Why Walking Might Be the Most Underrated Exercise

When people think about getting fitter, walking rarely gets much attention.

Running gets Strava screenshots. Strength training gets impressive before-and-after photos. Hyrox gets people pushing sledges around warehouses in very little clothing.

Walking?

You put your shoes on and go outside.

And perhaps that is exactly why we underestimate it.

Walking is simple, accessible, relatively easy to recover from and requires almost no equipment. More importantly, it can make a meaningful contribution to your cardiovascular health, energy expenditure, mental wellbeing and overall activity levels.

The latest UK Chief Medical Officers’ physical activity guidelines, updated in July 2026, specifically include brisk walking as moderate-intensity activity. Adults are encouraged to accumulate at least 150 minutes of moderate activity each week, alongside muscle-strengthening exercise on at least two days.

So, perhaps walking deserves a little more respect.

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Walking Is Proper Exercise

There is a strange tendency within fitness to judge exercise by how unpleasant it feels.

Sweating buckets? Exercise.

Heart pounding? Exercise.

Unable to walk downstairs the following morning? Definitely exercise.

Going for a 45-minute walk while chatting to your friend?

Somehow that gets dismissed as “just walking”.

But your body does not care whether an activity looks impressive on Instagram.

Physical activity is simply movement that increases energy expenditure, and walking absolutely counts. The NHS describes walking as one of the simplest ways to become more active and notes that brisk walking can improve stamina, burn calories and support heart health.

The important distinction is intensity.

A gentle stroll and a purposeful brisk walk aren’t quite the same stimulus. The current UK guidance suggests using the talk test to judge moderate intensity. You should be able to talk, but singing would become difficult.

For many people, particularly those who are currently inactive, brisk walking can therefore provide a perfectly legitimate cardiovascular workout.

The Biggest Benefits Might Come From Simply Moving More

One of the most important messages in the latest physical activity guidelines is also one of the simplest:

Some activity is better than none.

In fact, the biggest proportional improvements in health appear to occur when people move from doing very little physical activity to doing some. The benefits continue to increase as activity rises towards approximately 150 minutes per week, although the rate of additional benefit becomes smaller beyond that point.

That matters enormously from a coaching perspective.

If someone currently does virtually no exercise, they don’t necessarily need a complicated five-day training programme.

They might need to start walking.

A sedentary client who begins walking for 20 or 30 minutes most days of the week has made a significant change to their lifestyle.

And because walking doesn’t require changing clothes, driving to a gym, booking a class or recovering for three days afterwards, it can be remarkably easy to repeat.

That matters because the best exercise programme in the world is pretty useless if someone doesn’t actually do it.

Walking Is Brilliant for Cardiovascular Health

Your cardiovascular system responds to regular physical activity.

Walking at a sufficient intensity increases heart rate, breathing rate and oxygen demand. When performed regularly, aerobic activity contributes towards improvements in cardiovascular fitness and is associated with a reduced risk of several chronic diseases.

The World Health Organisation highlights regular physical activity as an important part of preventing and managing conditions including cardiovascular disease, hypertension and type 2 diabetes, while also supporting mental health and general wellbeing.

You don’t necessarily need to run.

For some people, running is fantastic. For others, particularly beginners, older adults, people carrying more body weight or those simply uninterested in running, walking may be a much more realistic starting point.

And realistic usually beats theoretically optimal.

Walking Can Help With Fat Loss, But Let’s Keep It Sensible

Walking is often marketed as some magical “fat-burning” activity.

It isn’t.

But it can still be extremely useful for someone trying to lose body fat.

Fat loss ultimately requires an appropriate energy balance, with diet playing the major role in weight management. The 2026 UK guidelines explicitly state that nutrition is an important factor in managing body weight, while physical activity plays a supporting role.

Walking can support this process by increasing daily energy expenditure without creating enormous amounts of fatigue.

Imagine two people both trying to become leaner.

One decides they need to destroy themselves with six brutal workouts every week.

The other strength trains a few times, pays attention to their nutrition and starts walking regularly.

The second approach isn’t as exciting.

It may, however, be considerably easier to maintain for six months.

That is where walking becomes powerful.

You can increase activity without necessarily increasing hunger, soreness, fatigue or recovery demands to the same extent as repeatedly adding harder training sessions.

Walking isn’t a replacement for managing your diet.

It is simply another useful piece of the puzzle.

Walking Complements Strength Training Brilliantly

This is another reason I love walking.

It doesn’t have to compete with your other training.

If you strength train regularly, you need to recover from those sessions. Adding several additional high-intensity conditioning workouts can eventually interfere with recovery, particularly if your sleep, nutrition and general stress aren’t great.

Walking gives you another way to remain active without every training session becoming a battle.

You can train hard when training hard has a purpose, then walk on other days.

It is a particularly useful approach for people interested in long-term health because walking and strength training provide different benefits.

The current UK recommendations still encourage adults to perform muscle-strengthening activity at least twice per week. Walking therefore shouldn’t replace resistance training entirely.

Think of them as partners rather than competitors.

