Are your daily steps really telling you how fit you are? Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher unpack the limitations of step tracking and explain why effort, not volume, is the true driver of fitness. From sedentary habits to the power of strength training, they reveal what actually moves the needle when it comes to improving your health and longevity.

• In today’s episode, Amy Hudson and Dr. James Fisher look at whether there’s a meaning behind taking and tracking a certain number of steps and its role within the fitness context.
• While tracking our steps can make us feel good about ourselves and being active, it’s something that doesn’t tell us the full story about our fitness.
• Tracking steps is founded on a good evidence base: a study showed that taking between 7,000 to 10,000 steps per day is associated with a lower risk of mortality in older adults. 
• Dr. Fisher talks about a recent Exercise Coach Franchise Conference and the importance he gives to tracking how much time he spends in a seated position.
• Going for a jog and a walk when attending a conference helps Dr. Fisher get some exercise done during the day and get some daylight…
• Dr. Fisher believes that tracking the number of steps taken during the day is particularly important for those with a sedentary job or inactive lifestyle.
• Knowing how little steps one takes during the day can prompt lifestyle changes. 
• The main problem with tracking steps is that we start to become quite volume-monitored, rather than effort-monitored.
• Dr. Fisher points out that, nowadays, people should aim for 12,000 steps instead of 10,000, and that “not all steps are equal.”
• Think of the difference – in level of effort – between a walk that’s more like a hike and one that’s on completely flat ground, where the heart rate stays low.
• The risk associated with tracking steps is that it doesn’t give you a good gauge of your fitness, nor of the exercise that you should be undertaking to try and maintain muscle mass and muscle fibers.
• Don’t focus on the number of steps… focus on effort level.
• 5,000 steps done as a jog are more effective than 10,000 steps done as a walk.
• Amy and Dr. Fisher discuss why strength training is the key way to stimulate our muscles, our metabolism, and myokines. 
• Dr. Fisher sees strength training as the biggest thing that’s going to shift the needle of your overall health and well-being.
• For Amy, if your goal is to change your body, to add strength, improve bone density, and your hormonal and metabolic health, you have to participate in strength training.
• Amy gives a definition of exercise: “a stimulus that causes your body to produce positive adaptations.” 
• Dr. Fisher concludes by sharing a couple of concerns and considerations related to tracking steps.

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SHOW TRANSCRIPT

I think that it’s important to ask yourself what your goal is. If your goal is to take more steps, then track your steps.

I used to joke about this with my wife. When we go for a walk, I always say, oh, my watch has told me I hit my 12,000 steps, and I would just stop in the middle of the path as if I wasn’t going to take another step.

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and wellbeing. I’m Amy Hudson.

I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co-hosts are Brian Saigon, co-founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence-based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Welcome back to the podcast. Today we’re talking about another topic that people like to measure and track as it relates to their fitness, and that is tracking steps. So I remember a couple years back my brother got an Apple watch he connected and he connected it to his Apple health and he started seeing the data about how many steps he was taking each day and then he got a goal in his mind about 10,000 steps. I’m gonna take 10,000 steps a day and he was he told me how proud he was about his streak of going and closing the loop, if you can picture that, for weeks straight, getting 10,000 steps a day. I got to go and get my steps in.

And so the question we’re talking about today is, what does the steps, is there meaning behind taking a certain amount of steps? And does that tell this whole story about our fitness if we end up tracking steps? We’re going to talk about what the danger is and focusing on only that metric in terms of concluding anything about our fitness or our health progress and maybe a better way to think about it. So Dr. Fisher, how are you? I’m really great, thank you Amy. One interesting topic to discuss. It is, it is and it’s fun to like see those scores when you’re, especially if you’re going through a, maybe you’re on a trip where you do a lot of hiking or things like that and you see all those numbers and you can feel pretty good about yourself when you, you see that I’ve gotten this many steps in or I’ve spent this many minutes walking and things like that. So what I want to know from you though is, you know, why might tracking our steps not tell us the entire story about our fitness?

First of all, the idea of step tracking is a really interesting kind of phenomenon of recent decades. And it probably originates from some research, which I don’t know. I don’t know how old it is now, but it was ideally, or it was showing, sorry, that somewhere between 7 and 10,000 steps per day is associated with a lower risk of mortality in older adults. So there was a good rationale behind this.

