Stride Length Calculator
A 5-foot-10 man's walking stride is about 29 inches. This stride length calculator estimates your walking or running stride length from your height using standard gender-based multipliers. Enter your height, pick a gender and a pace, and see your estimated stride length in inches and centimeters.
Quick answer
Stride length scales with height, so a taller person naturally covers more ground per step.
What this tells you
- •Stride length scales with height, so a taller person naturally covers more ground per step.
- •The calculator multiplies your height by a standard walking constant, 0.415 for men and 0.413 for women.
- •Running strides open up once you add a flight phase, so the running estimate scales the walking value up by about 50 percent.
- •Results show stride length in inches and centimeters plus the steps it would take to cover a mile or a kilometer.
How to Use
- 1Enter your height and choose whether it is in inches or centimeters.
- 2Select male or female to apply the matching multiplier.
- 3Select walking or running for your pace type.
- 4Click Calculate to see your estimated stride length and steps per mile.
How It Works
Formula
stride length = height x multiplierThe calculator converts your height to inches if needed, then multiplies it by a standard constant. Walking uses 0.415 for men and 0.413 for women, values commonly used by fitness trackers and pedometers. Running stride length scales the walking value up by a factor of 1.5 since a running gait includes a flight phase that walking does not, which stretches each step further. The result also converts to centimeters and shows how many steps that stride takes to cover one mile or one kilometer.
Calculation note: values are processed in the order shown above, using the current input units.
Worked Examples
5-foot-10 man walking
Multiply 70 inches by 0.415 to get a stride length of about 29.05 inches, or 73.79 centimeters. That stride covers a mile in about 2,181 steps.
178 cm woman running
178 centimeters converts to about 70.08 inches. Multiply by the female walking multiplier of 0.413, then scale up by 1.5 for running, to get a stride length of about 43.41 inches, or 110.26 centimeters.
Estimated Walking Stride Length by Height
Approximate walking stride length using the 0.415 (men) and 0.413 (women) multipliers.
| Height | Male Stride | Female Stride |
|---|---|---|
| 5'0" (60 in) | 24.9 in | 24.8 in |
| 5'4" (64 in) | 26.6 in | 26.4 in |
| 5'8" (68 in) | 28.2 in | 28.1 in |
| 5'10" (70 in) | 29.1 in | 28.9 in |
| 6'0" (72 in) | 29.9 in | 29.7 in |
| 6'4" (76 in) | 31.5 in | 31.4 in |
Running strides run roughly 50 percent longer than these walking figures for the same height.
Common mistakes
- Treating a height-based estimate as an exact measurement. Individual gait, leg length ratio, and walking speed shift real stride length above or below the formula result.
- Using the walking multiplier for a running pace. Running strides open up with a flight phase, so applying a walking constant to a run undercounts your stride length.
- Mixing up stride length with step length. Some sources define stride as a full left-right-left cycle, but this calculator and most consumer fitness trackers use stride length to mean the distance covered by a single step, matching the convention used by pedometers.