Average Walking Speed by Age: The Number Doctors Call the Sixth Vital Sign

Short answer: about 1.3 to 1.4 metres per second, roughly 3 miles an hour or a mile in 20 minutes, for healthy adults from their twenties through their fifties, with men a little faster than women. It drifts down through the sixties and seventies to around 1.25 m/s, and drops below 1.0 m/s past eighty. Those are the figures from Bohannon and Williams Andrews' meta-analysis of 41 studies and 23,111 people. The reason the number matters more than a curiosity is a second study: Studenski and colleagues pooled nine cohorts of 34,485 older adults and found that usual walking speed predicted survival about as well as age, sex and chronic conditions combined, with 1.0 m/s as a rough dividing line and every 0.1 m/s adding about 12% to the odds of being alive a decade later. Geriatric medicine has called gait speed the sixth vital sign for that reason. It takes a hallway and a stopwatch.

Normal walking speed by age and sex

These are comfortable, self-selected speeds, walking as you normally would, measured over a short flat course in the studies pooled by Bohannon and Williams Andrews. Fast or maximal walking is a different, higher number.

Three things to read from that table.

The plateau is long. Speed barely changes between the twenties and the fifties; the decline that people expect to begin at forty does not appear in the data until the sixties.

The drop past eighty is large. Between the seventies and the eighties, average speed falls by about a quarter, and the eighties average sits right at the 1.0 m/s threshold that the survival research treats as meaningful. Much of that is the mixture of very fit and very frail people in the oldest group, and, as with VO2 max and grip strength, the spread within a decade dwarfs the gap between decades.

Men are faster by a small margin, mostly because of leg length; per stride the sexes are similar.

Why a walking speed predicts survival

Studenski and colleagues (2011) pooled nine cohort studies with usual gait speed measured at baseline and followed 34,485 adults aged 65 and over for six to 21 years. The findings, published in JAMA:

The predictive power was comparable to models using age, sex, use of mobility aids and chronic conditions together. Gait speed did as well as the whole chart.

The reason it works is that walking is a composite. To walk at 1.3 m/s a person needs a heart and lungs that deliver oxygen, legs with enough muscle, joints that move, balance, vision, a nervous system that coordinates all of it, and enough overall health that none of those is compromised. It integrates almost every system in the body into one number, which is why Fritz and Lusardi's white paper proposed it as the sixth vital sign after temperature, pulse, breathing, blood pressure and pain, and why Middleton, Fritz and Lusardi later reviewed the reference values that clinicians use to interpret it.

Gait speed was associated with survival in all studies; predicted survival based on age, sex and gait speed was as accurate as predicted based on age, sex, use of mobility aids and self-reported function.

Studenski et al, JAMA, 2011 — summarised from the abstract

And in younger adults: pace, not speed

The Studenski cohorts were over 65. For younger and middle-aged adults the evidence uses a cruder measure, self-rated pace, and points the same way. Stamatakis and colleagues (2018) pooled 50,225 walkers from eleven British cohorts and found that people who described their usual pace as brisk or fast had about 20% lower all-cause mortality and about 24% lower cardiovascular mortality than slow walkers, after adjusting for total physical activity and other factors. The effect was larger in older participants. Self-rated "brisk" corresponds roughly to 1.4 m/s or faster, about 3 mph and above.

The causality question is the same as for every fitness marker on this site: fast walkers are fitter, leaner and healthier in ways that also lengthen life, and nobody has randomised people to walk faster for decades. But walking speed is cheap to raise, and the interventions that raise it, aerobic and strength training, have independent benefits.

How to measure yours

The clinical protocol is simple and the details matter for comparability.

Course: a flat, straight, uncluttered stretch of at least 10 metres, with a couple of metres either end for acceleration and slowing. A hallway or a quiet pavement works. Mark 4 or 10 metres in the middle.

Instruction: walk at your usual, comfortable pace, as if going to the shops. Not fast, not deliberately slow.

Timing: start the watch as the front foot crosses the first mark and stop as it crosses the second. Do it twice and average.

