How fast do you need to walk to get fitter?

What an ordinary walking pace is

Walking speed is expressed in kilometres per hour, and the spread is narrower than in running. A relaxed walk sits around 4 to 4.5 kilometres per hour: the pace at which you talk for an hour without thinking about it. Below 3 kilometres per hour you are strolling. From about 5 kilometres per hour you feel that you are working, and above 5.5 it becomes brisk walking.

That upper end is not an arbitrary line. Up to about 5.5 kilometres per hour, walking costs little energy per kilometre, and above it the cost climbs steeply: your stride becomes so long and so fast that your body has to do ever more work for it. Around 7 kilometres per hour, walking actually costs more than a gentle jog at the same speed. That is exactly why brisk walking is such a useful stimulus: it sits just below the point where walking stops being efficient.

Which pace makes you fitter

Getting fitter takes a stimulus bigger than what your body is used to. For someone who moves little, an hour at 4 kilometres per hour is already that stimulus. For someone who walks daily, that same hour is maintenance: good for you, but it does not make you faster or stronger.

So the useful question is not which pace is healthy, but which pace is more than usual for you. A simple measure: if you can still talk calmly in full sentences, it is easy. When your breathing becomes audible and your sentences get shorter, you are training. That turn point sits at 5 kilometres per hour for one person and at 6.5 for another.

Two paces each have their own use. Your easy pace builds time on your feet and your base; you can stay in it for a long while. Your brisk pace, the one at which talking just gets awkward, lifts your heart and your muscles. A week of mostly easy walks with one or two brisk stretches inside them does more than the same middling pace every day.

Why a zone does not work here

Heart rate zones come from running and cycling. When walking you put less muscle mass to work and there is no flight phase, so at the same perceived effort your heart rate is lower. Most of your walking time therefore falls below the lowest running zone. A walk that was real work for you gets a screen that says zone 1, or nothing at all.

That is why pace is a better steering signal for walking than heart rate. A target pace, a speed you aim for today, is concrete, measurable without a chest strap, and it says exactly what a zone does not: how hard you are working compared with what you normally do.

If you still want to read your heart rate, you need a band of your own instead of a zone ladder. How that works is in the article on heart rate while walking.

How to measure and build your pace

A watch or the app on your phone gives you an average speed per walk. Do not look at one walk but at a few weeks: what is your usual pace on a usual day? That number is your starting point, and anything clearly above it is training.

Then build with stretches rather than whole walks. Ten minutes of brisk walking in the middle of an easy one-hour walk is a stimulus you can simply repeat tomorrow. Add such a block twice a week, and after a few weeks you will notice that your usual pace has crept up with it.

Hills, sand and a backpack are the other dial. They raise the effort without your pace having to rise, and they load your legs differently from flat tarmac. Anyone who wants to get fitter without walking faster chooses terrain.

What Trimetra does with this

Trimetra steers walking sessions on a target pace, not on a threshold or a zone. That pace comes from your own walking history: what you are used to on an easy day, and what you can handle when you push on. A recovery walk gets a lower target pace than a brisk walking session, and both shift as your usual pace changes.

The planner has its own walking forms: a recovery walk, an endurance walk, a long hike, a progressive walk, brisk blocks, brisk walking, a hill or dune walk, a walk with a backpack, a session on posture and cadence, and a second day in a row. Each form says what the intention is and which pace goes with it.

Walking also has its own records: your fastest 5 and 10 kilometres, your longest walk, your biggest climb. They sit next to your running records, not among them, because a walking pace next to a running pace says nothing.

Without a heart rate monitor, a walk counts as training from half an hour at 3.5 kilometres per hour or more; anyone slower or shorter is getting from A to B, which is fine too but is not a stimulus. With a heart rate monitor every minute counts, even below that pace, because then the app can read the effort itself.

Frequently asked questions

Trimetra steers your walks on a target pace from your own history and keeps walking records separately. You can try everything for your first month; recording and collecting stay free after that.