Researchers at the University of Leicester tracked 474,919 adults in the UK Biobank and compared habitual walking pace with body weight. Brisk walkers had longer life expectancy than slow walkers in every weight category.
The gap held for both men and women, and it remained after adjustments for smoking, BMI and waist size, according to the Leicester team's analysis published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Underweight adults with a slow walking pace fared worst. Average life expectancy fell to 64.8 years for men and 72.4 years for women. A faster pace lifted projected life expectancy across the board.
"Perhaps physical fitness is a better indicator of life expectancy than body mass index (BMI), and that encouraging the population to engage in brisk walking may add years to their lives," said Tom Yates, professor of physical activity, sedentary behaviour and health at the University of Leicester.
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What your pace is really measuring
Walking is not one skill but several running at once. It draws on the heart, lungs, blood vessels, nerves, balance, and muscle strength. Slowing down often signals that one of those systems is under strain.
A 2011 meta-analysis of nine studies, pooled by Stephanie Studenski's team at the University of Pittsburgh and published in JAMA, followed 34,485 adults aged 65 and older.
Each 0.1 meter per second faster in gait speed was linked to a 12 percent lower risk of death over the follow-up period. The association held across every cohort in the analysis.
What counts as brisk
Brisk walking is a moderate-intensity activity. Catrine Tudor-Locke, professor of kinesiology at UMass Amherst, reviewed the evidence in the British Journal of Sports Medicine and put the practical threshold near 100 steps per minute.
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Vigorous walking begins closer to 130 steps per minute in her review. Counting your steps for 60 seconds on a normal walk is usually enough to place your everyday pace.
An easier check comes from Harvard Health. Dr. Lauren Elson describes brisk walking as a pace where breathing gets heavier, the heart rate rises, and "you can only carry on a conversation using short sentences."
How to walk faster
Form matters more than most people expect. Harvard Health's walking guidance advises standing tall through the crown of the head, keeping the shoulders back, and swinging bent arms forward and back rather than across the body.
Overstriding, reaching the front foot far ahead of the body, is a common brake on speed. Shorter, quicker steps with the front leg landing under the hip make cadence easier to lift.
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To build pace, Harvard suggests intervals. Walk three to four minutes at your usual speed, push briskly for 30 seconds, then repeat five to ten times, extending the brisk sections as fitness improves.
A separate UK Biobank analysis using genetic data from 405,981 adults suggested that a lifetime of brisk walking could correspond to a biological age around 16 years younger by midlife, based on telomere length.
For a benchmark by decade, our earlier explainer sets out walking-speed thresholds by age.
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This article is made and published by Jesper Bengtson, who may have used AI in the preparation.