I read something recently that shocked me.
For a long time, the American College of Sports Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control have established physical activity guidelines, recommending that healthy adults get at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise, or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise, per week.
Further, they have always maintained that, for the best health benefits, this should be spread out over at least 30 minutes per day 5 days per week. So, because the experts have promoted this, I’ve also encouraged my clients to get at least 30 minutes of exercise on most days of the week.
The shocker for me came last week when I read the results of a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which followed more than 350,000 adults over more than ten years — a mixture of non-exercisers, daily exercisers, and “weekend warriors” who only exercised two days per week.
The study found that as long as people got at least 150 minutes of moderate activity or 75 minutes of vigorous activity per week, it didn’t matter when they did it. Whether they crammed their weekly exercise into two days versus spreading it out over five or more, the health benefits were nearly identical.
Risk of premature death from any cause was 30% lower for “weekend warriors” than for those who didn’t exercise at all. The risk of dying early from cardiovascular disease was 40% lower, and cancer death rates were nearly 20% lower.
So what’s “moderate” versus “vigorous”? Simply put, “moderate” exercise gets your heart beating faster. This can include walking very briskly, playing tennis or pickleball, pushing a lawnmower, or mopping the floors.
“Vigorous” exercise gets you going even harder, and can include jogging or running, many fitness classes, carrying groceries up stairs, or shoveling snow.
So what does this mean for you?
First, you have time. Even with a hectic schedule, it’s likely that you can still fit in a couple 35–40 minute vigorous exercise sessions each week. So if weekends provide your only chance to get to the gym, go for a run, or ride that bike, you can still feel good knowing you’re doing something good for yourself.
I have my home exercise bike set up in front of an old TV. When I want to catch up on episodes of the latest streaming-on-demand series, I do it from the back of that bike. Americans spend an average of three hours each day watching TV — using just a portion of that time smarter pays serious health dividends.
Second, some is great; more is better. If you like that two weekly workouts are far healthier than being a couch potato, there’s more where that came from! Checking off the box by doing what’s recommended each week can reduce your risk of an early demise, but getting more than the minimums carries even more benefit.
More frequent exercise sessions with fewer days in between promotes adaptations in your body that increase your overall fitness, letting you work longer with harder efforts. This also helps improve your metabolism and maintain a healthy body weight.
Adding two days per week of muscle strengthening activity (weightlifting or “resistance training”) helps you feel strong and toned as it fights the loss of muscle and bone that naturally occurs as we age.
Third, effort matters. What you put into exercise determines what you get out of it. While I’m a firm believer that anything is better than nothing and all movement has value, the evidence is clear: harder efforts yield better results in less time. The more you can include vigorous efforts in your weekly regimen, the more health benefit you’ll enjoy.
Finally, remember the bottom line. The risks of doing nothing are well-known, and include weight gain, heart disease and diabetes, poor sleep quality, and premature death. With stakes that high, the time it takes to exercise at least a couple days each week seems a small investment to make.
As always, keep in mind that we don’t decide our future; we decide our habits, and our habits determine our future.