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Walking is Fitness - How Fast Should You Walk?

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Author: Walking is Fitness
Categories: Fitness
Tags: fitness
Views: 2 · Last viewed: 2026-10-16 14:00 UTC

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Walk at a pace of at least 3 miles per hour (a mile in 20 minutes or less) to make walking count as exercise, though any walking beats prolonged sitting. The speaker argues that faster walking brings extra health, calorie, efficiency, and muscle benefits, and that beginners should first build a consistent daily walking habit before worrying about speed.

Key Points

  • Sitting too much is linked to poor health, so getting up to walk helps even at a slow pace.
  • He says experts generally set 3 miles per hour as the minimum threshold for walking to count as exercise.
  • Faster walking lowers the risk of early death further: two 10-minute daily exercise-pace walks cut that risk by about 30 percent, and faster walking cuts it more.
  • Faster walking burns more calories and makes a given workout take less time.
  • The speaker mentions research from about two years ago, without naming the study, suggesting consistently faster walkers could have a biological age as much as 16 years younger than their chronological age.

Details Worth Noting

  • Concrete instructions:
    • Measure your pace by timing yourself on a track or a measured one-mile course. If you finish in 20 minutes or less, you are walking at least 3 miles per hour.
    • Use the talk-sing test as a rough guide: if you can sing comfortably, you are walking slowly; if you can talk comfortably but not sing, you are picking up the pace; if conversation is hard without stopping to breathe, you are walking at a faster, more exercise-intensive pace.
    • If you are just starting, first build a daily habit, such as walking to the end of your driveway and back, or to the end of a hallway if you live in an apartment building, and let fitness capacity and speed grow from there.
  • The speaker notes that pace was not a focus of earlier videos and that a slow pace can be a safety choice for someone who is clumsy or distracted by watching where they walk.
  • The speaker says he is not a doctor or licensed trainer, so the health claims are his summary of research he mentions, not professional medical advice.
  • The biological-age research was described as about two years old, and the speaker gives no study name or source.

Bottom Line

Any walking beats sitting, but walking at roughly 3 miles per hour or faster is what turns it into real exercise, and the first step for most people is simply making walking a daily habit.