Family Step Challenge: How to Run One Across Ages (and Phones)

By The Outstep team · Updated · 9 min read

The short answer

A family step challenge only works if everyone has a real chance, so don't just rank raw steps. Use a shared goal (pool steps toward a target), score people against their own usual day, or give points for hitting personal targets. Make sure every phone syncs (iPhone through Apple Health, Android through Health Connect, or the phone's own counter), keep it to 2 to 4 weeks, and agree a few rules first. In a 2017 trial with 94 families, families playing a points game added about 950 more steps a day than families who didn't.

On this page
  1. Do family step challenges actually work?
  2. Why raw step totals are unfair in families
  3. The fairest formats for a family step challenge
  4. What rules should a family step challenge have?
  5. Family step challenge ideas
  6. How do you get every phone in the family counting?
  7. Setting it up in Outstep
  8. Frequently asked questions
  9. Sources

A family step challenge sounds simple until you try it. Your 16-year-old walks 14,000 steps on a school day. Your dad is recovering from a knee operation. Your sister lives in another country and has an Android phone that only syncs when she remembers to open the app. Rank everyone by total steps and the result is decided on day one.

This guide covers how to set up a family challenge that works across ages, fitness levels and phones: the fairest formats, the rules worth agreeing, ideas to keep it fun, and how to get every phone counting. We make Outstep, a step-competition app for private groups, and its free plan fits a family of up to 8, so the setup examples use it.

Do family step challenges actually work?

Yes, there's good evidence they do. In the BE FIT randomized trial (JAMA Internal Medicine, 2017), 200 adults from 94 families tracked their steps for 12 weeks. Families in the game arm earned points and moved up levels together when members hit their step goals. Compared with their starting point, they increased their daily steps by 1,661, against 636 in the control families, an adjusted difference of 953 steps a day. In the 12 weeks after the game ended, activity dropped but stayed ahead: 1,385 against 798.

There's also the partner effect. A study of 3,722 older couples in England found that inactive people whose partner became active were far more likely to become active themselves: 67% of men and 66% of women, compared with 26% and 24% of those whose partner stayed inactive. Families nudge each other, and a challenge just makes the nudge visible.

Why raw step totals are unfair in families

People's normal step counts differ hugely by age, job and health. Health guidelines differ by age too:

Who Guideline
Children and teens, 6 to 17 60 minutes or more of moderate-to-vigorous activity every day (CDC)
Adults At least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week (CDC)
Adults 65 and over At least 150 minutes a week, plus activities to improve balance (CDC)

Research on step counts points the same way. A 2022 meta-analysis of 15 studies with 47,471 adults found the drop in mortality risk levelled off at about 6,000 to 8,000 steps a day for adults 60 and over, and 8,000 to 10,000 for younger adults. A grandparent walking 7,000 steps a day may be doing as well, for their age, as a 30-year-old walking 10,000.

So a fair family challenge rewards each person for doing well by their own standard.

The fairest formats for a family step challenge

Format How it works Fair across ages? Best for
Shared goal Everyone's steps add up toward one family target Very: everyone helps, nobody loses First challenges, mixed fitness
Beat your own usual day Each day is scored against your own average Very: a 6,000-step walker can win Competitive families
Personal targets Points for hitting your own daily target Yes Long-running family groups
Team challenge Mixed-age teams compete Yes, if teams are balanced Bigger families of 6+
Most steps Plain leaderboard No Siblings of similar age
Race to a total First to, say, 100,000 steps wins No, but fun as a side race Teens and keen walkers

In Outstep, these map onto real formats:

  • Group target (free): everyone pools steps toward one goal. The app can suggest a target from everyone's daily goals at four difficulty levels, from Relaxed to Epic, and sends milestones at 50%, 100% and 150%. Everyone who contributes earns a medal if the family makes it.
  • Step Up (Group Premium): each day scores your steps divided by your own baseline, which is your average walking day over the previous 30 days. Walking 1.4 times your usual day scores 1.4, whether that's 6,000 steps or 16,000. An optional 2× daily cap stops one huge day from deciding it.
  • Seasons (free, always running): every group has 8-week seasons where you earn points for hitting your personal daily and weekly targets, which are set from your own recent steps, plus bonus points for beating your usual. Seasons need at least 3 people walking. A consistent grandparent can outscore a teenager who walks more but skips days.
  • Team challenges (Group Premium): 2 to 6 teams, which the app can balance by everyone's last 28 days of steps. Uneven teams rank by average per person.
  • Leaderboard and Race to X (free): good for a side contest between siblings.

What rules should a family step challenge have?

