28-day walking challenge: a free plan, day by day
Four weeks is long enough to turn a walk into a habit you notice missing, and short enough to see the end from the start. This plan starts gently, adds five minutes a day each week, and finishes at 30 minutes a day, the amount the guidelines point to. It needs nothing but shoes and somewhere to walk, indoors or out.
The short answer
Walk every day for 28 days: 15 minutes a day in week 1, 20 in week 2, 25 in week 3 and 30 in week 4, at a brisk pace you can keep up while talking. By the end you will have walked about 10 and a half hours, roughly 63,000 steps and 44 km (27 miles). In week 4 you will be doing 210 minutes a week, more than the 150 minutes the US guidelines ask for.
The plan
| Week | Every day | That week | What to focus on |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 15 minutes | 105 minutes | Pick a time of day and keep it |
| 2 | 20 minutes | 140 minutes | Walk briskly: faster than a stroll, still able to talk |
| 3 | 25 minutes | 175 minutes | Add one hill, stairs, or a faster stretch in the middle |
| 4 | 30 minutes | 210 minutes | Try one longer walk at the weekend, 45 to 60 minutes |
Split a day’s minutes if that is easier: two 15-minute walks count the same as one 30-minute walk. If you miss a day, carry on the next day rather than starting over.
How brisk is brisk?
The CDC puts moderate-intensity walking at about 3 mph (4.8 km/h) or faster. A simple test: you can talk, but not sing. In steps, a review of step targets used about 100 steps a minute as the lower edge of moderate walking (Tudor-Locke and colleagues, 2011), so 30 brisk minutes is roughly 3,000 steps on top of the rest of your day.
The challenge in steps and distance
At about 100 steps a minute, the 28 days add up like this for an adult of average height:
| Week | Steps that week | Distance that week |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | about 10,500 | about 7.4 km (4.6 miles) |
| 2 | about 14,000 | about 9.9 km (6.1 miles) |
| 3 | about 17,500 | about 12.3 km (7.6 miles) |
| 4 | about 21,000 | about 14.8 km (9.2 miles) |
| Total | about 63,000 | about 44 km (27 miles) |
These are the challenge walks only, on top of the steps you take anyway. 44 km is further than the 36 km Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
If 15 minutes is too much
Start where you are. Walk 5 or 10 minutes a day in week 1 and add five minutes a week from there, or take eight weeks over the plan instead of four. The guidelines’ message for people starting out is that some activity is better than none, and the steepest gains come at the low end.
Bad weather days
Walk indoors: laps of the house, stairs, a shopping centre, or walking in place in front of the TV. Steps indoors count the same if your phone is in your pocket.
After the 28 days
Keep week 4 going: 30 minutes a day, most days of the week. If you want more, the US guidelines note that more activity brings more benefit, and our walking plan to lose weight builds further over 12 weeks.
A reason to walk today
Walking is easy to skip when it leads nowhere in particular. reTrek gives your walks a finish line: pick a famous route, like the Camino de Santiago or the Inca Trail, and every walk moves you further along it, with a short film about the place waiting at each milestone. You stop looking for a spare moment to walk and start walking to reach the next milestone.
Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.