Fitness
Exercise scientist recommends one easy trick to increase benefits of walking
It’s 2025, and walking 10,000 steps a day is one of the most popular fitness goals on the planet.
The scientific rationale is dubious – research suggests that doing 7,000 to 8,000 steps a day offers optimal return for your health. But the human psyche loves having a nice, round number to aim for, and if a step goal encourages people to move more, it’s hardly a bad thing.
However, a 2024 paper published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports suggests there’s more to consider than just how many steps you do if you want to maximise benefits such as losing weight, lowering your blood pressure and decreasing your blood sugar levels.
The article shows that both exercise quantity and quality (ie. intensity) are associated with the five cardiovascular risk factors for metabolic syndrome; elevated waist circumference, high triglycerides, low HDL (or “good” cholesterol), high blood pressure and high blood sugar.
To improve these, “the analysis says you can get away with just doing a higher volume of exercise, but you’re better off doing a higher volume and a higher intensity of exercise in combination,” the paper’s lead author Dr Elroy Aguiar tells me. “It’s the combination of quantity and quality that gives you the best benefit.”
In other words, incorporating a slightly faster spell of walking into each day could have significant positive impacts.
How to walk 10,000 steps a day for optimal health results
The good news is, particularly for those newer to exercise, upping your exercise quality doesn’t need to mean signing up for several sweaty HIIT classes or committing to sprint intervals. It can be as simple as walking a bit faster.
“Accumulating a high volume of walking throughout the day, then focussing on doing at least 30 minutes of faster walking or jogging, would be a way to lower your metrics for each of the progressive risk factors,” says Dr Aguiar.
However, even shorter bursts of more intense physical activity were shown to have a positive effect.
“One of the really interesting findings from our paper was that, if you look at people’s highest one minute of activity across each day, averaged across the monitoring period, that was a very strong signal for whether they had one or more of the metabolic syndrome risk factors present,” Dr Aguiar explains. “Even something as little as one minute of high-intensity activity could be beneficial.”
In practice, applying this advice might mean most of your daily steps are performed at your usual pace. Then, you can try to include a brisk stroll while running errands at some point during the day – a higher cadence, or the number of steps you take per minute, has also been linked to improved health outcomes.
Read more: Stanley Tucci got into the ‘best shape of his life’ at 63 with this training method
Benefits of focussing on exercise quality and quantity
If you ask people about their fitness goals for 2025, “improving metabolic syndrome risk factors” probably doesn’t crop up too many times. But by breaking it into its requisite parts, the benefits of improved exercise quality and quantity become far more relatable.
“Exercise is one part of a behavioural strategy to lose weight, which would reduce visceral adiposity,” Dr Aguiar explains. Visceral adiposity refers to the fat found around vital organs, deep within the abdominal area.
“We know that if you store fat mass around your abdominal area, that’s more dangerous than storing fat mass in your lower body or subcutaneously [just under the skin]. Visceral fat around your vital organs wreaks a lot of havoc in terms of the metabolic signalling that goes on there. Essentially, it’s dangerous to store a lot of abdominal fat because it changes the way our vital organs in that area function.
“By accumulating a higher volume and intensity of activity, you can reduce your weight and abdominal fat.”
As ever, you’re likely to see the best weight loss results by changing both your activity levels and diet. But exercise alone will still deliver significant benefits.
Read more: Walking for 15 minutes after eating has an ‘immediate effect’ and can protect your health long-term, expert says
“Especially for individuals who are overweight and obese, and may have metabolic syndrome, exercise and behavioural strategies can minimise and reverse risk factors when they are in their early stages,” Dr Aguiar adds.
Blood pressure is another of the metabolic syndrome risk factors that can be improved by increasing the quantity and quality of your weekly physical activity levels.
“Exercise is already well-known to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure; that’s called post-exercise hypotension,” Dr Aguiar says. “Within as little as 15 or 20 minutes post-exercise, you can see a decrease in blood pressure from one bout of walking, for example.
“Just going out for a walk at a brisk pace, faster than you would usually, will drop your blood pressure down for up to about 24 hours post-exercise.”
A quick trot is also capable of dropping your blood glucose levels for up to 48 hours, Dr Aguiar adds.
“Each of those metabolic syndrome five risk factors, on a small timescale of hours to days, can benefit from going out for a brisk walk, a slow jog, or something like that. By consistently meeting physical activity guidelines, all five risk factors will improve over time too.”
