How many steps for an 80+ yo male?

[Shashi_Lko]

Hi all,

I just bought a charge2 fitbit for my sedentary & somewhat fragile 84 yo father.  I want it mainly to track his sleep and heart rate but also hope to use it to motivate him to walk more.  Does anyone know what a safe daily steps goal would be for someone like my dad?    

Thanks for your help!

[Shashi_Lko]

My tentative plan is to monitor his normal activity for a few days or a week and then gradually increase his steps goal a little at a time.  I guess my question really is, considering his age & general physical frailty, if I should stop increasing his daily steps goal before attaining 10k and how do I know the optimal stay-put count?

[BruceBu]

How about starting with the 'reminder to move' which requires 250 steps each hour. It is easy to follow and provides an easy goal with reminder to get your hourly step a few minutes before the end of the hour). Under the circumstances, getting low-level activity throughout the day may be more important that amassing lots of steps. Trying to get 8 active hours would mean a minimum of 2000 steps and he could grow from there.

(there is nothing magic about 10,000 steps/day)

[Shashi_Lko]

Thanks, Bruce!  I will activate that reminder.  I suspect he will ignore it, but I will try.  He likes to get all his exercise done in one go & is goal-oriented, that is why I'm focusing on the total count.

[WavyDavey]

I also like to get the exercise done in one go if possible. Besides total step count, you can also count number of steps of a tracked walk activity.

The Charge 2 is nice because it's good about auto-detecting walks, so he can go on a short walk. Then, in the app, you'll see how many steps were in that walk. Try to increase the number of steps from the last time. As fitness levels improve, you can fit more steps in the same amount of time.

For someone who'd rather get most of their daily steps in a few walks rather than spread throughout the day, this method can work well.  Each daily walk will count towards the weekly exercise goal. So he could start with any number of walks per week, and increase the goal number of walks for the week gradually.

[emili · Accepted solution]

@Shashi_Lko  Oy, this makes me nervous. If he is frail, one wrong step and he can really hurt himself. I like you idea of figuring out what he does now for steps and maybe upping it a little at a time. If he is stubborn and goal oriented he may ignore if he is feeling tired or winded and it just makes me nervous. Maybe also talk to his doctor  he may have a recommendation based on his overall health assessment. And then.. create him a profile and get him chatting in the community 🙂

[WendyB]

I agree with @emili I think you need to talk to his DR to see what is best for him.

[Shashi_Lko]

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughts & suggestions.  We'll try it all (hourly reminders, track activities) with gradual step increases.  All in combination with with his doctors advice.