Walking in nonstop segments of 10 to 15 minutes in daily life is much better for your heart than the same number of steps with only five minute walks.
If you squeeze in little walks here and there — maybe a quick stroll to the mailbox or a loop around the office — you might want to reconsider your approach.
A study suggests that going for one or two longer walks each day could do a lot more for your heart than scattering tiny bursts of movement throughout the day.
Researchers from the University of Sydney and Universidad Europea in Spain found that people who walk continuously for 10 to 15 minutes at a time can slash their risk of cardiovascular disease by as much as two-thirds compared to those whose walks are shorter than five minutes.
Even if both groups end up with about the same total number of steps, the people taking longer, uninterrupted walks seem to come out ahead when it comes to heart health.
The study, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine (2025), looked at how walking habits affect people who aren’t especially active to begin with.
Over 33,000 adults between 40 and 79 took part. None had a history of heart disease or cancer, and they typically walked fewer than 8,000 steps per day.
Each participant wore a high-quality activity tracker for a week so researchers could see not just how much they walked, but how they walked — whether in short segments or steady, continuous sessions.
Then the researchers tracked participants’ health for about eight years.
Striking Results
• Those who walked in bouts of 10-15 minutes had only about a 4% risk of problems such as heart attacks or strokes.
• People whose walking was mostly broken into tiny five-minute segments had a 13% risk.
• Among the least active participants (those logging fewer than 5,000 steps a day), longer walks were even more powerful.
Their risk of developing heart disease dropped from 15% to just 7%.
• Death rates also fell sharply — from 5% for short walkers to under 1% for those who regularly walked longer stretches.
This study may have you confused, as it’s yet another walking study among so very many.
But there are basic measures you can take to ensure that the walking you do every day will heavily count towards protecting your heart from disease and improving overall health.
• Simply walk as much as possible. This includes pacing about while watching TV.
• When you walk incidentally, such as from one spot to another at the workplace, move at a quick pace rather than a sluggish or lumbering one.
• Move quickly when shopping.
• Walk with speed whenever you’re in parking lots.
• Make a point to dedicate time every day to one 10 minute nonstop walk and one 15 minute nonstop walk.
• Replace naps with walks.
