Forget Steps! Just Walk at Least 15 Minutes at a Time for Daily Exercise.

Over the many decades that we have been hosting a nationally syndicated show on public radio, we have interviewed thousands of health experts. They often disagree about drugs, diets and treatments. But they all agree that daily exercise is beneficial for your health. Where they disagree, though, is what kind and how much exercise is best.

Researchers have been arguing about how many steps you need to prevent heart disease. But a new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Oct. 28, 2025) reports that it’s not how many steps you take but how long you walk that counts. Walk at least 15 minutes at one time on a regular basis and you will get substantial benefit.

Longer Walks Are Better Than Lots of Short Walks:

For years, we were told that 10,000 steps should be the daily goal. Then scientists reported that 7,000 might be enough for older adults.

Now, the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reports that getting your steps in a single long walk is better for cardiovascular health than accumulating steps in many shorter walks. The investigators analyzed data from more than 33,000 participants in the UK Biobank database.

These healthy people averaged 62 years of age at the start of the review and were taking fewer than 8,000 steps daily. The periods of physical activity were classified as shorter than 5 minutes, 5 to 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes or 15 minutes or longer.

After 8 years, the volunteers who regularly walked more than 15 minutes at a time were 80% less likely to have died. They were 70% less likely to have had a heart attack or stroke than the people who took shorter walks.

Absolute Risk Reduction is a Powerful Metric!

Most of us are terrible at statistics. Drug companies have become skilled at taking advantage of our ignorance when it comes to promoting pharmaceuticals. Even the FDA has fallen into the stat trap.

My favorite example, that I have abused far too many times, has to do with the most prescribed drug in the US. Atorvastatin (Lipitor) is taken by about 30 million Americans every day in the hopes of preventing heart attacks. An ad promoting the brand name cholesterol-lowering statin boasted that Lipitor lowered the risk of a heart attack by 36%. That was a “relative risk reduction.”

An asterisk next to the 36% number offered the absolute risk reduction at the bottom of the page. During a five-year clinical trial involving Lipitor, 3 people out of 100 (3%) experienced a heart attack if they were on placebos. For those taking Lipitor, 2 people out of 100 (2%) experienced a heart attack. In other words, the absolute risk reduction thanks to Lipitor was 1%.

What, you may ask, does absolute risk reduction have to do with walking and the risk of cardiovascular events or mortality?

The article in the Annals of Internal Medicine (Oct. 28, 2025) found:

“Cumulative all-cause mortality at 9.5 years decreased with bout length: For bouts shorter than 5 minutes, it was 4.36%; for 5 to shorter than 10 minutes, 1.83%; for 10 to shorter than 15 minutes, 0.84% ; and for 15 minutes or longer, 0.80%. Cumulative CVD [cardiovascular disease] incidence at 9.5 years followed a similar pattern: For bouts shorter than 5 minutes, it was 13.03%; for 5 to shorter than 10 minutes, 11.09%; for 10 to shorter than 15 minutes, 7.71%; and for 15 minutes or longer, 4.39%.”

These are absolute risk reductions. As you can see, people who achieved more than 15 minutes of walking at a time achieved substantial cardiovascular and mortality benefits!

The authors concluded:

“Most guidelines emphasize a minimum range of MVPA [moderate to vigorous physical activity], and daily stepping targets are emerging. Regardless of how physical activity recommendations are framed, many people do not meet them. In this large prospective cohort study, we found that among suboptimally active participants (those with an average daily step count < 8000), those who accumulated most of their steps in longer bouts had lower risks for all-cause mortality and CVD than those whose steps were mostly taken in shorter bouts.”

The bottom line:

People who get most of their daily steps from longer walks do better than people who get shorter walks.

What About Other Kinds of Exercise?

Muscle-strengthening exercise, in particular, can also reduce the risk of premature death (British Journal of Sports Medicine, Feb. 28, 2022). What’s more, it doesn’t take a lot. Just 30 to 60 minutes a week of push-ups, sit-ups, weight lifting, using resistance bands, or even digging in the garden can be protective. How can people be inspired to get up and move?

Minimal Equipment Daily Exercise Is as Good as Going to the Gym:

Exercise physiologists are frequently asked which equipment is best for rehabbing a particular health problem. This is especially important when it comes to people with breathing problems such as asthma or COPD. A study published in JAMA Network Open asked the question whether minimal exercise equipment could be as helpful as specialized exercise equipment when it comes to pulmonary rehabilitation (JAMA Network Open, Aug 12, 2025). After all, the investigators point out, “demand for PR [pulmonary rehabilitation] outstrips supply.”