Keep them short, write them in the family chat before you start, and agree them together:

  1. Only automatically counted steps count. No typing steps into the Health app. (Outstep ignores manually entered steps anyway.)
  2. One phone and one watch per person. No handing your phone to the dog-walker.
  3. Sick days don't count against anyone. If someone's ill or injured, they can pause without explanation.
  4. Encourage, don't shame. Reactions and messages should be fun. In Outstep, the 🐢 turtle is a gentle "come on", not an insult, and you can only send one reaction per person per day.
  5. Kids under 13 walk with an adult. Outstep, like many apps, requires users to be 13 or older. Younger children can walk with a parent whose phone counts, and celebrate together.
  6. Pick a prize everyone wants. The best family prizes are shared: choosing the next holiday restaurant, a day trip, or the loser cooking dinner.

Family step challenge ideas

  • Walk to Grandma's. Work out the distance between two family homes and turn it into a group target. At a typical 0.75-metre stride, a kilometre is roughly 1,300 steps, so 100 km is about 133,000 steps together.
  • The improvement cup. Run a 2-week Step Up challenge where everyone is scored against their own normal. Announce the winner at a family dinner.
  • Generations vs generations. Kids against parents, or grandparents and grandchildren against the middle generation, scored by average.
  • The weekend walk bonus. Agree that one family walk each weekend is a must. It's the bit people remember.
  • School holiday challenge. Two weeks when the kids are off, so routines don't matter.
  • The streak. Everyone keeps their own daily-goal streak. Outstep's optional weekly rest day forgives one missed day a week, which suits busy parents.
  • Rotating captain. Each week someone different picks a side challenge, like most steps before 9 am.

How do you get every phone in the family counting?

Each person needs a phone that records steps and an app that can read them. The common setups:

Person has How steps get into Outstep
iPhone Apple Health, which the iPhone fills automatically
iPhone + Apple Watch Apple Health, which combines both without double counting
Android phone Health Connect (which Samsung Health can write to), or Outstep's option to count from the phone itself
Android + Fitbit, Galaxy Watch or other watch Health Connect, if the watch's app writes to it
iPhone + Fitbit Needs a third-party app that copies Fitbit steps into Apple Health

Common snags with grandparents and older phones:

  • Older Android phones sync only when the app is opened. On Android below version 14, Outstep can't sync in the background, so a grandparent's steps appear when they open the app. Make opening it part of the morning routine.
  • The phone has to be on them. A phone left on the kitchen table counts nothing. A cheap watch, or a phone in a pocket, matters more than which app you use.
  • Permissions. If someone's steps are stuck at zero, it's almost always a health permission that wasn't granted. Check it together on a video call.

On iPhone, Outstep syncs in the background about once an hour, so leaderboards move during the day rather than instantly.

Setting it up in Outstep

  1. One person creates a group and shares the invite link or six-character code in the family chat.
  2. Everyone downloads Outstep, connects Apple Health or Health Connect, and joins. Each person's past steps fill in from their phone, so personal records and averages appear straight away.
  3. Start a Group target challenge for your first one: 7, 14 or 30 days.
  4. Agree the rules above, and let reactions and pass alerts do the rest.

Free groups hold up to 8 people and run one challenge at a time, up to 30 days. Bigger families, or families who want Step Up, team challenges or several challenges at once, can use Group Premium: $6.99/month or $49.99/year for up to 50 people. Only one person pays; everyone in the group gets the perks.

What Outstep can't do: it only counts steps, so swimming, cycling or wheelchair pushes don't score. Kids under 13 can't have an account. Journeys (virtual walks between cities) and personal challenges are personal, not shared with the group.

If your family is mostly on one kind of device, there are built-in options too: Apple Watch owners can run one-on-one Activity competitions, and Fitbit and Garmin users have friend leaderboards. Our guide to the best step challenge apps compares them.

Frequently asked questions

How do you make a step challenge fair for different ages?

Score people against themselves, not each other. Use a shared family target, a format that compares each day to your own average, or points for hitting personal targets. Rank raw totals only between people of similar age and fitness.

What's a good step goal for a family challenge?

Let each person keep their own daily goal. For a shared target, add up everyone's usual daily steps, multiply by the number of days, and add 10 to 20%. Outstep suggests a target from members' goals at four difficulty levels.

Can kids join a family step challenge?

Teenagers 13 and over can join Outstep, though some apps set the minimum at 18; Stridekick does, for example. Younger children can walk with a parent, or use a children's activity tracker with its own family features.

How long should a family step challenge last?

Two to four weeks is long enough to build a habit without people losing interest. Run another round afterwards rather than one very long challenge.

Can a family with iPhones and Androids do a step challenge together?

Yes. Cross-platform apps like Outstep, StepUp and Pacer work on both iPhone and Android, so everyone competes on the same board. Built-in options like Apple Watch competitions only work within one platform.

What are good prizes for a family step challenge?

Shared, low-cost prizes work best: choosing the restaurant, a day out, getting out of a chore, or a trophy that moves house each round.

Sources

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