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10,000 steps a day

v2

A daily step target with a single mid-afternoon check-in. The simplest activity habit that moves the needle on cardiovascular health, NEAT, and recovery — without touching training volume.

Available
All levelshabitstepsactivityNEATdailyconditioning

Get an AI coach that uses this skill

FitnessGrid is an AI coach that plans your week and adapts as you go. Install 10,000 steps a day and your coach will follow this protocol every week, learn from what you actually do, and adjust on the fly.

  • Your coach builds the week from this skill
  • Adapts to your actual progress, not a static template
  • Free to start — no credit card, ~60 seconds to set up

A single daily step target, configurable but defaulting to 10,000. The number is arbitrary (the figure came from a 1960s marketing campaign), but it's a useful anchor: most sedentary adults track 3,000-5,000 steps a day, and the gap to 10,000 is the most productive activity intervention available.

A daily step card lands on the user's grid. A mid-afternoon nudge surfaces at 3pm if the user is < 60% of the target so far.

Decision rules for the coach

  • Daily card, fresh each day. The resolver writes one step card per day with the target. Don't write multi-day blocks — steps don't average usefully across weeks the way calories do.
  • Mid-afternoon nudge only. At 3pm local, if the user is below 60% of the daily target, a single check-in card surfaces. Not morning, not evening. Mornings have no signal; evenings are too late to course-correct.
  • Don't lecture on misses. A 4,000-step day is fine. A three-day run of < 5,000 steps is the signal — surface it once, ask if anything's changed (travel, illness, weather). Then drop it.
  • Adjust by goal, not feel. If the user has been hitting target for 4 weeks running without effort, suggest raising the target (default jump: +1,000 steps). If they've been missing target for 4 weeks, suggest lowering it — the goal that gets hit is better than the goal that gets abandoned.
  • Steps are NEAT — don't double-count them as cardio. Steps contribute to daily energy expenditure but they don't replace conditioning work in a structured training programme. Mention this only if asked.
  • Health-data integrations. Prefer the Health app / Google Fit step count over manual entry; the daily card auto-fills from synced data if available.