Fitness apps that track how many steps you take each day often stop short of telling you how far you actually walked. A simple calculation can convert that step count into kilometres in seconds.
Staying healthy requires regular physical activity, whether that is running, weight training, a team sport or simply walking. Walking is good for health, but contrary to popular belief, it is not necessary to hit 10,000 steps a day to benefit.
What health guidelines actually recommend
The World Health Organization does not set a specific number of steps per day. Instead, it recommends adults get at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week, which works out to roughly half an hour of walking a day, or around 3,000 to 4,000 steps.
The World Health Organization is the United Nations agency responsible for international public health.
How to turn steps into kilometres
Smartphone apps that track movement can easily show the approximate number of steps taken in a day, whether that is 5,000, 8,000, 10,000 or even 20,000. Useful as that figure is, it does not on its own reveal the distance covered.
To find out how many kilometres you have walked in a day, there is a simple formula: multiply the number of steps by the length of your stride.
Working out your stride length
For the most accurate result, start by measuring your average stride length by taking a single step. That average stride typically ranges between 0.60 metres and 0.80 metres.
If you took 10,000 steps in a day, you simply multiply that figure by your stride length, which in one example is 0.70 metres. That comes to 7,000 metres, or seven kilometres.
Stride length is not identical with every step, however, so it helps to estimate distance using a wider range rather than a single figure. For a stride of 0.70 metres, 10,000 steps can be said to correspond to somewhere between six and eight kilometres.
