you live,” O’Leary said. “Steps can stay high while the pace dies; a shuffle still counts as a step.” He points to a large study of older adults, which found that how fast people usually walked predicted how long they would live. You can check your own without a lab, he says, by timing yourself over the same stretch of sidewalk once a month. If the time creeps up, that matters more than your step total. Whether deliberately walking faster brings extra benefits beyond the number of steps is a separate question, and it’s still debated. The large 2022 studies mentioned earlier suggested it does, but the 2025 Lancet review found mixed results: a faster pace was linked to a lower risk of early death, but for most other conditions it made little difference once total steps were taken into account. The researchers concluded there wasn’t yet enough evidence to recommend a particular walking pace. Ebrahimi’s advice? “Since the findings differ, I’d treat steps as the main number and use pace as a bonus: some brisk walking, enough that you can talk but not sing, in addition to the total.” Others go further. Writing for The Conversation, Hunter Bennett, a lecturer in exercise science at Adelaide University, suggests that we focus less on steps altogether and more on the minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity counted by those public health guidelines. The same guidelines also recommend muscle-strengthening activities at least twice a week, something a step count doesn’t capture at all. Walking is great for your heart and lungs, but it isn’t enough on its own to build the muscle strength and power that help keep us independent and steady on our feet as we age. As Bennett puts it, if you can aim for 7,000 steps a day and add weight training twice a week, “you’re going to have most of your bases covered from a health perspective.” Arek Adeoye / Unsplash (not the actual photo) “If you do get 10,000, you’re definitely going to get health benefits,” Lee told The Wall Street Journal. “It’s not wrong, but it might be a harder goal for some people.” And for those people, fixating on 10,000 can backfire. As Harvard Health contributor Steve Calechman notes, “When people continue to not hit five digits, eventually some ditch the effort altogether.” Zhong sees a similar risk. “Missing your goal one day doesn’t mean you did something wrong or that you have to make up for it the next day,” he said. “A goal of 10,000 steps on a busy work day could create guilt, and that’s counterproductive.” It could lead to an all-or-nothing mindset: the feeling that if you don’t reach 10,000, the effort somehow doesn’t count. In reality, the biggest gains come from moving away from a very inactive baseline, which is good news if you’re starting low. In other words, aim for progression, not perfection. Rather than chasing an arbitrary target, start where you are. “If I had to put a number on it, I’d say try to get 2,000 steps more than you already do,” Lee told the WSJ. Zhong agrees that a modest goal you can sustain beats an ambitious one you’ll abandon. “Rather than set a lofty goal you’re going to give up on, it’s better to have a goal you’re going to keep on with for months at a time,” he said. “Once a particular goal becomes easier, adjust from there.” That goal might be as simple as a short walk after dinner or taking the stairs. It also helps to look beyond the daily total. “Consistency matters more than any single day’s count,” Ebrahimi said. Adam Lamb, a chiropractor in New York City who regularly advises patients on walking for back, hip and knee health, suggests paying attention to how your walking feels, too. “A more meaningful measure than a single day’s total is consistency plus how the walking feels and is done: regular days, a comfortably brisk pace, upright posture, and no limp, low-back or joint irritation afterwards,” he told Bored Panda. “A day at 6,000 steps done briskly and pain-free tells me more than a forced 10,000 done with overstriding and a sore back the next day.” And once walking is part of your routine, O’Leary suggests asking it “for something the counter cannot see: a faster minute, a hill, the groceries carried home.” Your ideal step count may also change as your life does. Age, fitness, health and even your job all play a role. “If you have a physically active job where you take 10,000 steps during the workday, you may not need to take a bunch of steps after work, too,” Agusala writes. “Instead, you might want to consider strength or core training, or work on your flexibility.” And if you’re recovering from surgery or illness, the goal looks different again. “For someone recovering from surgery, a short comfortable walk is more useful than forcing themselves to complete a goal of 10,000 steps,” said Professor Prasanna Sooriakumaran, a surgeon and the medical director of Prostate Clinic London. He told Bored Panda he’d rather see patients track how long they walk, their pace and how they feel, and build up gradually from there. You don’t need a fancy device to do this, either. Agusala says most people walk a mile in about 15 to 20 minutes, so tracking minutes or distance works just as well. And if you already hit 10,000 steps consistently? There’s no reason to stop. It’s just not a universal requirement for good health. Andrej Lišakov / Unsplash (not the actual photo) So where does that leave my mom, doing laps of her lounge at 9 p.m.? Probably in a better place than that number might make her feel. For her, as for many of us, the benefits level off well before 10,000, and those last few hundred steps before bed may not make much difference on their own. What matters more is the habit she’s built and the fact that she keeps moving, day after day. When I asked the specialists I interviewed what they’d say to someone who feels they’ve failed for missing 10,000, every one of them gave some version of the same answer. “If you missed 10,000, you did not fail,” O’Leary said. “That number never came from a study.” The same goes for me on the days I’m stuck at my desk and my step count is lower than I’d like. A parkrun, a hike or a few evening laps around the complex all count, whether or not they add up to 10,000. As Lee told the WSJ, “Even very modest amounts benefit your health. It’s not like you have to go out and run a marathon.” You don’t need a perfect 10(K), either. And neither, it turns out, does my mom. Timon Studler / Unsplash (not the actual photo) Centre for Ageing Better / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
