I've been walking 10,000 steps a day for 10 days to get back into shape and help my body get physically active again. My goal is to walk 10k steps for 30 days, but for these next 10 days, I’ll be trying something different. Instead of walking all my steps at once and trying to hit my daily step goal in a single session, I'll split my steps throughout the day into segments.

Here's what I mean.

I'll walk in the park once, early in the morning, getting around 3,000 steps. Then I'll walk a second time around noon, closer to home, getting another 3,000 steps. Finally, at the end of the day, I'll finish off whatever steps I still need in one last segment.

The whole point of segment walking is that you don't need to get all your steps in one shot.

You've probably heard that you're supposed to get at least 10,000 steps a day. It's a popular number with a nice little milestone chosen because it’s easy to remember. It was a marketing scheme in Japan, but that number has since been debunked.

You don’t need to get 10,000 steps a day to see the health benefits of walking. But 10,000 is still a good milestone to hit each day.

A 2025 review in The Lancet Public Health that pooled dozens of studies found that walking about 7,000 steps a day was linked to a 47% lower risk of early death compared to 2,000 steps, with the benefits leveling off after that (The Lancet Public Health, 2025).

So 10,000 is a great daily goal, but it isn’t a requirement, and you definitely don't need to hit it all at once. In fact, there are real benefits to spreading those steps out through the day.

For example, if you were to hit 10,000 steps by 8 AM, what would you do for the rest of the day? Lounge around all day because you finished your goal? That would be counterintuitive to your goal of getting healthier.

A big benefit of walking is that it helps you avoid a sedentary lifestyle. It keeps your body active for much of the day and helps you avoid sitting for long stretches of time.

So the bigger problem usually isn't that you don’t take enough steps, it's that you’re sitting too much.

One study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association found that older women who sat for 11.7 hours or more a day had roughly a 30% higher risk of dying, even if they exercised (JAHA, via UC San Diego). Long, unbroken stretches of sitting slow down your metabolism and blood flow, and a single morning workout doesn't fully undo the damage of sitting the rest of the day.

The good news is that it helps to break up your sitting sessions. Research from the American Cancer Society found that swapping just 30 minutes of sitting for light activity was linked to a lower risk of early death, with the biggest gains for the least active people (American Cancer Society). Those little "micro-movements" throughout the day keep your metabolism active and prevent the kind of shutdown that happens when you're stationary for hours.

The whole point of walking is to keep your body active, to keep it moving more often than not. So if you break your steps into segments, your body is more frequently active throughout the day while you're still hitting your goal of 10,000 steps.

At first, splitting my walks into segments didn’t make sense to me. Why not just get all my daily steps done in one session?

In the book 52 Ways to Walk, author Annabel Abbs-Streets writes that “sitting for as little as an hour cuts blood flow through the legs to the heart by as much as 50%.”

Half of our blood flow is reduced by sitting down for one hour?!

I used to be guilty of sitting through an entire Netflix series or a three-hour movie without getting up (except for a bathroom break). I'll even spend multiple hours sitting in traffic. So, that means I’m cutting my blood flow by nearly half for long stretches of the day, and frequently throughout the week—and that reduced circulation is what takes a toll on our health.

So what can I do about it?

Abbs-Streets adds that “American researchers say that a slow five-minute walk every hour reverses the damage.”

So if I spent the first 90 minutes of my day getting all 10,000 steps and then stayed sedentary the rest of the day, it could still be harmful to my health. The simple solution is to break up the day with a few short walking sessions—even five minutes at a time.

To be clear, if you can only fit one walk per day, that’s still far better than nothing. But if you can add a few smaller sessions, you’ll benefit even more because you’re active throughout the day, not just during one short window.

For the first 10 days of walking, I was perfectly fine heading to the local park trail and walking for about 90 minutes. In that time, I was getting nearly all my daily steps in a single session.

You can see in the image above that I walked over 9,000 steps in under 90 minutes. Then I just get the rest of my steps throughout the day, usually at work.

But I started to notice that I don’t always have 90 uninterrupted minutes to carve out of my day. Things always seem to come up.

For example, the other day my daughter called and asked me to help her pick up a dresser she found on Facebook Marketplace. Afterward, we went out to grab something to eat, and just like that, most of my free time was gone.

Little things constantly pop up and try to knock me off my goal of hitting 10,000 steps a day.

It’s these constant little interruptions that had me wondering if I really need to get all my steps in one session? Or is it just as beneficial to spread them out across the day instead?

It turns out that it is beneficial to spread out your steps throughout the day, and here’s why.

First, there’s your physical health

Whenever I start a walk, it takes my body a few minutes to loosen up. My first steps feel stiff, especially in my knees and hips, but once I get going, that stiffness fades. My joints start to feel smoother, my posture straightens out, and by the time I'm a few minutes in, my whole body feels looser and more relaxed. That's a big reason breaking my walks into segments works so well for me. Instead of loosening up once in the morning and then tightening back up from sitting the rest of the day, I get to reset my body over and over.

According to Harvard Health, walking actually protects your joints, especially the knees and hips, by lubricating them and strengthening the muscles that support them (Harvard Health). That lines up exactly with what I feel. The more often I move, the better my joints feel, so a short walk every few hours keeps me loose all day instead of letting my body stiffen up in a chair.

