Exercise Guidelines Explained: How Much Exercise Per Week for Good Health

Overview

Your fitness level is one of the strongest predictors of your all-cause mortality risk and provides numerous health benefits. For example, a study involving approximately 2.3 million participants found a 45% lower mortality risk in people who are physically fit compared to those who are sedentary and unfit (1). Therefore, it is important to understand how to exercise effectively to obtain these benefits.

There are two main types of exercise recommended to improve your health, and both are equally important.

What is Aerobic Exercise?

Aerobic exercise is an activity that is maintained continuously and is rhythmically. There are many types of aerobic exercise to choose from. These can include: 

• Walking

• Running

• Cycling

• Rowing

• Swimming

• Aqua aerobics

• Zumba

• Boxing

• Dancing

• Team sports

What is Resistance Exercise?

Resistance exercise involves making your muscles contract against a resistance with the goal of improving strength, power, or muscle mass. It is recommended to follow a whole-body resistance program that targets all major muscle groups. An easy way to achieve this is by selecting a minimum of two shoulder and arm exercises, two abdominal exercises, and two leg exercises to create a full-body workout.

There are many different exercises you can choose from depending on your goals and the areas you want to focus on. Common examples include push-ups, squats, and sit-ups.

How intense should exercise be?

When exercising, the goal is to challenge your body as much as possible without exceeding your abilities. Generally, higher-intensity exercise leads to greater improvements in physical fitness. However, light-intensity exercise is still beneficial and is always better than doing nothing.

It is important to be aware that some individuals and medical conditions may require exercising at specific, safe intensity levels. This should be discussed with an Exercise Physiologist or appropriate health professional to determine your safe maximum intensity.

There are several ways to measure exercise intensity. One of the most common and easiest methods is the Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. This scale measures how hard you feel you are working during an exercise. You rate your effort on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means no effort at all and 10 means exerting yourself as hard as possible. Your ideal RPE may vary depending on your goals and training program.

Exercise Progression is Key

Progressing your exercise routine is essential for continuing to gain benefits over time. There are many ways to progress your exercises, and it is important to regularly try small increases in difficulty, even if you are already working at a higher intensity. The type of progression you choose will depend on your individual goals.

Aerobic Exercise Progression Examples:

• Increase the duration of exercise

• Increase your speed (e.g., casual walk to brisk walk)

• Increase resistance (e.g., adding extra resistance to cycling)

• Reduce rest periods during interval training

Resistance Exercise Program Examples:

• Increase the resistance or weight used (this is often the ideal first progression when appropriate)

• Increase the number of sets and repetitions

• Change the difficulty of an exercise (e.g. kneeling push up to full push up)

• Adjust the tempo of the exercise (e.g., increasing the time taken to complete a squat from 2 seconds to 4 seconds)

If you're unsure how to structure an exercise program to improve your health, fitness, or overall physical function, book an appointment with us and we can help create a personalised plan tailored to your goals.

Reference

1. O'Keefe JH, O'Keefe EL, Eckert R, Lavie CJ. Training Strategies to Optimize Cardiovascular Durability and Life Expectancy. Mo Med. 2023 Mar-Apr;120(2):155-162. PMID: 37091937; PMCID: PMC10121111.