How Fast Should I Walk?

How fast should you walk for fitness walking and for the best fat-burning walking pace? That walking speed is a moving target, as it depends on your heart rate, which depends on your level of fitness and age. Walking too slow does not give your heart the workout it needs. But you can only determine that by taking your exercise pulse or wearing a heart rate monitor.

Let Heart Rate Zones Judge Your Walking Speed

The zones to shoot for are:

• Healthy Heart Zone: 50 to 60% of your maximum heart rate. This is an easy and comfortable zone to exercise in. You will be able to carry on a full conversation in this zone, although you may be breathing a little heavier than usual.


• Fitness Zone: 60 to 70% of your maximum heart rate. In this zone, you are attaining moderate intensity exercise. You are breathing heavier but can still speak in short sentences. You can talk, but you can't sing. This zone should be your goal for most fitness walking and walking for weight loss.


• Aerobic Zone: 70 to 80% of your maximum heart rate. At this intensity, you are breathing very hard and only able to speak in short phrases. This heart rate and above takes intensity up to vigorous intensity.

Finding Your Right Heart Rate

What pulse rate matches each zone depends on your age. Use our Target Heart Rate Calculator to find the beats per minute for you in the different heart rate zones.

Now you will need to take your pulse or monitor your heart rate while walking to find the right speed.

• How to Take Your Exercise Pulse: This is the good old-fashioned way to find your heart rate, but it can be tricky to do unless you slow or stop.


• Pulse Monitors: These gadgets allow you to place one or two fingers on sensors to read your pulse, and some automatically calculate your heart rate percentage of maximum. But you may have to slow or stop to get a good reading.


• Heart Rate Monitors: These use a chest strap to give you a continuous heart rate readout that is as accurate as a medical ECG. They transmit to a wrist monitor or even a cell phone and have a variety of features, including percentage of maximum heart rate and alarms for when you are in or out of your target zone.

The Right Walking Speed

Now you can judge whether you are walking fast enough by your heart rate rather than by the clock. If you want to speed up to get into a higher heart rate zone, use this tutorial: How to Walk Faster

As you increase your fitness, you may not be able to walk fast enough to get into the moderate intensity or vigorous intensity zones. Adding hills or stairs may increase your intensity at lower speed. Using fitness walking poles can also increase your heart rate by 6% or more at the same speed.

If you still can't achieve a higher heart rate by walking, you can try using the racewalking technique or switch to jogging intervals to get into a higher heart rate zone.

Predicting Your Finish Time for Races and Distance Walks

If you need to reach a certain speed in order to finish a 5K, 10K, half marathon or marathon before the cutoff time, use these methods to see how fast you need to be walking:

• Predicting Your Race Finish Time
• How to Measure Your Walking Speed
• Walking Pace Calculator