10K Steps a day or 70k a week?

kraney88 wrote: »

So I have been really curious. Do you have to hit 10k steps a day to be effective or can just hitting 70k steps a week be just as beneficial? I am currently training for a run and on my training days I sail pass 10k, but on my rest days I tend to fall short, but I am always over 70k a week averaging 10k steps a day.

The 10K steps is a moderately arbitrary number that's easy to identify, gives you a basic amount of activity and isn't excessive. The main things that you get from aiming for it are consistency and routine.

I'm in a similar situation, when I'm training then my short runs are at least 10K, working up from there, so on running days I can make an assumption that I've got more than 10k steps in the day anyway, but on non-running days it can be quite dependent on my work. If, as today, I drove to site, spent most of the day in and around the office, then drove back I'm getting 6k steps for the day.

Given that I can run a sub 50 minute 10k and a 2 hour half marathon I'm pretty comfortable with my fitness, the benefit of step tracking is that it helps prod me to move around more during the day, where it's possible. There is some evidence suggesting that long periods of sedentary activity have negative effects, regardless of the periods of more intensive activity like an hours running or cycling 5 or 6 days per week.

that and 10k steps walking is not equal to 10k steps running as far as benefit goes. If you're hitting 11k average and >50% of that is running, you're doing just fine.