Stride length/step length

[Tilly2]

I was arguing with a friend today who said that the average STEP length for a man was 600mm. I disagreed and said he meant STRIDE length.
He was an engineer and maintained that 600mm was the 'standard' which was used to calculate health and safety issues, i.e, machinery stopping if someone gets too close.

So any idea who was right. Was he talking about stridelength?

[Nibble]

This seems to be a generally agreed rule for working out the average stride length
http://wiki.answers.c..._man's_walking_stride

[rojash]

The American College of Sport Medicine calculates that the average STRIDE length is 787 mm (31 inches). So, I suspect that your friend is right.

[heathfield]

The normal army marching pace length is 75cm (30").

[rojash]

Lots of sites point out that step length and stride length are not the same but then fail to differentiate the two. According to this site: http://moon.ouhsc.edu...t/knmatics/stride.htm

Step length is 790 and stride length is 1580 mm

[ABerrant]

heathfield's introduction of the term 'pace' has further reduced clarity on the subject.

In the ancient world a pace was a stride; a Roman Mile was defined as 1000 paces (mille passus) which measured around 1520 metres, thus a Roman pace (stride) equated to 1520 mm.

Nowadays pace is used as a synonym for step, i.e. a stride now equates to a 'double-pace'.

[Tilly2]

This was all o do with me using a pedometer. I haven't set the steps distance because I'm not interested in how far I walk, just how many steps I've done. My friend was trying to work out how far I'd walked yesterday by multiplying the step length 600mm (according to him) by 90376(the number of steps I'd clocked up at that time)
I thought that 600mm was an overestimate of my step length.