That's to account for possibly different (average) left/right steps.
Averages out better.
Averages out better.
My hypothesis is this: Actually try to count every foot when you’re out. If you count only every second footfall, you can mentally go "a-one-a-two-a-three" and so on, but counting every foot, there are just too many of them. At least I get brain overload from it.
They're both shortcuts to count things with half as much counting.