Women who walk at least 10,000 steps a day have no greater muscle strength and perform no better on tests of balance and agility than women who walk fewer than 7,500 steps, according to a new study. Researchers did find, however, that extra walking each day is tied to favourable measures of body fat, weight and endurance.
"This tells me more is better in terms of body composition and fitness," said Catrine Tudor-Locke, a professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center, who was not involved in this study. But "none of us think that if you walk a huge amount that you're going to have huge muscles." The researchers, led by professor Mylène Aubertin-Leheudre at the University of Quebec in Montreal, tracked the walking habits of 57 women between 50 and 70 years old. Women wore pedometers for a week to tally how many steps they took in day that occurred from any walking periods lasting longer than three minutes.
The women were split pretty much equally among three activity groups: low activity women walked fewer than 7,500 steps a day, the medium activity group walked between 7,500 and 10,000 steps and the high activity group walked more than 10,000 steps each day.
The researchers also measured the women's body weight, fat and muscle mass; muscle strength through hand grip and knee extension exercises; and balancing and functional skills by exercises such as standing on one leg or jumping onto a step with both feet.
The women who walked the most weighed less and had a smaller percentage of body fat.
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