Um, so the idea of tracking steps is, is, is founded on kind of a good evidence base. And I personally wear a fitness tracker. And I do track my steps and I’ll tell you my stories. For example, uh, we were at the conference just recently at the, uh, the exercise coach front desk conference in Tennessee. And I, one of the things that I’m very aware of whenever I go to a conference is the amount of time I’ll spend in a seated position. So I feel like I just don’t move around very much. I also am very aware when I’m on a different time zone that it’s harder for me to acclimatize to that time zone. And especially if I’m indoors so much where my body doesn’t get that natural light and that vitamin D and so forth. So whenever I go to a conference, I find myself going for a bit of a run and I was talking to one of our colleagues, uh, because he, he does the same. He goes for a run every morning. So I found myself going for a short run every morning, you know, just somewhere between, uh, you know, one or two miles, so maybe four or five miles, and then also go for a walk later on in the day. And it serves two purposes for me. First of all, it’s the idea that I’m getting some exercise during the day. And second of all, I’m getting some daylight and I’m, you know, outside getting some fresh air. I’m not just sat in a conference room, but. Certainly I track the amount of exercise that I’ve done in that way by looking at the number of steps that I’ve taken. So this idea of kind of tracking steps to say, how’s my body moved around enough during the day is not totally redundant. I’m, I’m, I’m certainly not against that idea. And I’d go so far as to say that for people who are inactive and have an inactive lifestyle, maybe they do a very sedentary job with a set at a desk. Maybe they drive or get the train in their commute to and from work and maybe they don’t have time for normal, for other exercise habits. Then the idea of introducing a step tracker into their life can be really, really positive because it first of all it can show them, hey you’re only taking 2,000 steps in a day, you know, that’s not, that’s not not a lot you need to be more active than that.

And of course that can prompt lifestyle changes so now they might wake up a bit earlier in the morning go for a walk or on their lunch instead of. I’m gonna sit at their desk me and i at university is we used to go for walking meetings. So we’d get a cup of coffee each, or we’d go and meet, and then we’d walk around the city of Southampton, and we’d kind of talk through the things that we wanted to have our meeting about, our research meeting about. So I think there can be great benefits to it, and it can be applied sort of any number of ways. Um, the main problem that’s lost is we’ve started to become quite. Volume monitored rather than effort monitored. So of course, natural steps are equal. If I go for a walk, that is more like a hike. Then the effort level is far, far higher. My heart rate response.

We’ve talked about heart rate, my sweat response. We’ve talked about sweating as well in this podcast, will be higher because of my body temperature rising and because of the effort level I’m working out so my heart rate will get higher. That might be far more important and far more beneficial than the same number of steps on completely flat ground where my heart rate stays low and my core temperature stays low and so forth. So the idea of getting 10,000 steps in a day or even 12,000 steps in a day because we have to kind of move with time and I think the metric has changed now from 10,000 to 12,000 steps. It doesn’t quite do justice and we should really think about there being, uh, some of those steps being of a reasonably high effort or being somewhat challenging to us. So maybe some of those steps should be walking up flights of stairs where we’re really having to put some strain through our muscles and through our bones and raise our heart rate and so forth.

I should check with my brother if he’s up to speed on the 12,000 then that you said, uh, cause I don’t know if he knows that or not. But you know in terms of drawing conclusions about our fitness level or what we have accomplished in terms of our physical fitness from taking steps, what is the danger in focusing on just that metric of the steps I’ve taken. I think if we do nothing else then the steps taken can be can be a very loose gauge of a baseline amount of exercise. But of course it just doesn’t give us a good gauge of our fitness, it doesn’t give us a good gauge of the exercise that we really should be undertaking to try and maintain muscle mass and specifically to muscle fibers, which we really only recruit with higher end exercise. So for example, if somebody said to me, well, I get my 10,000 steps in a day.

And somebody else said to me, I don’t get 10,000 steps in. I only get 5,000, but I get that during a run. Well, I’m afraid the money in my mind is probably on the person that runs for 5,000 steps compared to the person that walks 10,000 steps because their effort level is higher. So their stimulus to their muscular systems, their cardiorespiratory system, and so forth is much greater. So I think the idea that 10,000 steps is great for reducing mortality risk is good, but it certainly shouldn’t be taken as all we need to do for our overall health and wellbeing and fitness and strength and muscle mass and metabolism and so forth.

Okay.

