You used to think you were only competitive in the weight room. But when you started tracking your steps per day and your daily mileage, it occurred to you that your average walking pace could be something to boast about just like your benching numbers. Are you as fast (or as slow) as you feel like you are, compared to other folks in your age group?
I’ll break down those times for you so you can see where you measure up. Then, I’ll share some tricks I learned talking to Certified Road Runners Club of America (RRCA) Run Coach Ludgina Dieujuste, who runs the walking-focused YouTube channel Treadchic. Lace up your walking shoes and let’s push beyond the average walking speed.
What Is the Average Walking Speed?
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average walking speed is between 2.5 and 4.0 miles per hour. (1) This CDC definition encompasses speeds associated with “walking with purpose.” The CDC further defines walking at a speed exceeding 2.5 miles per hour as “brisk walking.” The low end of this average equates to a 24-minute mile.
Of course, if you’re taking a casual stroll with no particular destination in mind, you might find yourself walking a bit slower than that. And if you’re a New Yorker, for example, your version of “walking with purpose” may seem like quite speedy race-walking to an athlete from a quieter town.
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Snugly within that range, at least one cross-sectional study established 3.0 miles per hour as the beginning of moderate-intensity walking. (2) A separate accelerometry study identified 3.0 miles per hour as the average walking speed up until age 60. (3) At that point, average walking speed drops to approximately 2.8 miles per hour and seems to bottom out at about 2.1 miles per hour as people reach their 80s.
The accelerometry study also noted the differences between average walking speeds between cisgender women and cisgender men (trans and nonbinary people were not made note of here). In every 10-year age bracket, those assigned female at birth posted average walking speeds that were 0.1 to 0.2 miles per hour slower on average than participants assigned male at birth.
[Read More: How Long Does it Take to Walk a 5K? (+ Tips to Walk Faster From a Walking Coach)]
As an example, among participants between the ages of 30 and 39, men had an average walking speed of 3.2 miles per hour. (3) Women had an average speed of 3.0. In the 80-to-89-year-old demographic, women participants averaged 2.1 miles per hour while male subjects averaged 2.17 miles per hour.
What Factors Impact Walking Speed?
It’s not just about how quickly you want to get to your bus stop. There are plenty of factors that affect walking speed. I’ll lay them out for you here.
Your Walking Form
More or less, walking is a form of controlled falling forward. But you want it to be very controlled — yet not stiff — for maximum efficiency. If your walking form is smooth, then accelerating should be smooth.
How Strong Your Legs Are
Sure, a casual stroll through the park is no running workout. But while they may not be firing on all cylinders, your muscles are still applying pressure to the ground to propel you forward while you walk. Studies have confirmed that your level of leg muscle strength can either help or hinder your walks, which affects the walking pace you can sustain. (4)
[Read More: The Best Treadmill Walking Workouts From a CPT (+ Insight From a Conditioning Coach)]
Your Aerobic Fitness Level
Even if you’re more interested in taking the dog outside for some quality sniffs instead of just improving your fitness level, you’ll still be boosting your aerobic fitness and conditioning with your walks. And the more aerobic capacity you have, the longer your heart can sustain ease at an elevated walking pace.
Your Body Type (Think: Limb Length)
The shape of your body can also impact the speed at which you walk. Take your height and limb length, for example. The longer your legs, the more strides you’re likely to take. Factors like this can go a long way toward impacting how quickly you get from point A to point B.
How Old You Are
For many people, there is a direct association between walking speed and age. Studies suggest that walking speed may tend to decline as you age. (5) This means that older adults may generally move more slowly than younger adults.
Tips to Improve Walking Speed
Certified running coach Ludgina Dieujuste devotes much of her time to helping train clients to walk to the best of their abilities. Dieujuste shared with me several ways you can equip your body for a faster walking speed. Let’s dive…erm, walk…right in.
Lift More Weights
Building your muscle strength, particularly in your core and lower body, can help you get faster even on a casual stroll. All things being equal, stronger muscles can help you propel yourself further, faster, and more efficiently with less fatigue.
[Read More: The Best Leg Exercises for Muscle & Strength, According to a PhD]
“Incorporating strength movements that are going to help your glutes, hamstrings, and calves to become stronger will help you to push off the ground with greater force or power,” explains Dieujuste. “A strong core also helps you with your posture and balance, which helps you with your walking form.”
To help you walk faster, try any of these exercises on for size:
Boost Your Aerobic Fitness
Yes, walking is “enough” to help increase your aerobic fitness all on its own. So the stronger and more efficient you get at walking — which takes practice — the faster you’re likely to get at it. That said, you can also improve your aerobic fitness with activities like cycling, going on the elliptical, and even swimming. Think of it as cross-training to support your walking speed.