This 8-week randomized clinical trial involved two supervised personal sessions a week for two months with follow-up a year later. The minimal equipment exercise program involved walking, body weight exercises and resistance bands. The specialist equipment involved the use of treadmills, ergometers, resistance equipment and free weights. Personal trainers supervised both groups. The investigators measured exercise capacity, breathlessness and health-related quality of life.

Both exercise programs were effective in improving the 436 participants’ overall health. The authors concluded that minimal equipment was just as effective as high-tech gym equipment. Both reduced breathlessness and improved exercise capacity and health-related quality of life. A low-tech approach should make this type of health program accessible to more people who need it.

Testing Behavior Change Strategies to Encourage Daily Exercise:

Although the health benefits of regular exercise are well-known, health experts don’t know how to get people to actually participate in physical activity. A study tested behavior change strategies in a study of about 300 sedentary older individuals (JAMA Network Open, Feb. 29, 2024).

Researchers divided these volunteers into three groups who were asked to participate in an exercise program on their own three times a week. One group served as a control. Another group was encouraged to set goals as an incentive to move. The third group used peer-to-peer experience sharing. All participants wore an accelerometer for objective measurement of their physical activity.

Only the volunteers in the third group increased their activity significantly by the end of the year. Daily step counts were up by nearly 1,000, and people fit in more than 10 extra minutes of moderate to vigorous activity daily. These results suggest that one of our favorite tactics, exercising with friends, is worth consideration.

Optimal Exercise Combination to Delay Death:

A study considered what types of exercise are best (JAMA Internal Medicine, Aug. 7, 2023) to reduce all-cause or cancer mortality? To find out, an international group of investigators analyzed data from the US National Health Interview Survey.

More than 500,000 adults participated in this research, and the volunteers were followed for a median of 10 years. The authors were especially interested in different kinds of activity: moderate aerobic physical activity (MPA), vigorous aerobic physical activity (VPA) and muscle strengthening activity (MSA). They wanted to know about the optimal combination of exercise for longevity.

What they learned from half a million people is that balanced amounts of moderate and vigorous aerobic activity and a comparable amount of muscle strengthening exercise reduced people’s risk of dying during the ten years of follow-up. They saw the greatest reduction in risk of dying from any cause in people who did up to 75 minutes of MPA, 150 minutes of VPA and at least two MSA sessions each week.

Cardiovascular mortality was lowest among people with more MPA, up to 225 minutes a week, and up to 75 minutes of VPA along with at least two strengthening sessions. Those who engaged in even more MPA, up to 300 minutes a week, along with 75 minutes of vigorous exercise and two MSA sessions had the lowest risk of dying from cancer. In order to achieve those weekly totals, daily exercise, or near-daily exercise, is required.

Studies of Daily Exercise and Longevity:

The results of a meta-analysis of cohort studies published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggest that even less daily exercise can be protective. The investigators analyzed data from 16 studies, with participants between the ages of 18 and 98 years old.

Muscle-strengthening activity was linked to lower risks of cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and mortality from any cause. Including aerobic activity in the analysis demonstrated that people who exercised more were less likely to die early. These vigorous individuals had less cardiovascular disease or cancer.

How Much Daily Exercise Will Protect You?

The meta-analysis found that people benefited from strength-building exercise for just an hour a week. Spreading it out over multiple sessions in the week works best. In previous research, as little as 15 minutes of daily exercise made a difference for longevity.

Many people feel as if they are either too busy or too stressed out to exercise every day. A frequent excuse is, “I don’t have time to put in 30 minutes to an hour working out at the gym every day.” Aside from the fact that exercise can help reduce stress, they don’t need an hour every day.

A decade ago, a study published in The Lancet tracked over 400,000 Taiwanese volunteers for roughly eight years (The Lancet, online Aug. 16, 2011). Those who exercised even moderately for a quarter of an hour daily lived three years longer than their inactive countrymen. The more people exercised, the better their chance of living longer. Moreover, half an hour of daily exercise improved life expectancy by an additional year. The bottom line seems to be that regular exercise, even just 15 minutes daily, can improve lifespan.

Learn More by Listening:

We have discussed the benefits of daily exercise and how to motivate yourself to manage it in some of our podcasts. You might want to listen to Show 1442: The Healing Power of Exercise Prescription; Show 1264: How to Make Exercise More Enjoyable; Show 1182: How to Use Exercise as Medicine is also worthwhile.

If you were to ask us what is the #1 most valuable thing you can do to maintain good health, we would have to say that exercise tops our list. If you agree, please send this article to friends and family. They might be surprised to learn about the latest research that demonstrates walking more than 15 minutes at a time provides substantial benefit compared to shorter bouts of exercise.

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