Then there’s your respiratory health

When I first got back into walking, even a moderate pace had me breathing heavier than I'd like to admit. But a few minutes in, my breathing settles into a steadier, deeper rhythm and I stop noticing it. What surprised me is how quickly that got easier. Hills that left me winded in the first few days barely faze me now, and I don't get out of breath climbing the stairs at work like I used to anymore.

Breaking my walks into segments means my lungs get that rhythm going several times a day instead of just once in the morning.

The American Lung Association explains why this works. Aerobic activities like walking give your heart and lungs the kind of workout they need to function efficiently, strengthening the muscles you breathe with and training your body to use oxygen better (American Lung Association). So every short walk is a small dose of lung training, and stacking a few of them through the day is what's slowly building my endurance back up.

Fat burning, which is why most start exercising.

Losing a little weight was one of the reasons I got back into walking, so this is the benefit I was most curious about. What I learned is that timing matters more than I expected. The best time for one of my short walks turns out to be right after I eat. Instead of sitting down after a meal like I used to, I head out for ten minutes. When I do that, my body uses the sugar from that meal for energy instead of letting it spike my blood sugar and get stored as fat.

And this is where segment walking really pays off. A single morning walk can't do much about the meals I eat the rest of the day. But a study in Diabetes Care found that three short 15-minute walks taken after meals controlled blood sugar over a full 24 hours better than one longer walk did (Diabetes Care, 2013). That's basically my whole segment approach in a nutshell. A walk after breakfast, another after lunch, and one after dinner keeps my metabolism working right when it matters most, and I end up burning more throughout the day without ever grinding through a hard workout.

Mental health, which is something I really needed help with.

Here's the benefit I didn't expect. When I did all my steps in one shot, I got a real mood boost right after. It felt great walking every morning, but as the day dragged on, that boost wore off. When I break my walking into segments, though, I get a little mental reset every single time. A short walk clears my head, takes the edge off my stress, and leaves me feeling reenergized, so by the time I get back home I feel sharper and calmer.

And it turns out those little doses add up in a positive way.

A 2024 review in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance that pooled dozens of studies found that regular walking measurably eased symptoms of depression and anxiety, whether it was done indoors or outdoors (JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 2024). What I like about that is you don't have to earn it in one grueling session. Getting outside for a few minutes at a time, a few times a day, does more for my mood than one long walk ever did.

This is one of the biggest benefits I’ve noticed, because my mood seems to determine how the rest of my day will go. When I’m in a better mood, I’m more likely to enjoy the little things, see the positive side of situations, feel better about myself, and stay comfortable working longer hours—which can lead to earning more, doing more with my finances, and flipping a hundred tiny levers that brighten my day.

It’s like putting two versions of myself in the same room: one is happy and positive, while the other can’t see anything good. That mood boost makes a tremendous difference in my life. I might cover this specific topic in more detail in another article.

So those are the benefits of segment walking compared to walking only once per day.

After logging all my walking sessions for the first 10 days, I saw that all I need is about 90 minutes to hit 10,000 steps. But looking closer at that screenshot, something in the data caught my attention. My total steps for the day came out to 13,952.

That’s nearly an extra 4k steps on top of my actual walking session. That’s almost half of the 10,000-step goal.

So where did those extra steps come from?

Most of them came from work—some work days I tend to do a lot of walking, and the rest from just moving around doing normal, everyday things.

In other words, I was racking up thousands of steps without even trying to hit a goal. These are called incidental steps, which I’ll talk about in more depth in my next article about walking. You can sign up for my newsletter below so you don’t miss out.

But if I’m already acquiring almost 4,000 incidental steps just by going about my day, then the dedicated portion I actually have to plan for is a lot easier to obtain.

What that means is, you already acquire many of the steps you need without doing anything different. When you run your errands, walk around the house, or do anything outside like going to the store, you’re keeping your body active, accumulating steps. It doesn’t feel like a workout in any sort of way, but your body being active is from these daily errands is benefiting your overall health.

That means you can accumulate more steps—lets say the remaining steps for your goal in committed walking sessions.

The gap between where you are and 10,000 steps is smaller than you think, and you can accumulate them in small segments. Fifteen minutes in the morning. Ten minutes after lunch. Another ten after work. Then a final stretch at the end of the day, and you’re there.

Here's what I learned, and what you can take away from this article.

I can easily spend 90 minutes a day, once a day, to hit my goal in one session. If I only have time for a single session in a day, then this would be my option. But on most days, I can afford to spend a few minutes here and there, keeping my body moving and accumulating steps towards my goal.

On average, people walk 100 steps per minute. Older folks walk an average of 82 steps per minute. That means that in just a few minutes, you can easily rack up a lot of steps in a short period of time. Here’s a short timetable to give you an idea:

A few minutes here and there add up faster than you'd expect.

The last thing I want to leave you with is this. Breaking your walks into segments still counts. Every step moves you toward a healthier version of yourself, whether you got them all in one go or spread them across the day.

One more thing worth mentioning. I use an Amazfit T-Rex 3 Pro watch to track my steps, but any smartwatch will do the job. A Garmin, Fitbit, Apple Watch, or similar device makes it significantly easier to track your running total throughout the day.

Here's the recap of my total results after 20 days.

Stay tuned for the next article, where I’ll talk about incidental steps vs exercise steps to explain how they are different, which ones are better, and the health benefits.

See you next time.

Amado.

Until next time,

Amado Aguilar