How many steps you can take daily to meet Australia’s physical activity guidelines

A person’s age is the most important factor in how many steps they need to see physical and mental health benefits, according to experts.

While it was originally thought that 10,000 steps a day was the golden number for everyone, how old they are plays a huge part in how far they should walk to meet daily activity guidelines.

The new 24-hour movement guidelines for all Australians, released in March, recommend both adults — aged between 18 and 64 — and older adults — aged between 65 and over — get 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day.

This would equate to 3000 steps a day if you wanted to walk as your exercise of choice.

Children and adolescents — aged between 5 and 17 — are recommended to get 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity a day, which would equate to 6000 steps.

The more steps the better the outcomes, according to 2025 University of Sydney research, which revealed when a person increased their daily steps from 2000 to between 5000 and 7000 steps there was significant health improvements, including the risk of death lowering by 47 per cent.

Dementia risk dropped by 38 per cent from walking 7000 steps a day with only a seven per cent extra reduction at 10,000 steps.

Cardiovascular disease risk decreased by 25 per cent while depression reduced by 22 per cent and risk of falls dropped by 28 per cent.

Cancer risk also reduced by six per cent.

Walking 10,000 steps was the most beneficial in reducing the chances of developing type 2 diabetes by 22 per cent, compared to 14 per cent if walking 7000 steps.

University of Sydney Healthy Ageing theme leader Anne Tiedemann said walking was an easy way to stay healthy for a lot of Australians.

“Walking is physical activity and we know that physical activity has massive benefits for physical and mental health,” she said.

“It reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, mental health issues and it promotes feeling good, sleeping better, and keeps your bones strong and muscles strong.

“The benefits of doing walking as your physical activity is that it’s very accessible. You can do it anywhere, it doesn’t require a lot of equipment, apart from some decent shoes, and it’s free.

“There’s a lot of benefits in choosing walking as your physical activity to keep your body and your mind healthy.”

Depending on how fit you are, Professor Tiedemann said you can vary the intensity of walking to get your heart rate up.

“You can vary the intensity of your walking by walking faster or using hills or stairs so there’s ways we can increase the demand on the body to get those benefits continuing,” she said.

For Hannah Munro, who created women’s hiking group SheHikes Perth, walking had both physical and mental health benefits.

The hiking group meets every Saturday and usually walks between eight to 15 kilometres.

“I’ll do gyming and yoga as well but hiking is my main form of exercise, I like that it’s low impact,” Ms Munro said.

“Hiking fit is a different fit to any other fit. You definitely notice that you’re far better for it.

“I found even when I was at university I would need to go hiking just to have a good mind reset.

“I think a lot of the girls that join us for the hikes are university students and they notice the same thing — it’s a good reset.”

Hiking has proven to be popular among Perth woman with more than 4000 people now following SheHikes Perth on social media.

“We launched the Instagram in July last year so we’ve only been around for a wee bit but now we have 4000 followers, which is crazy,” Ms Munro said.

“Obviously, the community wanted something like this because, otherwise, it wouldn’t have taken off like it has.”

Professor Tiedemann reminded everyone that if walking isn’t for you it is not the only answer to keep healthy and also to only walk if it’s in a safe environment.

“Having a goal for people to do a number of steps per day is good but it’s not the only answer to improving our health with physical activity.

“Many types of activity are important and steps is just one way we can capture that.”