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“Consistently overloading your body and doing more than you can time after time is going to help you increase your endurance and increase your pace over time,” Dieujuste explains. So try intentionally getting that heart rate up there on your next walk (or exercise bike ride). It’ll pay big dividends over time as your body gets more aerobically efficient.
Grab Some Technology
The great outdoors is, well, great. But sometimes you’re in the mood for a technological assist. That might be as simple as bringing your headphones to listen to your favorite playlist, or as all-in as investing in a heart-rate monitor, fitness tracker, or pedometer to keep some stats about how you’re doing out there. (If you’re inside, your treadmill will likely have all the tech you need.)
“I love a pedometer, especially for someone that’s trying to challenge themselves,” suggests Dieujuste. “It tracks your steps over time, so it helps you to track your progress and challenge yourself to do better than you did yesterday by letting you see exactly what you’re doing. It’s a great tool, especially for someone that’s really new to walking. It helps you set targets, it increases your accountability, and it helps you get that real-time feedback on your activity.”
Think Like a Runner
You don’t have to be prepping to run a marathon — or even want to — to benefit from the toolbox of a runner. Ultimately, you can stick to your walking routine. But your quest for more walking speed might be helped along by the tricks of a runner’s trade, like interval training, tempo run, and any other fast-walking workouts intended to elevate your heart rate and have you operating at moderate-intensity or higher.
[Read More: The Best Treadmills for Walking, Researched and Tested by Our Team]
“You want to incorporate interval training so that you have some fast movement included with slower walking,” explains Dieujuste. “You can also get on a treadmill and walk at an incline, which gives you more of a progressive overload. Those ways of challenging yourself, challenging your muscles, and pushing your cardiovascular system — it’s all going to make you stronger and faster.”
Fix Your Form
Loading more weight on the bar when your form is awful just…isn’t a good idea. It’s the same with walking. Cranking out more speed with suboptimal form may make you feel faster for a little while, but ultimately you’ll get suboptimal results. You will probably achieve a faster pace for a short time, but speeding up inefficient movement may just cause you to tire out faster. To get to the root of the problem, you’ll want to make improvements to your walking form.
“When you don’t have that ideal walking posture, you expend so much energy, and you’re not efficient,” adds Dieujuste. “You become tired more quickly, and you’re tempted to give up a lot faster, and then you’re not motivated to want to go out because you’re uncomfortable. To be efficient, you need a stride that has short, quick steps and arms held at a 90-degree angle without crossing them in front of your body.”
[Read More: These Are the Best Budget Treadmills]
Frequently Asked Questions
Still got questions about average walking speed? That’s cool. We’ve still got answers.
Is walking at six miles per hour fast?
Not only is walking at six miles per hour an extremely fast pace, but it would land well within the average running pace of most people.
Is walking three miles per hour good?
A walking pace of three miles an hour is often cited as the average walking speed of most individuals across the majority of age groups. It has also been declared to be a brisk walking pace by some studies.
What is considered brisk walking?
Depending on the individual, a brisk walking speed could be defined as any walking pace that exceeds 2.5 miles per hour. A walking speed above 3.0 miles per hour is almost universally described as brisk walking.
How long does it take the average person to walk one mile?
According to CDC statistics, it can take between 15 and 22 minutes for you to walk one mile if you are “walking with purpose.” (1) This average is influenced by factors like age and fitness level.
Editor’s Note: The content on BarBend is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. When starting a new training regimen and/or diet, it is always a good idea to consult with a trusted medical professional. We are not a medical resource. The opinions and articles on this site are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional.
References
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2018.
- Zheng P, Ducharme SW, Moore CC, Tudor-Locke C, Aguiar EJ. Classification of moderate-intensity overground walking speed in 21- to 85-year-old adults. J Sports Sci. 2022 Aug;40(15):1732-1740.
- Schimpl M, Moore C, Lederer C, Neuhaus A, Sambrook J, et al. (2011) Association between Walking Speed and Age in Healthy, Free-Living Individuals Using Mobile Accelerometry—A Cross-Sectional Study. PLOS ONE 6(8): e23299.
- Rantanen T, Guralnik JM, Izmirlian G, Williamson JD, Simonsick EM, Ferrucci L, Fried LP. Association of muscle strength with maximum walking speed in disabled older women. Am J Phys Med Rehabil. 1998 Jul-Aug;77(4):299-305.
- Martins VF, Tesio L, Simone A, Gonçalves AK, Peyré-Tartaruga LA. Determinants of age-related decline in walking speed in older women. PeerJ. 2023 Mar 7;11:e14728.