How many steps in 20 minutes of walking?

The short answer

About 2,000 steps, if you walk at a moderate pace. Researchers who measured walking in the lab (the CADENCE-Adults study, Tudor-Locke and colleagues, 2019) found that about 100 steps a minute is where walking becomes moderate-intensity exercise for adults aged 21 to 40, so 20 minutes at that rhythm is 2,000 steps. An easy stroll comes in under that, and a fast walk at 130 steps a minute, the study’s line for vigorous intensity, comes to about 2,600.

How you walk	Steps a minute	Steps in 20 minutes
Easy, below moderate	under 100	under 2,000
Moderate, the “brisk walk” level	100	about 2,000
Fast, the study’s vigorous threshold	130	about 2,600

How to tell which pace you are walking

Count your steps for 15 seconds and multiply by four. Twenty-five steps in 15 seconds is 100 a minute. If that is too fiddly, the CDC’s talk test gives the same answer by feel: at a moderate pace you can talk but not sing, and at a vigorous one you cannot say more than a few words without pausing for breath.

How far is 20 minutes of walking?

Roughly 1.3 km (0.8 miles) at an easy 4 km/h, 1.7 km (1.0 miles) at a normal 5 km/h, and 2.0 km (1.2 miles) at a brisk 6 km/h. Your own distance depends on your step length, which comes mostly from your height. The steps to miles calculator works it out for your height, and how long it takes to walk a mile has the times by age.

What 20 minutes adds up to

Twenty minutes at 100 steps a minute is 2,000 steps, a useful block: three of them in a day make the 6,000 that the step research links with most of the benefit for adults over 60, and add up to an hour of walking.

Your phone’s count will not match exactly. A 2015 study in JAMA found phone apps counted within about 7% of the real number on a treadmill, so 2,000 steps may show as anything from about 1,900 to 2,100.

For other lengths of walk, see how many steps in 30 minutes of walking.

Walking with a finish line

The hard part of walking more is not the walking. It is having a reason to go out today. 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. Instead of fitting in a walk for its own sake, you walk to reach the next milestone.

At 20 minutes a day, Lukla to Everest Base Camp takes about 35 days. Everest Base Camp is free. Get reTrek.