walking 10000 steps per day..cardio?

cwolfman13

Walking IS cardio. It frustrates me when people tell me it's not classed as exercise. I think it’s assumed that walking is always just strolling along at a comfortable rate. Put your all into it, aim for a 4mph speed, and get your heart rate up, and that’s a perfectly acceptable form of cardio. As for logging it as exercise, I think what a previous poster said about using your fitbit to adjust your calories is the best thing. Mine is pretty accurate and ties in with what my HRM tells me. 10,000 steps per day is the recommended amount in the UK. I think you’re doing just fine.

I would never say that it's not exercise...but for someone who if pretty fit, walking even at a 4 MPH pace isn't really going to get you into an aerobic HR zone...I would pretty much have to get into speed walking or something at this point if I was going to use walking to increase my aerobic capacity and endurance.

I walk a lot as a recovery exercise now...when I first started it was my primary form of exercise, but these days it really does very little in the way of improving my cardiovascular fitness or endurance capacity. It really just depends on where you are and ultimately what your fitness goals are.

I generally get in around 10,000 - 15000 steps or more per day but I still cycle 4 times per week with one of those being a hard spin and another being a long ride (right now my "long" is 30 miles but I'm building that up). I also weight train full body 2x weekly. I could never have imagined having the capacity for this much exercise a year and a half ago...now I can't figure out how I just sat around so much and did nothing before.

dmt4641

As others have said, there is a difference between steps from daily activity and cardiovascular exercise. Even though both burn calories and will help you lose weight, you need your heart rate to be elevated for a period of time to be considered "cardio." For some individuals, a brisk walk will be cardio. For me, my heart rate doesn't really go up unless I am pushing myself harder. I try and make sure I have enough active or very active minutes in my day. My fitbit dashboard has it set for a goal of 30 minutes a day. A brisk walk usually shows up as active minutes (yellow), and more intense cardio shows up as very active (green). I try to have some yellow minutes along with the red every day, and green mixed in on my "cardio" days.

Francl27

Walking IS cardio. It frustrates me when people tell me it's not classed as exercise. I think it’s assumed that walking is always just strolling along at a comfortable rate. Put your all into it, aim for a 4mph speed, and get your heart rate up, and that’s a perfectly acceptable form of cardio. As for logging it as exercise, I think what a previous poster said about using your fitbit to adjust your calories is the best thing. Mine is pretty accurate and ties in with what my HRM tells me. 10,000 steps per day is the recommended amount in the UK. I think you’re doing just fine.

I would never say that it's not exercise...but for someone who if pretty fit, walking even at a 4 MPH pace isn't really going to get you into an aerobic HR zone...I would pretty much have to get into speed walking or something at this point if I was going to use walking to increase my aerobic capacity and endurance.

I walk a lot as a recovery exercise now...when I first started it was my primary form of exercise, but these days it really does very little in the way of improving my cardiovascular fitness or endurance capacity. It really just depends on where you are and ultimately what your fitness goals are.

I generally get in around 10,000 - 15000 steps or more per day but I still cycle 4 times per week with one of those being a hard spin and another being a long ride (right now my "long" is 30 miles but I'm building that up). I also weight train full body 2x weekly. I could never have imagined having the capacity for this much exercise a year and a half ago...now I can't figure out how I just sat around so much and did nothing before.

Well, yes and no. You can make it more challenging, at least on a treadmill, with a bigger incline.

Azdak

For a fit person, regular walking--even 10,000 steps--will be "activity" and likely not provide much in the way of fitness benefits.

Bah. I disagree. Going for a one hour brisk walk will be exercise, no matter how fit the person is.

Walking 10,000 steps while shopping or taking the kids to the park will be activity.

It depends on the intensity of the activity vs the fitness level of the individual. When I walk my dog, I walk for 45-60 min at 4.0 mph and my heart rate does not go above 100. For me it is not exercise--it's the dog's exercise. I would never log it nor count it. When I finish, then I go and do my workout.

Conversely, last Friday I walked for 76 minutes on the treadmill at an average speed of 3.7 mph and an avg incline of about 8%. In that time, my HR averaged about 125 and I burned 1000 calories. That was exercise--for me.

It's not a value judgement, it's just physiology.