Why I'd Rather You Didn't Count Your Steps
Look at the watch on your wrist, or the phone in your pocket, or whatever's counting for you right now. That's what I want to poke at today.
I don't wear one when I walk the loop. Never have. This surprises people, because I'm a PT, and PTs are supposed to love data. I do love data, actually, in the clinic. Gait speed, range of motion, all of it tells me something useful. But steps on a walk with friends is a different thing, and I think it does more harm than good.
Let me put my opinion as plainly as I can: the number turns a walk into a chore. You hit 8,000 and feel like you did something. You hit 4,000 and feel like you failed at something, even though you had a good conversation and got outside and moved your body for half an hour. The number doesn't know any of that. It just counts.
What I've seen happen
Someone starts tracking. First couple weeks it's motivating, sure. Then they miss a day, or a bad week happens, three days of nothing, and the gap between where they are and where the app says they should be gets big enough that it's easier to quit than to catch up. I've watched this exact pattern more times than I can count, no pun intended.
Compare that to just... showing up on Tuesday because you said you would. There's no gap to catch up on. You either walked or you didn't, and tomorrow's Tuesday is its own thing.
What to try instead, practically
If you're used to tracking, run a few of these and see what shifts:
Leave the watch home for one week. Not forever, just seven days. See what changes about how the walk feels.
If you can't leave it home, turn off the step notifications. Most phones let you silence the little congratulatory buzzes. Keep the data if you want it for some other reason, just stop letting it grade you in real time.
Replace the number with a question. Instead of "how many steps," ask yourself "how did my shoulders feel by the end." Or "did I actually notice anything on the way." That's a better measure of whether the walk did what it's supposed to do.
Track attendance, not distance, if you need to track something. A checkmark on a calendar for "I showed up" is honest and simple. It doesn't care about pace or mileage. It just asks whether you did the thing.
A story about not pushing it
Last spring my son Liam, he's sixteen, sluffed a family walk. Just stayed home. Didn't want to come, said so, and I didn't push him.
I went back and forth on that one for a while afterward. Was I supposed to make him come? Is that the kind of thing a parent insists on? I genuinely didn't know. I've landed on thinking it was the right call, mostly because forcing him would've made the walk into one more obligation he resented, and next time he'd resent it more. But I reserve the right to change my mind on that. I've changed my mind on bigger things.
I bring it up because it's the same principle as the step counting. The second a walk becomes a number you have to hit, or an attendance requirement enforced from outside, it stops being the thing that actually helps you. It becomes one more task. And tasks are the first thing people cut when life gets full.
I'd rather this group be the opposite of a task. That's the whole design. Slow pace, low bar, show up when you can, and don't let a device tell you whether it counted.
One real exception
If you've got a doctor who wants you tracking steps for a specific reason, blood pressure, recovery from something, whatever, that's different. That's medical data doing a job. Keep doing that. I'm talking about the general habit of walking-as-hobby getting hijacked by a number that doesn't actually know how you're doing.
Before next time
Leave the phone in your pocket, screen off, and just walk the loop paying attention to how your body feels instead of what it's counted. See if anything felt different, and tell me on Tuesday.