Stop or Go, Should Walking Count As Exercise?
- Elliot Fisher
- Oct 6
- 8 min read
Disclaimer: Before we dive in, let’s be clear: this applies to the average person. If you’re dealing with medical limitations, impairments, or you’re just starting your fitness journey, walking can absolutely be powerful, perhaps even transformative. In those cases, walking is exercise. But if you're generally healthy, capable, and seeking fat loss, strength, or performance gains, you need to know something uncomfortable: walking alone is not enough. Believing it is, might be holding you back.
The Problem With Avoiding the Problem
Everyone wants the benefits of exercise, without the discomfort. Walking feels perfect: it’s effortless, accessible, safe, and non-intimidating. It feels like exercise but demands little effort. That’s why many use walking as a substitute for serious training. But here’s the truth: what feels easy rarely drives real transformation. Avoiding real stimulus by hiding behind walking is just a convenient lie.
Walking Is Beneficial, But It’s Not Enough
Let me clarify upfront: walking delivers plenty of meaningful benefits:
Boosts digestion
Clears mental fog
Supports joint health
Improves posture
Enhances circulation and heart health
Carries Mental Health Clarity
I encourage all my clients to walk daily for those exact reasons. The issue isn’t walking itself, it’s when people try to replace actual training with walking. Countless times a client says, “I won’t make it to the workout today, but don’t worry, I’ll walk plenty.” Or after a holiday, they boast, “I walked over 20,000 steps every day!” And yet, check-in photos and scales often show they've gained weight or lost muscle. If walking truly delivered results, structured workouts wouldn’t exist. Reality keeps telling us otherwise.
Anecdote From the Gym Floor
As a gym manager, I meet new members daily, especially older adults who've finally realised they need the gym. Almost invariably, they minimize their need for real training by saying, “I walk a lot already,” and ask only how to use the treadmill for yet more walking.
This is the moment where I have to strategically deflate their illusions, gently but firmly. The treadmill won’t fix what’s broken nor does it add anything not already covered by their existing walks. What they need is to address the gaps; bone strength, muscle preservation, joint stability, that walking alone doesn’t fill. So, we introduce them to resistance machines and heavier loads than daily life, because that's what will help them stay mobile, strong, and functional in their later years.
Myth #1: Incline Treadmill Walking Is Real Exercise
One of the biggest misconceptions: incline treadmill walking, especially while holding the handrails. People think it’s great fat-burning cardio. But here's the truth:
Gripping the handrails shifts your posture, nullifying the incline.
You replicate walking as if on flat ground.
You reinforce rounded shoulders and poor alignment, exactly what most of us need to fix, not worsen.
Evidence: Studies show holding the rails can reduce calorie burn by 20–25% compared to walking hands-free ymcastark.org. Another resource warns that gripping the treadmill decreases effectiveness by lowering calorie expenditure and disturbing posture Verywell Fitymcastark.org.
Even when done hands-free, incline walking burns more, but the difference is dramatically reduced when you hold on. One study found that walking at a 10% incline increased metabolic cost by about 113% versus flat walking PubMed. Supporting that incline walking can burn nearly twice the calories of flat walking, and increase heart rate, muscle activation, and overall calorie burn, but only if performed properly, without support.
If you're going to use incline walking, walk hands-free, let your arms swing, and preserve upright posture, even then, Myth #3 has another curveball to send your way.
Myth #2: You Should Be Doing 10,000 Steps
The rise of fitness trackers and the obsession with “10,000 steps a day”, it all sounds scientific. But it’s based on myth.
Why:
Arbitrary origin: The 10,000 steps craze began in the 1960s with a Japanese pedometer marketing campaign. A device called the Manpo-Kei (万歩計), literally the “10,000-step meter”, launched before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. The number sounded appealing; it wasn’t based on health science The Guardian
Steps = units, not truths: One step burns about 0.04 kcal. That means 1,000 steps ≈ 40 calories, less than what’s in your latte. Steps are just a simplified unit, like horsepower for cars ,not meaningful for fat loss unless contextualised, therefore it's not literal steps we need to take but units of movement. How long does it take to move 1000 step units vs how easy to drink a latte?
Steps are not equal: What could be recorded as a single step on your device might not have the equivalent energy expenditure as an actual foot step. A movement of your arm doesn’t involve supporting your body weight and multiple muscles in balance. On the flip side, carrying a heavy load uses more energy but still only counts as one. You can have differing effects in reality despite the same recorded units of steps.
What’s useful is tracking progression, not hitting arbitrary thresholds. If your baseline is 5,000 steps/day, aim for 5,500. Steady increases, paired with good nutrition, create change. Use activity trackers as a guide for general direction rather than an absolute metric to appease.
Myth #3: Low-Intensity Walking Burns More Fat
Here’s the most confusing myth of all: “Walking in the fat-burning zone is best.” It’s true that a higher percentage of fat is used at lower intensities. But overall, that’s misleading.
At low intensity, fat contributes more relatively, but total calorie burn is low.
At high intensity, total calorie burn is higher, so absolute fat calories burned are often greater.
