For health benefits, the World Health Organization recommends that all adults should:

• do at least 150–300 min of moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity, or at least 75–150 min of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity, or some equivalent combination of both throughout the week
• do muscle-strengthening activities at moderate or greater intensity that involve all major muscle groups on 2 or more days per week.

However, many people don’t meet these guidelines. For example, it’s estimated globally that 1 in 4 (27.5%) adults don’t meet the recommendations for aerobic exercise.

One potential barrier to people being more active is the belief that unless you reach these specific numbers, you won’t get any health benefits… But that’s not true!

Health benefits still occur with levels of physical activity below the recommendations.

So, some physical activity is better than none—you can always start small and gradually build up over time!

If you need any help with getting started, let us know.

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References

• Bull et al. (2020) (PMID: 33239350)
• Guthold et al. (2018) (PMID: 30193830)