Assistant Professor of Exercise Science Dr. Elroy Aguiar was recently quoted in four different UK Independent News articles, touching on topics including rucking, exercise snacking, and the amount of steps a person should aim for each day.

Fitness Writer Harry Bullmore's articles "I walked 10,000 steps with a weighted backpack every day for a week" and "Rucking is the fitness trend that’s here to stay" both focus on the benefits of rucking, or walking while wearing a weighted backpack. Not only is it an accessible form of exercise but a simple one as well.

The extra weight of the backpack makes walking more difficult and requires more energy than walking without one, and trying to maintain the same walking speed with this additional weight also increases your oxygen consumption and heart rate, Dr. Aguilar says.

“Walking is largely a lower body activity, so the quadriceps, hamstrings and gastrocnemius [muscles in the thigh and calf] are going to have to accommodate that heavier load."

Because of this, one would see small improvements in strength and bone density if they were to continue rucking. Over time, muscle mass would also improve but not to the degree one would see through strength training, he added.

However, it is best to be careful and gradually increase the weight of the backpack over time.

“If you took a sedentary person, put a 20kg backpack on them, then told them to walk 8,000 steps a day, it probably won’t be super harmful, but it could be too quick of a progression for them. It may also increase factors like joint pain, especially if they have things like osteoarthritis or other musculoskeletal conditions...”

Bullmore's "Add this five-minute habit into your day to build full-body strength and boost your fitness" explores the concept of "exercise snacking."

Instead of making time for an hourlong workout session, a person would exercise in quick bursts throughout the day, staying active by walking, stretching, or strength training (squats, sit-ups, lunges, and press-ups).

Sprinkling snack-sized workouts throughout your day can drastically improve strength, flexibility, and longevity, Bullmore says.

Dr. Aguiar specializes in step-based physical activity metrics and shares his insight in the article's section on walking.

Research in recent years says one can offset sedentary time (sitting down for long periods) through large amounts of exercise, he says. Ideally, though, throughout the day, a person should have less sedentary time and lower amounts of aerobic or resistance exercise training.

“You don’t need to think about those breaks in sedentary time as ‘exercise,’" Dr. Aguiar says. "... It’s more about thinking of activity as a choice throughout the day: building in movement wherever possible rather than thinking, ‘I have to have an hour to exercise, otherwise I’m not doing any.’”

Being mindful of the intensity of purposeful movement, like slightly increasing your walking pace, is also beneficial, Dr. Aguiar says, and his research shows that a moderate walking intensity is a cadence of 100 steps per minute.

In Bullmore's article "A walking expert says you don’t need to walk 10,000 steps a day for most health benefits", Dr. Aguiar discusses daily step goals and how 10,000 steps a day may not be ideal for everyone.

“There have been a lot of studies looking at whether 10,000 steps is better than less activity, and that’s created an artificial confirmation bias,” Dr. Aguiar explains. “People think 10,000 is very sticky. It’s a round number and it’s easy to remember, and they’ve used that in their research studies as the comparison.”

Though the figure is linked to reducing risks of death, cancer and heart disease, recent research shows that somewhere close to 8,000 steps might be a preferable daily target.

“If you want optimal benefits for the time you put in, you have most of the gain already if you’ve done 8,000 – then there are marginal or incremental gains beyond this point,” he says. "In terms of meeting the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) physical activity guidelines of about 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity physical activity, or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity, those numbers translate to about 7,000-8,000 steps per day."

But that's not to say a person shouldn't aim for 10,000 if it's achievable for them. It just may not be feasible for everyone.

“One thing we need to be conscious of is setting realistic targets,” Dr. Aguiar says. “If someone is doing 4,000 or 5,000 steps per day, and you tell them to do 10,000, that’s doubling their amount of daily activity, which can be problematic or even demotivating.”

Wearable fitness devices can assist you in reaching your step goal by monitoring your activity levels.

“A lot of modern wearable devices like Garmin and Google watches look at your current level of activity then try to bump you up by a certain percentage,” he says. “So, instead of setting an arbitrary goal like 10,000, your device would track that you were doing 5,000 steps a day, then it might prompt you to do 10-20% more than that to improve the amount of exercise you do as a gradual progression.”