So if we don’t put all of our eggs in the basket of our step count, what should we be putting our eggs in? What basket should we be putting our eggs in if we’re trying to really improve our physical fitness? Well, the answer might surprise you actually, but strength training. There’s no way to kind of recode this, but strength training, um, uh, there’s no, there’s no way to kind of ship recoat this, but it’s got to be strength training. Strength training is the key way to stimulate our muscles, to simulate our metabolism, to stimulate the release of myokines, which are signaling proteins around our body to sort of positively impact organs and cells and our brain and so forth.

Um, and recruit higher end type two muscle fibers. So strength training is really the best thing that we can do for our overall health bar nothing. I mean, if you do nothing else, if you don’t get 10,000 steps in a day, then if you’re a strength training, you’re still going to tick so much or so many of those boxes over your exercise level. Now I would always encourage people to try and get 10,000 steps in a day or to be active.

I think monitoring it is great and I think if people have a step goal, it’s great. If somebody gets to, you know, 6pm and they’re about to sit down on the couch at the end of the day, or, or, um, you know, they look at their, their step tracker and they say, wow, they’ve done 8,000 steps, I’m going to go for a walk, well, that can only be a good thing. I think that that could be a good thing. they say, oh, I’ve done 10,000 steps, I don’t need to go and do strength training today.

I think that’s a bad thing. I think that incorporating strength training into anybody’s lifestyle of any age, of any demographic, of any, you know, anybody on this planet can engage in strength training of some format. And I think that’s going to be the biggest thing that they can do to shift their needle for their overall health and well-being.

Yes, absolutely. I think that’s the point of this podcast, of course. And so, yeah, I think that it’s important to ask yourself what your goal is, right? If your goal is to take more steps, then track, right? If your goal is to take more steps, then track your steps. If your goal is to move around more, to reduce stress and to get outside and to get vitamin D, great. If your goal is to change your body, if your goal is to add strength, if your goal is to improve bone density, if your goal is to improve your if your goal is to improve bone density if your goal is to

Improve your hormonal health and metabolic health

You have to participate in strength training and that should be your first win In terms of changing. I mean we talked about the definition of exercise exercise is a stimulus that causes your body to produce positive adaptations and most of the adaptations that we’re looking for And most people are looking for if you ask them their goals in terms of fitness Those are the things that we accomplish through strength training alone, and we have to incorporate those type 2 muscle fibers and Recruit those in order to see those, those major changes. Walking alone isn’t going to suffice to really transform you from the inside out, but it’s wonderful to move around. And so it’s just not the, the end all be all, would that be a fair assessment of what we’ve basically said?

Yeah, completely, completely. Now I think there’s a couple of other things worth kind of talking about when we talk about step trackers though, if that’s okay. Yeah. And that is that they will also pick up other movements. So if I go for a walk, my step tracker will obviously count my steps, but as I’m moving around the house, there are certain things that I might do. Or if I go for a walk and I’m pushing a stroller, my wrist might not move, so it might not track steps. Or if I’m at a conference and shaking hands with everybody, then that will count those as steps. So step trackers are not perfect, they’re only tracking an amount of movement. So you know, we’re going to get some natural variation in that anyway, uh, based on our kind of our other activities. So I think we have to be a bit careful of that.

And I think the other, the other problem with kind of having a goal and setting a target for a number of steps, and I used to joke about this with my wife because we used to go for a walk, uh, or we, when we go for a walk, I always say, oh, my watch has told me I hit my 12,000 steps and I would just stop in the middle of the path as if I wasn’t going to take another step. And of course I was being facetious, but the idea that, oh, I’ve hit my step count for the day.

I’m not going to do anything else. Whereas the reality is actually if I’m out for a walk or if there are benefits to going for a walk like you said with vitamin D and fresh air and being in our wonderful planet and soaking up the environment, then we should do that regardless of how many steps we’ve taken. And we can almost kind of build this cushion that knowing that there are some days when I might not get my 10,000 steps, then if other days I get 15 or 20,000 steps, that can be great.

But, but as we’ve said, it shouldn’t be at the expense of, of not strength training.

Absolutely. Really, really good stuff. I hope if you haven’t considered this before, that this is helpful to interpret, you know, the, the activities that you’re doing and the actions you’re taking towards better health and remembering at all times what your goal is. And when you select a type of exercise to engage in, keep those goals in mind and the outcomes that you’re looking for in mind. But super, super helpful information. Do you have any other closing comments that we didn’t get to yet, Dr. Fisher?

No, no, no, no, no.

Awesome.

All right, well, we will see you next week. I hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything.com.

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