Your normal walking speed can be a practical and useful indicator of your overall health, especially as you approach retirement. According to a blog post in McMaster University’s Optimal Aging Portal, it can also provide clues to your life expectancy.
As the chart shows, walking speed tends to drop as we age. If your normal walking speed at least matches the numbers in the chart, you should have a fair chance of reaching your expected lifespan, if not exceeding it.
Julie Richardson, the author of the McMaster Optimal Aging Portal blog post, says the converse is also true: If we work to improve our walking speed, we might extend our life expectancy. This belief is based on a 2007 paper, “Improvement in usual gait speeds predicts better survival in older adults.” If you go to mcmasteroptimalaging.org, you will find certain exercises to make this happen.
The blog post describes a way to measure your walking speed. An alternative method is to use the app on your smartphone, though you will want to measure when you are moving at normal speed rather than, say, when you’re walking your dog or grocery shopping.
I should mention that the authors of the McMaster Optimal Aging Portal believe that walking speed is more useful when expressed as metres per second, in order to answer the question, “Can I make it across the street at this light?” Nevertheless, I was partial to using kilometres per hour.
Frederick Vettese is a former chief actuary of Morneau Shepell and the author of the PERC retirement calculator (perc-pro.ca)