Is it better to take one long walk or multiple shorter walks? Welcome to walking as fitness. This is a

podcast of action providing a little extra motivation to help you keep that fitness promise you made to

yourself. Hi, I'm Dave. I've been walking for fitness since 2013, averaging about 21,000 steps a day.

I'm walking right now, and I would love to have you join me for the next 10 minutes.

Temperatures in South Carolina, normal for this time of year.

What is different today is the skies are cloudy. We've been in this stretch of

abundant sunshine and temperature's a little bit below normal, but lots of sunshine today. I don't

think sunshine is really part of the forecast, and it certainly isn't now as I'm walking.

But there's something about a cloudy, cool day in autumn that I really like.

And I'm a fan of sunshine.

But this one feels good.

I hope the weather where you are is equally as enjoyable.

What's better? Taking one long walk every day or dividing it up into shorter walks.

And let's assume that your goal is 10,000 steps. And we're going to refer back to the study that we talked about recently, that massive study that now concludes, finds that there is

value, health value, in walking 10,000 steps a day, more than, say, 7,500 or 5,000 those are good goals and those are worthy goals and

those step counts over the course of a day every day week after week month after month

both have value long-term health value but 10,000 steps now is shown to be a goal that has some data behind it, some numbers, some research behind it.

And for most of us to reach 10,000 steps, you know, if we're just doing the incidental steps, as the study put it, you know, walking from room to room, you know, where there's really no purpose behind it, we're probably in the 3 to 4,000 range.

So to get 10,000 steps, most of us need 6,000 purposeful steps, additional steps, steps that are intentionally designed for fitness

and exercise. And 6,000 steps for most of us takes about an hour. So the bottom line, is it better

to take one long hour walk every day to reach that 10,000 steps?

Or is it better to divide that up?

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