Example: Walking might burn 250 kcal/hour with ~60% from fat (150 kcal fat). Running might burn 600 kcal/hour with 40% from fat (240 kcal fat). Which is better? The latter.
A recent small study comparing incline walking, specifically the 12 - 3 - 30 [walk at 12% incline, at 3 mph for 30 minutes] approach PubMed versus running found that incline walking burned a higher percentage of fat (41% vs. 33%), but total calorie burn per minute was still lower. That being said the male and female comparisons found that ladies only burned 3% more energy from fat during a walk whereas men got the most benefit at 10% more, giving the optimistic higher figure. This shows what that “fat-burning zone” concept misses: total energy burned matters more than fuel percentage.
Holiday Anecdote: Real-Life Evidence
Every coach has seen this: a client returns from vacation having walked 20,000+ steps daily, yet is heavier than before. If walking at that volume were enough, holidays wouldn’t derail progress.
The truth: holidays often bring calorie surpluses. Walking simply doesn’t create enough of a deficit to counter indulgence, unless nutrition is strictly managed. Resistance training and cardio, combined with good nutrition, preserve muscle and burn more overall calories. Walking alone tends to blend into maintenance, not transformation.
I always tell clients: walking should be in addition to, not instead of, intense workouts. If we can’t plan your holiday to be a rest phase then it looks like you’re packing some gym clothes too.
Nutrition + Training: Walking is not exercise
This is crucial. Fat loss is fundamentally about nutrition control, supported by exercise. You can walk for miles and still fail to lose weight if your calorie intake is too high. Conversely, when paired with structured nutrition, even moderate training can deliver results.
And for improving performance, strength, power, endurance, you need high-intensity, high-stimulus workouts, supported by good nutrition. Walking doesn’t produce the hormonal and neuromuscular stimulus required for speed, strength, or metabolic adaptation.
The Balanced Truth: Why Walking Still Matters
Let me be crystal clear: walking isn’t useless. Far from it. Daily walking is one of the most underrated health habits available. It:
Enhances longevity
Reduces stress
Aids digestion
Clears mental fog
Offers low-impact movement in a sedentary world
Walking is accessible, free, sustainable, and excellent for recovery. But there’s an essential distinction: walking is for health; resistance and cardio training are for transformation. If strength, fat loss, or fitness gains are your goal, you need structured, progressive overload and higher stimulus (with nutrition), walking alone won’t deliver.
What Really Provides Stimulus for Muscle and Bone Growth, and Why That Matters
Now that we’ve established walking is great for health but not enough for transformation, let's dive into what actually does count as a real stimulus for muscle growth, bone strength, and meaningful progress. Your body only adapts when it’s forced to. Walking doesn’t force much, it’s the movement your body is already built for. To create change, you need stress that’s heavier, harder, and uncomfortable such as:
Heavy Resistance Training Preserves Strength in Older Adults
A randomized controlled trial (the LISA study) found that retirees lifting heavy weights (three times a week, at 70–85% of their one-rep max for 1 year) generally maintained leg strength over four years, while those doing moderate or no exercise lost strength The Guardian. This shows clear, long-term benefits of challenging resistance and that walking alone doesn’t suffice. A point to note is that the control group did around 10,000 steps daily and still lost muscle mass whereas the intervention group did the steps AND resistance training.
Resistance Training Boosts Muscle, Fitness, and Lean Mass
Another study in older men found that a year of resistance training significantly increased lean body mass (+1.5% vs +0.1%), fitness (+13% vs +4.6%), and leg strength (+39% vs +14%) compared to a control group doing light activity like walking PubMed.
Bones Need Loading Beyond Regular Walking
Bone density responds to impact and overload, not gentle repetition. While walking is weight-bearing, it doesn’t provide the kind of strain necessary to spark new bone formation or improvements in density, loading via exercises like squats, deadlifts, and weighted impact is necessary like in our sample programmes here.
Putting it all together: If it feels easy and conversational, it’s not a stimulus. Walking supports your health but doesn’t spark the growth and adaptation your body needs for transformation. Muscles, bones, and your cardiovascular system require challenge—and proven, regularly applied stress is the key.
Final Thoughts: Stop Settling for the Easy Way
Walking is wonderful, but it’s not enough. It’s the baseline, not the peak. Real progress requires challenge: lifting, sprinting, sweating, pushing boundaries. Walking is the supporting cast, not leading.
Keep walking! For mindset, health and recovery. But don’t fool yourself that walking is enough. If you truly want change, demand more of yourself. That’s where results live, supported by smart nutrition and varied, challenging training.
Summary
Walking offers substantial health benefits, but not enough for transformation.
Incline walking without posture or support awareness often doesn’t deliver meaningful intensity.
Step counts are arbitrary, they motivate, but don’t equate to results.
Low-intensity walking “burns more fat by ratio,” but high-intensity training burns more total fat.
Real change comes from nutrition plus high-stimulus exercise, not walking alone.
Walk smart. Train hard. Fuel wisely. That’s how results happen.
Strength - Resilience - Consistency
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