Personal leadership · Every phase
Moving through the day
You know how much movement is enough, why sitting still for long stretches matters, and how to move more without having to find extra time for it.
Worth reading first: Where do you start with working healthily?
Does this sound familiar?
- I never get to 10,000 steps, so I don't bother.
- I work out in the morning, so sitting for the rest of the day doesn't matter.
- The furthest I walk is from the car to the front door.
- Meeting after meeting, and I only get up when I need the loo.
Who it's for, and when
For anyone who sits all day: at a screen, in the car, in meetings. It matters in every phase, and it often gets worse as the company grows: the more meetings, the less you walk.
Self-test
Three questions about an ordinary working week. The result tells you whether moving through the day is the thing to work on, and what your first step is.
How many steps do you take on a normal working day? Check your phone or watch, or make a guess.
How long do you usually sit in one go before you get up?
How many minutes a week do you move enough to get warm and breathe faster: brisk walking, cycling, taking the stairs?
The model
The guideline is at least 150 minutes a week of movement that makes you warm and breathe faster, spread over the week. On top of that, something for your muscles twice a week (that's in the lesson Strength and fitness), and not too much sitting still. About four in ten adults manage it.
The 10,000 steps didn't come out of research. The number comes from a Japanese pedometer from 1965, the 'manpo-kei', which literally means 10,000-step meter. The research shows the benefit starts well below that: people who go from about 3,500 to 7,000 steps have a much lower risk of dying early, and above that the extra gain gets smaller. If you're starting low, each extra thousand steps counts the most.
Sitting still for long stretches counts against you, even if you exercise. The extra risk of sitting a lot only went away at around an hour or more of activity a day. So a half-hour workout in the morning is good, but getting up and walking for a few minutes during the rest of the day is still worth it. A standing desk on its own isn't enough: standing still isn't moving.
For almost everyone, walking more is safe without seeing a doctor first. If you get chest pain, unusual breathlessness or dizziness when you exert yourself, or pain in your legs that comes back after the same distance every time, see your GP first.
Health Council of the Netherlands (Gezondheidsraad), Physical Activity Guidelines 2017. WHO, Guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour (2020). Paluch et al. (Lancet Public Health, 2022) and Ding et al. (Lancet Public Health, 2025) on steps. Ekelund et al. on sitting (The Lancet, 2016; BMJ, 2019).
150 minutes a week
Brisk walking, cycling, taking the stairs, enough to get warm and breathe faster. Five half-hour sessions, or twenty minutes every day. Three lots of five minutes count too.
Steps
Count where you are now, and add a thousand. Most of the benefit comes at around 7,000 to 8,000 a day; pace is a bonus, the number counts most.
Breaking up sitting
Get up and walk about at least every half hour. Take calls standing or walking, and hold the odd meeting on foot.
Watch and read
GP and professor Mike Evans (University of Toronto) uses a drawing to show what half an hour of movement a day does, alongside everything else you do.
Watch on YouTubeIn five minutes: what sitting still for long stretches does to your muscles, your circulation and your back.
Watch on YouTubeNeuropsychologist Erik Scherder on what walking does for your brain, in three minutes. In Dutch.
Watch on YouTubeRead
Laat je hersenen niet zitten
Erik Scherder · 2017 · ISBN 9789025307219
The best-known Dutch professor on movement and the brain, in plain language, on why sitting affects your head as much as your body. In Dutch; the title means 'Don't let your brain sit still'.
View the bookApply it
- 1
1. Measure for a week
Switch on the step counter on your phone and spend a week just looking at the number. Then you know where you're starting from, and what an extra thousand steps means.
- 2
2. Build it into what you already do
You don't need to find extra time. The stairs instead of the lift, park further away, a walk round the block after lunch, take calls while you walk.
- 3
3. Break up the sitting
Set a reminder for every half hour, or tie it to something: you get up after every meeting, and you fetch your own coffee.
- 4
4. Make it normal in your team
If you're a manager: start the odd one-to-one as a walk, and don't book all your meetings back to back. What you do, your team will copy.
Examples
A working day with 3,000 more steps
8.30am park on the far side of the site: 500 steps. 12.30pm a ten-minute walk after lunch: 1,000 steps. 2pm the one-to-one as a walk: 1,500 steps. Every half hour, a quick trip to the window or the coffee machine.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
5 situations. You need 4 of 5 right. You can try again at any time.
1.You currently take about 4,000 steps a day. A colleague says there's no point below 10,000. What's right?
2.You work out for half an hour every morning and then sit at your screen for eight hours. What's right?
3.Your company buys standing desks for everyone. Does that solve the problem of sitting?
4.What matters most for your health: the number of steps or how fast you take them?
5.You don't have half an hour in one go. Do three ten-minute walks count?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
- Strength and fitness · You know why muscle strength and fitness matter so much, how much is enough, and how to start without a gym.
Not sure where to start? Take the growth scan