Does walking speed predict how long you live?
On this page
In adults over 65, closely. In 34,485 older adults, every bit faster went with longer survival, and a normal pace of 1 meter a second (about 2.2 mph) or faster went with a longer life than expected for age and sex. You can time it over 13 feet (4 meters).
What we’d do
After 60, time your normal walking pace once a year, and more often if it’s slipping. If you’re under about 2.2 mph, work on leg strength and walk more, briskly, most days. Treat a pace that drops over a few months as something to raise with your doctor. About 2.2 mph is a typical target, and the Gyroscope app personalizes yours.
Why a walk can say so much
Walking feels automatic, so it’s surprising that how fast you do it could predict anything. But a normal walk uses your heart, lungs, muscles, joints, nerves, balance and brain all at once. If any of them is struggling, your pace drops, often before you notice anything else.
The simple version
Your walking pace is like a relay team’s time. Every runner contributes, and one slow leg shows up in the total, even when you can’t tell from the stands which runner it was.
How to time it
- Mark a straight 13-foot (4-meter) stretch on a hallway floor, with a few extra steps of space at each end.
- Walk it at your normal pace, the way you’d walk to the mailbox. Don’t hurry.
- Time it with a phone stopwatch. Do it twice and take the faster time.
| Time for 13 feet | Speed |
|---|---|
| 3.3 seconds | 1.2 m/s, about 2.7 mph |
| 4 seconds | 1.0 m/s, about 2.2 mph |
| 5 seconds | 0.8 m/s, about 1.8 mph |
What the study found
Researchers led by Dr. Studenski at the University of Pittsburgh pooled nine cohort studies from 1986 to 2000, covering 34,485 adults aged 65 and over, followed for 6 to 21 years. Their average pace was 0.92 meters a second.
Each 0.1 meters a second faster (about a quarter of a mile an hour) went with 12% lower risk of dying. At age 75, the predicted chance of being alive 10 years later ranged from 19% to 87% in men and from 35% to 91% in women, depending only on walking speed. A pace around 0.8 m/s sat at about the average life expectancy for age and sex. At 1.0 m/s and up, people consistently lived longer than expected, and the authors suggested that over 1.2 m/s points to exceptional life expectancy.
The most surprising finding was how much one walk captured. Predicting survival from age, sex and walking speed alone was as accurate as using age, sex, chronic diseases, smoking, blood pressure, BMI and hospital stays.
The limits
The cohorts measured walks over distances from 8 feet to about 20 feet, and the people were mostly white and living at home. Walking speed predicts survival, but nobody has shown that walking faster on purpose adds years. What raises your normal pace is the usual list of stronger legs, better balance and more fitness.
2 sources
- Studenski S and others, Gait speed and survival in older adults, JAMA, 2011pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Studenski S and others, Gait speed and survival in older adults, full text, JAMA, 2011pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