Read more: A walking expert says ‘10,000 steps a day is a good starting point’ – here’s what to do next
How to increase your activity levels
Overall, Dr Aguiar says the current World Health Organisation’s (WHO) physical activity guidelines provide a solid benchmark to aim for.
They state that “every move counts towards better health,” and each week adults should aim to collect 150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity, 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity or a combination of the two. But this blanket prescription can take many forms to fit in with your lifestyle.
“Some people might choose to get most of their activity on the weekend, and some people might choose to break their activity up into smaller periods throughout the day,” Dr Aguiar says.
“You can also use incidental movement. The new WHO messaging says that all movement counts, so if that means walking a little bit more quickly to your car or the train station, just to elevate your heart rate and your metabolic rate a little bit for brief periods you can accumulate throughout the day, those things count in terms of exercise.
“And they’re incidental. We all walk, to some degree; from your office to the bathroom, or to a local cafe. If you can focus on walking a little bit faster than you normally do, that’s going to be beneficial for a lot of these risk factors, especially the blood glucose and blood pressure side of things.”
Read more: Rucking is the fitness trend that’s here to stay – here’s why you should try it
People with high cardiorespiratory fitness were 36% less likely to experience depression and 39% less likely to develop dementia than those with low cardiorespiratory fitness. Even small improvements in fitness were linked to a lower risk. Experts believe that exercise’s ability to boost blood flow to the brain, reduce bodywide inflammation, and improve stress regulation may explain the connection.
Fitness
These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique
While many swear by them, most people see burpees as a form of punishment – usually dished out drill sergeant-style by overzealous bootcamp PTs. Often the final blow in an already brutal workout, burpees are designed to test cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and mental grit. Love them or loathe them, they deliver every time.
For Max Edwards – aka Busy Dad Training on YouTube – they became a simple but highly effective way to stay fit and lean during lockdown. Once a committed powerlifter, spending upwards of 80 minutes a day in the gym, he was forced to overhaul his approach due to fatherhood, lockdown and a schedule that no longer allowed for long, structured lifting sessions.
‘Even though I was putting in hours and hours into the gym and even though my physique was pretty good, I wasn’t becoming truly excellent at any physical discipline,’ he explained in a YouTube video.
‘I loved the intentionality of training,’ says Edwards. ‘The fact that every session has a point, every rep in every set is helping you get towards a training goal, and I loved that there was a clear way of gauging progression – feeling like I was developing competence and moving towards mastery.’
Why He Walked Away From Powerlifting
Despite that structure, Edwards began to question whether powerlifting was sustainable long-term.
‘My sessions were very taxing on my central nervous system. I was exhausted between sessions. It felt as if I needed at least nine hours of sleep each night just to function.’
He also noted that his appetite was consistently high.
But the biggest drawback was time.
‘I could not justify taking 80 minutes a day away from my family for what felt like a self-centred pursuit,’ he says.
A Simpler Approach That Stuck
‘Over the course of that year I fixed my relationship with alcohol and I developed, for the first time in my adult life, a relationship with physical training,’ says Edwards.
With limited time and no access to equipment, he turned to burpees. Just two variations, four times a week, with each session lasting 20 minutes.
‘My approach in each workout was very simple. On a six-count training day I would do as many six-counts as I possibly could within 20 minutes. On a Navy Seal training day I would do as many Navy Seal burpees as I could within 20 minutes – then in the next workout I would simply try to beat the number I had managed previously.’
This style of training is known as AMRAP – as many reps (or rounds) as possible.
The Results
Edwards initially saw the routine as nothing more than a six-month stopgap to stay in shape. But that quickly changed.
‘I remember catching sight of myself in the mirror one morning and I was utterly baffled by the man I saw looking back at me.’
He found himself in the best shape of his life. His energy levels improved, his resting heart rate dropped and his physique changed in ways that powerlifting hadn’t quite delivered.
‘It has been five years since I have set foot in a gym,’ he says. ‘That six-month training practice has become the defining training practice of my life – and for five years I have trained for no more than 80 minutes per week.’
The Burpee Workouts
1/ 6-Count Burpees
20-minute AMRAP, twice a week
How to do them:
- Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
- Crouch down and place your hands on the floor (count 1)
- Jump your feet back into a high plank (count 2)
- Lower into the bottom of a push-up (count 3)
- Push back up to plank (count 4)
- Jump your feet forward to your hands (count 5)
- Stand up straight (count 6)
20-minute AMRAP, twice a week
How to do them:
- Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
- Crouch down and place your hands on the floor
- Jump your feet back into a high plank
- Perform a push-up (chest to floor)
- At the top, bring your right knee to your right elbow, then return
- Perform another push-up
- Bring your left knee to your left elbow, then return
- Perform a third push-up
- Jump your feet forward
- Stand or jump to finish
Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.
