10k steps is easy ?

Exercise and steps aren't the same thing.

And 3.5 is quite brisk. 3 is more average. Over a long walk, or walking with others, 2.

As lots of others have said, the watch is tracking the hand movement. I remember when I tidied up some toys and was filling up a box with them; I did hundreds of steps despite being sat on the floor!

Housework is a good way to keep active but there are better ways to exercise and get genuine steps.

"...51000 is about 25-26 miles" or put another way at 3.5 mph thats 7 hours solid walking. Please tell us more.

Might be helpful to see if your phone also tracks steps, and put it in your pocket for a day and compare watch and phone.

If I'm at home and I do housework 😕 it's about 2500 steps. I only get 10, 000 in if I go for a big walk.

Yes I have this when I visit my mum, she lives in a village with few pavements, so if I want to walk more than a mile loop (or go for a run) I have to get into the car and drive somewhere. I always struggle to get my steps in when I am there.

My Fitbit records kneading dough as steps. I suspect your Garmin is doing something similar (unless your house is actually a castle and you’re the only cleaner).

When I stay at home I am hard pushed to get to 3000 steps. Today I have done about 15,000 but that's mainly because I walked to parkrun, ran parkrun and walked back.

When I go to the office I do about 14,000 walking to and from the station at both ends.

I have to make an effort to get my steps in. Some of you must live in mansions to do that many steps at home.

I clean my Dads house from top to bottom every Saturday, a 4 bed detached. I do the laundry as well and put it away. I do about 2000 steps!

Cross post!

I just looked at my step count for the day I ran 52k and it was 64k steps. So that 51k of yours must have been at least a marathon?!

51000 is about 25-26 miles. That’s not a normal amount of walking. Either that’s exceptional so not worth the mention or your tracker is inaccurate. Even 8-9 miles (17000 steps) seems unlikely for an average unless your job is guiding walks.

I track my steps. I average 17,000 a day and the highest so far this month was 51,000 in a day.

I only get about 4,000 steps or so from a whole day of housework and that’s if I’m doing loads like gardening work, big clear outs and lots of labour intensive batch cooking.

We found this too. Living in the city we did twice as much walking as we do now living very rural. That includes chasing animals and having an acre of garden. You don't actually walk anywhere as part of your day. You either go somewhere for a walk or have to set time aside to walk around the often unsafe rural roads. Even using public transport in the city involves walking to and from stops. I was back in leeds for a week and walked everywhere.

10k steps is actually quite active (just for the people out there who are disillusioned!). We once had a manic morning in work at Christmas (pound shop, very very busy, up and down stairs, out the back etc etc) and after it we were laughing that we’d only logged aBout seven k steps. You don’t blink and 10k are done as some people suggest!!

It’s that it tracks your wrist action! I once sat and gave myself a manicure and hit 50,000 steps through filing my nails!

I love these threads about how many millions of steps people are getting in just on doing the housework. Are you all trotting about like goats taking little tiny steps? I must have a big manly stride, I have to walk about 6 miles to do 10k steps.

You can’t be measuring them right.

I think your tracker is inaccurate. I walked ten minutes each way to the gym and did a 25 (easy) rehab gym session. Came home and did a bit of housework and later cooked a meal. All that was just short of 4,000!

I have a toddler to run after / clean after. Live in a 2bed semi and there is no way I come close to 10k steps a day just pottering around the house. I need to go on at least an 1hr walk

As others have said, they track arm movement so with any vigorous movement (I.e when you’re scrubbing pans or wiping worktops down), it will think you’re walking.

It isn’t easy to reach 10k for people with sedentary jobs which most do nowadays. Many drive to work, walk from the car park into work then sit behind a desk all day. I’m a lecturer so spend a lot of my day on my feet at the front of a lecture hall and I pace generally. I also have to shoot across a big campus a lot thanks to wild timetables putting my classes in 50 different buildings. Plus I commute in on the train so have a walk to and from the station. And I’m a runner so three or four days a week I’ll do at least 6k steps from that.

I think most people lead sedentary lives in comparison. If you’re just cleaning the house every day, unless you’re insane and blitz it from top to bottom daily then you’re not getting 10k steps in. It takes concerted effort.

I've done housework (three story townhouse), a walk round the park and a walk round town and I'm at 7k.

On a week day I find the walk to and from school is about 2k steps so twice a day is 4k, I normally do about 1.5 - 2k doing the usual jobs round the house and then a walk or gym at lunchtime to get me to 10k.

All wrist step counters need to be calibrated to your stride length, you can't just stick them on and expect them to be accurate, especially if you are on the short or tall side. I find my Fitbit is pretty good at differentiating between steps and other exercise, but its far from perfect. the other thing is that bimbling around in the house may clock up steps but that is no way the same as pounding down the street doing 4 mph. In other words there's steps and there's steps...

Absolute twaddle