Dear Fellow Canadians: We Need to Walk to More!

Walking. It’s not that attractive of a word, is it? In fact – if we are to believe the results of a new Stanford University study – the word is doing a really poor job of getting Canadians excited about the activity it’s describing.

According to Stanford University researchers, Canadians take an average of 4,819 steps per day. That may sound impressive, but this total is actually below average. What’s more, we only take 45 more steps per day than Americans.

The study – which spanned citizens of 111 countries, over 95 days – determined that people take an average of 5,000 steps per day, or 4km.

Elsewhere, people in Great Britain walk 5,444 steps daily, while most European countries see their residents travel on foot more than those in Canada.

People in Hong Kong, meanwhile, take the most daily steps (6,880). On the other end of the scale, Indonesians only take 3,513 steps per day.

Sadly, Canada also placed in the bottom three (alongside America and Egypt) in the measuring of “activity inequality.” Basically, this piece of research shows the disparity between a country’s most, and least, active people.

To reach their conclusions, researchers zoned in on the activity of more than 700,000 global subscribers of the Azumio Argus physical activity tracking mobile app. Researchers admit that the study isn’t flawless, as it’s understood that not everyone always has their smartphone on them when moving around.

All right fellow Canadians, let’s get up and get moving! If we can invent a sport as physically enduring as basketball, surely we can strap on the right sneakers and get walking.

To keep our health optimal, walking is an important form of exercise that really isn’t that hard to do – you just have to actually do it.

-Adam Grant