You check your smartwatch after a run. Your fitness score has dropped. You’ve burnt hardly any calories. Your recovery score is really low. It’s telling you to take the next 72 hours off exercise.
The worst bit? The whole run felt amazing.
So why is your watch telling you the opposite?
Ultimately, it’s because smartwatches and other fitness trackers aren’t always accurate.
Smartwatches can shape how you exercise
Using wearable fitness technology, such as smartwatches, has been one of the top fitness trends for close to a decade. Millions of people around the world use them daily.
These devices shape how people think about health and exercise. For example, they provide data about how many calories you’ve burnt, how fit you are, how recovered you are after exercise, and whether you’re ready to exercise again.
But your smartwatch doesn’t measure most of these metrics directly. Instead, many common metrics are estimates. In other words, they’re not as accurate as you might think.
1. Calories burned
Calorie tracking is one of the most popular features on smartwatches. However, the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired.
Wearable devices can under- or overestimate energy expenditure (often expressed as calories burned) by more than 20 per cent. These errors also vary between activities. For example, strength training, cycling and high-intensity interval training can lead to even larger errors.
This matters because people often use these numbers to guide how much they eat.
For example, if your watch overestimates calories burned, you might think you need to eat more food than you really need, which could result in weight gain. Conversely, if your watch underestimates calories burned, it could lead you to under-eat, negatively impacting your exercise performance.
2. Step counts
Step counts are a great way to measure general physical activity, but wearables don’t capture them perfectly.
Smartwatches can under-count steps by about 10 per cent under normal exercise conditions. Activities such as pushing a pram, carrying weights, or walking with limited arm swing likely make step counts less accurate, as smartwatches rely on arm movement to register steps.
For most people, this isn’t a major problem, and step counts are still useful for tracking general activity levels. But view them as a guide, rather than a precise measure.
3. Heart rate
Smartwatches estimate your heart rate using sensors that measure changes in blood flow through the veins in your wrist.
This method is accurate at rest or low intensities, but gets less accurate as you increase exercise intensity.
Arm movement, sweat, skin tone and how tightly you wear the watch can also impact the heart rate measure it spits out. This means the accuracy can vary between people.
This can be problematic for people who use heart rate zones to guide their training, as small errors can lead to training at the wrong intensity.
4. Sleep tracking
Almost every smartwatch on the market gives you a “sleep score” and breaks your night into stages of light, deep and REM sleep.
The gold standard for measuring sleep is polysomnography. This is a lab-based test that records brain activity. But smartwatches estimate sleep using movement and heart rate.
This means they can detect when you’re asleep or awake reasonably well. But they are much less accurate at identifying sleep stages.
So even if your watch says you had “poor deep sleep”, this may not be the case.
5. Recovery scores
Most smartwatches track heart rate variability and use this, with your sleep score, to create a “readiness” or “recovery” score.
Heart rate variability reflects how your body responds to stress. In the lab it is measured using an electrocardiogram. But smartwatches estimate it using wrist-based sensors, which are much more prone to measurement errors.
This means most recovery metrics are based on two inaccurate measures (heart rate variability and sleep quality). This results in a metric that may not meaningfully reflect your recovery.
As a result, if your watch says you’re not recovered, you might skip training — even if you feel good (and are actually good to go).
6. VO₂max
Most devices estimate your VO₂max — which indicates your maximal fitness. It’s the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise.
The best way to measure VO₂max involves wearing a mask to analyse the amount of oxygen you breathe in and out, to determine how much oxygen you’re using to create energy.
But your watch cannot measure oxygen use. It estimates it based on your heart rate and movement.
But smartwatches tend to overestimate VO₂max in less active people and underestimate VO₂max in fitter ones.
This means the number on your watch may not reflect your true fitness.
What should you do?
While the data from your smartwatch is prone to errors, that doesn’t mean it is completely worthless.
These devices still offer a way to help you track general trends over time, but you should not pay attention to daily fluctuations or specific numbers.
It’s also important you pay attention to how you feel, how you perform and how you recover. This is likely to give you even more insight than what your smartwatch says.
Hunter Bennett is a lecturer in exercise science at Adelaide University. This piece first appeared on The Conversation.
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