How much exercise is enough?

One of the most common questions I hear about exercise and fitness is, “how much do I need to exercise to get fit?”

For a long time the standard ‘textbook’ answer would have been three times a week for 30 minutes.  But the real answer is not an answer, but other questions.

“What do you mean by fit?”

“How fit do you want to be?”

“Do you wan to be fitter than you are now?”

“What do you want to be fit to do?”

As you can see, how much exercise you need to do depends on how fit you are now, how fit you want to be and what you want to be fit to do.

Probably a more relevant question for those people who don’t think they are very fit now is “How much exercise do I need to do to get fitter?”

Again, there is no simple answer to this. That is why you need fitness experts like me. However, a study has shed some light on this question.

The researchers conducted a study with 500 overweight, post-menopausal women. The women were divided into three groups, who did different amounts of moderate intensity activity.

What they found was that the women who exercised the most, improved their fitness the most.  No surprise there!  But what was surprising to the researchers was that the group of women who did just 72 minutes of exercise per week had significant improvement in their fitness.  That’s just 10 minutes a day!

I can hear you all jumping for joy thinking that you only have to do 10 minutes a day to get fit.  Well, yes and no.

If you are currently doing no exercise then doing just 10 minutes a day will probably improve your fitness.  It might not get you to the fitness level you want, but it will make a difference, and given that getting started on an exercise program is the hardest part, just fitting in 10 minutes every day may be a good initial plan.

For those who are already reasonably fit, you probably need more than 10 minutes to get fitter but the good news out of this study is that just doing a small amount of activity can make a difference.

So the answer is, if you aren’t currently doing any exercise or you can’t do you normal activity just do something, even if it’s only 10 minutes!

IMPORTANT LEGAL INFO This article is of a general nature and FYI only, because it doesn’t take into account your personal health requirements or existing medical conditions. That means it’s not personalised health advice and shouldn’t be relied upon as if it is. Before making a health-related decision, you should work out if the info is appropriate for your situation and get professional medical advice.