Lift things. Walk places. Occasionally get out of breath.

There are worse foundations for lifelong fitness.

Walking Helps Break Up Sedentary Time

You can train for an hour in the morning and still spend most of the rest of the day sitting down.

This is increasingly relevant when so many people work behind desks, commute in cars and spend their evenings looking at screens.

The latest UK guidance specifically recommends reducing sedentary time and breaking up long periods of inactivity with at least light physical activity where possible.

Walking provides an incredibly simple solution.

Instead of thinking purely in terms of “workouts”, start looking for opportunities to move throughout your day.

Walk while taking a phone call.

Walk to the shops.

Go outside for ten minutes at lunchtime.

Walk after dinner.

Park slightly further away.

Take the stairs.

None of these things deserves its own motivational montage.

Collectively, however, they can dramatically change how active your average day becomes.

Walking Can Be Good for Your Head Too

Exercise isn’t only about body composition and fitness.

Regular physical activity is also associated with better mental wellbeing, and both the WHO and UK guidelines highlight benefits for mental health.

Walking also has something that many formal workouts don’t.

Space.

You can think.

Talk.

Listen to a podcast.

Spend time outside.

Walk with your partner.

Walk with your children.

Walk with your dog, assuming your dog hasn’t decided that every pigeon requires immediate investigation.

That makes walking more than just exercise.

It can become part of your lifestyle.

And that distinction matters because activities woven into everyday life are often easier to maintain than another appointment we have to squeeze into an already busy week.

The 2026 Chief Medical Officers’ report actually emphasises this point, noting that lasting activity is more likely when movement is enjoyable, useful or integrated into normal routines.

You Don’t Need 10,000 Steps

The 10,000-step target has become so ingrained in fitness culture that people sometimes treat 9,999 steps as some sort of physiological disaster.

It isn’t.

There isn’t a magical switch that activates at step 10,000.

The more useful principle is to look at what someone currently does and gradually increase it.

If you currently average 3,000 steps per day, getting to 5,000 or 6,000 consistently could represent a meaningful increase in physical activity.

If you already average 10,000, doing another 5,000 isn’t automatically necessary.

Context matters.

Your current fitness, health, goals, occupation, training programme and available time should all influence how much walking is appropriate.

This is another reason walking works so well. It is incredibly scalable.

How to Start Walking More Without Overthinking It

You don’t need a sophisticated walking periodisation model.

Try this instead:

1. Establish your current activity level. Check your average daily steps if you use a phone or smartwatch.
2. Increase gradually. Add a manageable amount rather than suddenly deciding you need to walk 20,000 steps every day.
3. Use short walks. Ten or fifteen minutes before work, at lunch or after dinner can quickly accumulate.
4. Walk briskly sometimes. If improving cardiovascular fitness is the goal, increase the pace until you’re breathing harder but can still hold a conversation.
5. Attach walking to existing habits. Walking after lunch or dinner is easier to remember than relying on motivation.
6. Make it enjoyable. Walk somewhere nice, listen to something interesting or go with somebody you like.
7. Keep strength training. Walking is excellent, but it doesn’t provide everything your body needs.

You could even start with the NHS suggestion of a brisk 10-minute daily walk and build from there.

Personal Trainers Shouldn’t Underestimate Walking Either

There is an important coaching lesson here.

Personal Trainers can become obsessed with writing impressive programmes.

We want supersets, intervals, metabolic conditioning, heart-rate zones and exercise variations that demonstrate just how much fitness knowledge we possess.

Sometimes the better intervention is much simpler.

Help your client move more.

For a busy parent working full-time who hasn’t exercised consistently for years, three daily walks may be far more valuable initially than designing the world’s most scientifically sophisticated conditioning programme.

Good coaching isn’t about making exercise complicated.

It is about helping people find behaviours they can actually sustain.

That ability to meet clients where they are, build confidence and turn exercise into a long-term habit is a huge part of becoming an effective Personal Trainer.

The Bottom Line

Walking probably isn’t the best exercise.

There isn’t one.

It won’t build as much muscle as strength training. It won’t develop maximal aerobic fitness as effectively as harder cardiovascular training. It won’t turn you into an Olympic sprinter.

But that’s missing the point.

Walking is accessible, useful, scalable and remarkably easy to integrate into everyday life.

It contributes towards cardiovascular activity, increases energy expenditure, reduces sedentary time and can support both physical and mental health.

Most importantly, people actually do it.

And in a fitness industry obsessed with finding increasingly advanced ways to exercise, perhaps one of the most effective pieces of advice we can give people is still one of the simplest:

Put your shoes on and go for a walk.

Want to turn your passion for fitness into a career?

If you love learning about exercise and want to use that knowledge to help other people become healthier, fitter and more confident, becoming a Personal Trainer could be your next step.

At Storm Fitness Academy, we don’t just teach you exercises. We help you understand the science, develop your coaching skills and learn how to apply that knowledge to real people.

And if you want to go beyond simply becoming qualified and really stand out from other Personal Trainers, check out our Elite Package, combining your qualifications with additional development and business support to help you build a career in fitness.