Arithmetic: metres divided by seconds. Four metres in 3.2 seconds is 1.25 m/s. Ten metres in 7.5 seconds is 1.33 m/s.

Convert if you prefer: multiply m/s by 2.24 for mph, or by 3.6 for km/h. A 20-minute mile is 1.34 m/s.

A phone's walking pace from a GPS walk is a reasonable proxy over a longer distance, though it includes stops and slow bits and typically reads a little lower than a measured course. The step counter is not a speed measurement.

What a slow result means, and does not

Under 1.0 m/s at any age under 70 is unusual and worth taking to a doctor, not as a diagnosis but as a prompt. Pain, breathlessness, joint problems, balance, vision and medication side effects all show up as slow walking before they show up as anything else.

Under 0.8 m/s at any age is the range in which the geriatric literature starts to see falls, hospitalisation and loss of independence; the thresholds Middleton and colleagues summarise place community ambulation at about 0.8 m/s and safe street crossing at around 1.2 m/s, which is what traffic-light timings assume.

A result comfortably above the average for your decade is a good sign and not a reason to stop. As with every fitness marker, the trend over years is the useful thing, and a measurement now is what makes a trend possible later.

A single slow measurement on a bad day is noise. Tired, ill, or in new shoes, people walk slower. Measure again in a week.

How to raise it

Walking speed responds to the same things as every other functional measure, and the response is fast in people who start low.

For a person walking at 1.0 m/s, three months of twice-weekly strength work and regular brisk walks commonly adds 0.1 to 0.2 m/s, which in the survival data is the difference between below and above the line.

Questions people ask

What is the average walking speed? About 1.3 to 1.4 metres per second, or 3 miles an hour, for healthy adults from their twenties through their fifties, based on a meta-analysis of 23,111 people. It declines to about 1.25 m/s in the seventies and below 1.0 m/s in the eighties.

What is the average walking speed by age? Men: 1.36 m/s in the twenties, about 1.43 from the thirties to the fifties, 1.34 in the sixties, 1.26 in the seventies, 0.97 in the eighties. Women: 1.34, 1.34, 1.39, 1.31, 1.24, 1.13 and 0.94 across the same decades.

What is a good walking speed for my age? At or above the average for your decade in the table, and above 1.0 m/s at any age. Above about 1.4 m/s, the pace people describe as brisk, is associated with lower mortality in adults of all ages.

How fast is 3 mph in metres per second? About 1.34 m/s, which is a mile in 20 minutes and close to the adult average. Multiply m/s by 2.24 to get mph.

Why does walking speed predict lifespan? Because it integrates the heart, lungs, muscles, joints, balance and nervous system into one measurement. In a pooled study of 34,485 older adults, usual gait speed predicted survival as well as age, sex and health status combined, with about 12% higher survival odds per 0.1 m/s.

What walking speed is considered slow? Below 1.0 m/s in older adults is the threshold at which survival falls below expectation; below 0.8 m/s is associated with limited community mobility and higher fall risk. In an adult under 70, anything under 1.0 m/s is worth a medical look.

How do I measure my walking speed? Time yourself over a marked 4 or 10 metres on flat ground at your usual pace, starting and stopping the watch as your front foot crosses the marks, and divide distance by time. Repeat and average.

Does walking speed matter for younger people? Yes. Among 50,225 adults in British cohorts, a self-rated brisk pace was associated with about 20% lower all-cause mortality than a slow pace, after adjusting for total activity. The association was stronger with age.

Can I improve my walking speed? Yes, and quickly if you start below average. Lower-body strength training twice a week plus brisk walking typically adds 0.1 to 0.2 m/s within a few months; treating pain or a vision problem can add more.

Is walking speed the same as walking pace on my phone? Roughly. GPS-based pace over a whole walk includes stops and slow sections and usually reads slightly lower than a measured course. For comparison with the tables, use the timed course.

This article covers functional fitness for general information and is not medical advice. A sudden or unexplained change in walking speed, or a speed below 0.8 m/s, warrants assessment by a clinician.