You folks are really foolish. If the question was "How can the AVERAGE PERSON average 50k steps a day?" Generally, the average person can't: they don't have the time, fitness, commitment, are overweight approaching obese (unfortunately the average in this country), and haven't spend months or years building up endurance for such things.
Corney, as usual you don't make much sense. Changing stride does not necessarily change cadence. For example, if you walk at some given speed, say 100 steps/min (although that is slow, pretty easy to train up to 120 for a man of average height). You can jog at the same speed with a 2/3 the stride length (jogging is defined as running with a stride shorter than or equal to normal walking stride). For me, I use a mixture of walking @ 110 and jogging @ 140 (~80% of walking stride length), which I can maintain at a 50:50 mix for hours (I *can* but enjoy 25% jogging more), so averaging ~ 120 - 125 steps /min, or 7200 - 7500 steps an hour. I, as most highly active people, do pick up about 5-10k living-steps a day that are not dedicated stepping, folks with on-their-feet jobs - much more. So, ***once you have trained up to it***, it takes about 6 - 6.5 hours of dedicated stepping per day. That is possible, with dedication, even if you have a full time job. If you are retired like me, it is relatively trivial to find the time.
No doubt there are plenty of people who cheat to get to this level, but that is probably because Fitbit is inadequate instrumentation that easily allows cheating, and because Fitbit pushes an ethos of competition (leaderboards, challenges, etc.) without sufficient controls to prevent cheating - those without much of a moral compass will take advantage and cheat. Those of us that have done real 50k/day avg for a month (I have done it a number of times, but long-term, year-in, year out, I average about 34k/day; max average for a given month 66.4k) - know that not only is it possible, it can be relatively trivial if approached correctly. As for those of you who don't believe because your can't, or don't have the dedication to learn how and train up - well, we really don't care what you think because you are simply unexperienced and uninformed.
The original question "How does one average 50K?" can be taken as an expression of disbelief or a request for instruction. I believe I have addressed both.
Also, you certainly increase the risk for injury, but if your genetics/biomechanics are good (if you have to use orthotics, you shouldn't try), and you do addition weight training to strengthen (tighten) leg joints and core - the risks are relatively low and definitely worth it.
If you are here out of disbelief - get over it, don't worry so much about what other people can or can't do - just do what YOU can do, get out and enjoy the countryside/cityscape, and try to push it a little bit so as to get better at it with time.
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