Too little exercise can lead to diseases such as adult-onset diabetes, heart attack, cancer, Alzheimer’s or osteoporosis. Health organizations such as the North Rhine Medical Association therefore recommend walking 10,000 steps a day for a healthier life. A pedometer or fitness tracker, for example, of which we have tested almost 40 models, can help to comply with the minimum number of steps.
Other expert recommendations are a little lower and are “satisfied” with 6,000 and 8,000 steps a day. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s 10,000, 8,000 or just 6,000 steps: the core requirement is that we walk more. Our skeletal and muscular system can easily cope with this, as it is designed for at least 20 kilometers a day.
How many steps do we actually get per day? According to a Stanford study that evaluated pedometer data worldwide, active people with pedometers walk an average of around 4,900 steps a day worldwide. Germany is a bit higher with 5,200, Hong Kong is the leader with an average of 6,880 steps per day.
With the tracker to the daily goal
Have you ever counted how many steps you take on average per day? Is it significantly fewer than the recommended 6,000 to 10,000 steps? In order to do something good for yourself and your health, you should at least 6,000 steps as an average daily goal set.
Of course, guessing would work too. But a fitness tracker with a pedometer can help if you want to know or monitor as precisely as possible how many steps you take every day. Of course, such a fitness bracelet can often do a lot more and is generally a good companion for sports. Because the tracker records your training progress and continuously measures the most important vital values. The selection of fitness trackers is now huge. You can get cheap devices for less than 30 euros, premium models can cost up to 300 euros.
CHIP has tested almost 40 fitness tracker models – with different functions and in different price ranges. The complete test report can be found here – a selection with some of our best recommendations is shown in the following table: