> In order to achieve substantial protection, classed as a greater than 30% risk reduction, between 560 and 610 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week was needed.
So 30 minutes a day is still good, but more is better. Seems reasonable.
Also exercise doesn't mean planned / scheduled exercise, like going to the gym. Daily activities can count, like cycling to the train station for example. Which gets to one of my favorite hobby horses: increasing exercise at the population level is an urban design problem.
[1]: See, for example, https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2026/03/11/how-paris-...
Very torn on this one. I love it for them, but also, it seems super sad to me. I can't even really explain why it's so saddening.
I wound up in a fairly walkable part of Calgary. But Calgary is not a super walkable or bikeable city. Transit here is at best ok, and winter gets very cold. There are some good bike paths but you have to be pretty determined to use them when it snows or it's -40 out.
I guess what I'm saying is urban design is super important, but geography has a say too. We don't all get to live in the relatively mild west coast weather.
In the WHO recommendations, they say to get 75 minutes of vigorous or 150 of moderate per week. I believe in this study they use the same double counting of vigorous minutes.
I’ve seen other studies that say you get most all of the cardio benefit you can with about 150m vigorous/300m moderate. You could roughly get that by running about 2.5 miles per day.
Most of the people I see in the gym are sitting on the benches on their phone 9 minutes out of 10. I'm pretty sure going to the gym is not helping at all...
The people who walk 45m on the treadmill while watching a show, or people who sit around chit chatting, yes... A waste of space.
Whether someone's effectively strength training/bodybuilding or not, which is the section I think you refer to—nobody reasonably believes that does anything significant for cardiovascular health, which is the topic being dicussed here.
I may be misunderstanding how the study was conducted, but it sounds like a more reasonable conclusion to draw from the study is that those who tend to have better health outcomes and longer healthspans/lifespans are the ones who also are willing to prioritize their health and physical fitness and are willing to spend this much time on exercise.
The average age of participants in the study was 57, so you're already narrowing in on a very specific and pretty narrow subset of the population when you're looking at seniors who are also spending 10 hours a week on exercise.
While 560-610 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity certainly helps, I'd think these are individuals who are generally abstaining from smoking, will try to eat healthy at least moderately often, stay away from overconsumption of fast food or alcohol, etc.
Basically, it sounds like there is a degree of correlation here between habits and outcomes that is being conflated with causation.
30%+ reduction from 10 hours a week of exercise sounds ideal, but 9% isn't nothing.
Jokes aside, 10 hours a week is quite something. Good that they mention that 2-3 hours is also already beneficial.
This study defines moderate as "brisk" walking, suggesting that it's not just walking.
Athletes live in their own bubble where "vigorous" means "maximal".
I was always a little suspicious when they would say that you only need moderate exercise like walking because when you do vigorous exercise your blood vessels expand up to 3x diameter, keeping your arteries supple and elastic. You just don't get that by walking.
I guess the one interesting thing is that they only had accelerometer data, so i guess maybe this wouldnt undercount activity minutes the way my garmin does (i can do a lot before i cross 100bpm or whatever the threshold is).
It seems like a lot here depends on how you try to measure this activity. Garmin uses the hr mostly i think so basically most of my stepcount is ignored. Pure accelerometer data underrepresents resistance training and overrepresents relatively low energy fidgeting.
I feel like this is a garbage study tbh. Or a mid study with a garbage headline slapped on it.
also people: 2h average a day doomscrolling on tiktok
I wonder if healthy diet also plays role in the outcome.
Walking, housework, gardening, etc are all classed as moderate for this purpose, whilst things like running or lifting weights are vigorous and count double.
So we're only talking about a couple of dedicated exercise sessions a week, on top of an hour of non-sedentary activities each a day.
What it honestly comes down to is people absolutely love to make excuses, simple as.
> Adults should aim to do between 560 and 610 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity to achieve a substantial reduction in the risk of heart attacks and stroke, suggest the findings of an observational study published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
It is highly likely that healthier people exercise more (and the bedridden exercise way less). Also, who exercise more: people who care about their health in general, who don't overwork themselves, who have disposable time and income.
For example, an older person's walking pace is strongly correlated with their remaining life years. If we force these people to walk faster, they won't outrun death - we would very likely just increase their mortality.
15 MET hours above 3 METs gain 70% of the possible benefits from cardio.
Not exactly contradictory results, but it makes this sound like bullshit.
Walking briskly is 3. Moderate running is 6. These are just examples.
An hour spent at 3 MET is 3 MET hours.
Well, on second thought, a potential flaw of this analysis is that calculating MVPA from medical accelerometer data has a huge blind spot. Bicycling is invisible to those devices, as is any other activity that doesn't move your wrist, like leg presses.
> 560 and 610 minutes a week of moderate to vigorous physical activity
> Observational study
Can we stop doing this please?
I play pickleball 10h a week and absolutely love the time spent playing. So there is no wasted time here. I spend all my exercise time doing something fun that I love doing, and it improves my health outcomes at the same time.
A lot of people can get this level of exercise by walking or cycling to work. Even for those people that can’t, it’s something to consider the next time you are changing jobs or moving house.
Honestly, only a hypochondriac or a narcissist would consider 10h/w acceptable. Everyone is too busy trying to stay alive.
The number only makes sense if you're a body-builder or an influencer who trades on appearance.
Go for a run pushing your kids in the stroller (even more cardiovascular benefit than just running by itself tbh). Do a bunch of squats at home while cradling your toddler (it becomes funtime for them, like they're on a mini rollercoaster ride). Take your kids for a hike, whether they're tiny and need to be brought along in a baby carrier or they can walk by themselves.
Basically, you can make it happen if you really want it to happen.
Plus, going for a walk/run in the stroller with Dad has to be developmentally healthier than staring at a tablet on the couch.
For anyone literally in this situation: start small and consistent. Your goal is not to pencil in 10 hours a week of cardio. Instead, try to do 30 seconds of the same calisthenics exercise with your child before work/school consistently for 6 months. Perhaps pushups.
Over time you'll find the 30 seconds grows because you want it to. You might learn that warming up with jumping jacks helps you do pushups more comfortably. You might watch videos with your child about pushup variations and incorporate them into your routine together. Perhaps invest a few $$ into small equipment to support activities you're already doing, like pushup handles. Or maybe an over-the-door pullup bar.
Your routine won't be "optimal" in the 600 minutes sense, but a suboptimal routine that you do consistently is infinitely better for you than an ideal routine you don't, and it can expand/contract based on your needs.
Upon reading the article:
> The average age was 57 years and 56% were female and 96% were white.
My take is that all this study says is that's kind of late to try to tackle this problem in one's 50s. That being said it's nice to know that I could maybe get a 30% reduction if I were to start spitting my lungs out at this age doing 10h of intense cardio.
I'm from Vancouver Island originally so Calgary snows a ton in comparison. :)
You're right it could be worse. It could be better too. That basically describes everywhere though! Overall I do love living here
> if we made city managers walk, roll or bus to work for a month it would help IMO.
Agreed. I think public servants should be encouraged (maybe required?) to dogfood public services now and then
The language isn't that precise because a trained marathoner is doing 7 minute miles for two hours at 50% of the populations resting heart rate.
The human body evolved for that, and much more, you're not training 90 min per day at athlete level performance, you'll be fine... Of course if you run 10 hours per week with bad technique you're going to fuck your shit up, but you can easily alternate 60 min of gym/cardio every day with very little chance of injuries + an evening 30min "brisk" walk or 30 min of bicycle commute.
It's your body, do as you want, but chances are you exercise (way) too little, not too much
This is questionable past the median age that humans had on evolutionary scale.
https://www.ucdavis.edu/blog/humans-are-born-run
https://www.kpax.com/news/a-wilder-view/a-wilder-view-why-hu...
Only a few people take benefit from running heavier than 5 km (3 miles) in 30 minutes every other day. The rest of you exercise should come from anything that is not driving or browsing the web.
Because if you need to fit 560 minutes of cardio and then also fit weight lifting 3 times a week that's a lot of time working out
In my own experience, no. Strictly cardio. The number of squats you'd have to do to constitue even five minutes of vigorous activity is practicably impossible.
Lifting weights could certainly count/classify as moderate activity though, just without as much 'bang for your buck' as dedicated aerobic exercise.
With small/insufficient muscle size, you simply run out of stored glycogen before you get tired cardiovascularly.
> Because if you need to fit 560 minutes of cardio and then also fit weight lifting 3 times a week that's a lot of time working out
Proper exercise is absolutely a lifestyle change and a big commitment. Not only do you have to exercise several hours a week, but also eat healthier macros and fix your sleep to make sure most of the benefits stick and aren't wasted.
People try to half-ass it all the time by doing weird diets or going on 15 minutes walk during their lunch break, and yes it's better than nothing, but not by much.
Like my heartrate for sure goes higher when lifting weights than when I walk. If I walk fast, it might get closer, but I am not that confident.
300 minutes of HIIT per week are equal to 10 HIIT sessions per week, I would argue that's outright impossible, the body cannot handle that, I don't think even an Olympic athlete can handle more than 3 times per week HIIT.
Vigorous might be possible, that's still 5 times 1 hour cardio sessions, on top of which you have to add 3 sessions of weight lifting for bone density, on top of which you have to add balance training and stretching.
There isn't enough time in a day to do that if you work, let alone if you have kids
Walking is good exercise for anybody who is out of shape.
Vigorous would be Z2/3 cardio, so like 120-160 BPM for most adults. Moderate would be Z1 90-120.
Once you are capable of doing cardio consistently in Z4/5 with HIIT and tempo training you really don't need to worry about "am I doing enough exercise."