One thing people out here periodically is how causation is hard to find. Someone who is dying may be not inclined to do anything 'cause they feel lousy all the time.
Median age of 61… 4.4 minutes of “vigorous” activity. Hard to interpret this as anything else that if you remain being able to be somehow active in your later years you will be better off.
I find all of the studies of “how little exercise” is needed sad. Instead we should be focusing on how to restructure modern lifestyle to allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises.
I'm confused. You're saddened by people researching the minimum exercise needed, but want society to aim to give people that minimum? How would society know what the minimum is?
We know the recommended minimum of 150 minutes of cardio exercise and two resistance strength training sessions per week. For many people this is unrealistic.
But this is not what the research for minimum is for. There are all those “20 minutes a week”, “7 minutes a day” programs to basically just avoid croaking from not moving at all.
1. Ban overworking. Make it a federal offense. Actually jail CEOs if their employees work >50 hours a week
2. These exercise tracking apps should pay people for the exercise they do. The money will come from health insurance. They pay $1 per mile you run or hike, they save $10 on your future hospitalization.
The solution is right here, above. Whether the politicians choose to listen, is not something I can influence.
Your health insurance or employer may already offer a similar program. Mine does. I get up to $500 added to my HSA every year if I hit step count goals on their app.
That said, looking around my office, I don't think it's very effective. It's hard to get people to exercise and a few hundred bucks doesn't change that.
Agreed. I've figured it out during the drier months in the NW of the States. Plenty of work in the woods, workshop, maintenance, and helping neighbors with the same. But winter and the rains I would inevitably put on 10 pounds and lose my super old guy muscles. My mildly successful campaign against the trend is long rain walks and Convict Conditioning workouts.
It took us centuries to screw everything so I don’t claim any of this is simple. But we will need to start actually fixing stuff eventually, rather than adding patches.
At least 30 minutes in a day, probably 3 days a week at minumum as the body requires it to maintain itself that is though if you want to live a happy and good life, but then over doing its isnt good as well, theres need to be a balance in everything
Overdoing it is a real risk, I learned recently. If you work out too hard, you actually produce free radicals. The tricky thing is that some people can get used to higher heart rate so it doesn’t matter if they are working out hard consistently because they are used to it.
You need to ramp up, of course. Given you're training at an appropriate rate, and you're doing sensible things - you should be fine. By sensible things I mean: short and intense weight training, intense cardio sessions, and not-too-long endurance sessions (eg: < 5h). More endurance is fine, but it can be very fatiguing, especially for the older athlete. If you ramp up to those over time, you needn't worry about "free radicals" (that's an oversimplification).
Recent research highlights a number of things, but what sticks out is that it's important to maintaining muscle mass because we lose a bunch as we get older, and loss of muscle is a leading morbidity factor.
The level which means you keep doing it is the right level.
For me that's 20 minutes a day on a rowing machine plus some body weight strength exercises.
Which is about a YouTube video long and as a result I basically only watch YouTube content when I'm doing it (hey I'd like to watch this -> I should go start rowing) is a surprisingly good motivator.
What a weird question.
The amount depends on what you hope to accomplish.
Want to be able to get on the floor and play with your grandkids? That's going to require a certain amount of mobility work.
Want to be able to hike up Mount Whitney? You'll need regular cardio.
I also hate the phrasing that exercise is something to "get away with". Most people who exercise regularly enjoy it. Moving your body is fun, especially once you get fit enough to do it without pain or immediate exhaustion.
Gotta fuckin love hn. Can't say the simplest thing without getting thrown into a well, actually.
I wasn't claiming to have run a damned study. Just making an observation. The thing is, people who don't enjoy exercising but start exercising anyway tend to find they enjoy it after a while. Saying people enjoy exercise is like saying "ice cream tastes good". There's a bit of activation energy required, but it's not a huge stretch to notice that something that is good for our bodies gives us pleasure.
> Saying people enjoy exercise is only slightly more controversial than saying "ice cream tastes good".
You might be in a bubble. I know many people who exercise regularly, and I'd say most of them only do it because it's healthy. If they found a way to stay healthy without exercise, they'd drop it in a heartbeat.
And because the most people don't exercise, it's easy to conclude, that the most people don't enjoy it.
One can even conclude reverse, that only people who enjoy exercising, are doing it.
How about you instead of trying to “get away with” as little exercise as possible you found a way to move your body that you genuinely enjoy? One should not optimise away sleep, nutrition and exercise. Yes we live in a ridiculous fitness and gym boom, but weight training might not actually be a good fit to most people. I love having to psych myself to lift big amounts of steel, I’m ok with bit of pain etc. - mostly people are not. There’s thousands of sports and ways to move out there. You don’t like running, well don’t. Go dancing, hiking, play a team sport, do tai-chi, yoga, goddammit change a hobby every two months, it doesn’t matter. Just do it and do it consistently every week.
And what best helps you in that is enjoying what you do, as well as doing it with a friend.
I've read before that tall people get more cancer than short people, if it's relative to how many cells you have then an extra 30 kilograms of muscle might make a difference too!
Have you ever heard of the motivational technique where, instead of telling themselves "I'm going for a run", people will say "I'm going to put my shoes on and see how I feel, no commitment and no pressure", and they end up nearly always going for a run anyway plus they do it more often and have more fun?
Also, have you read Dynomight's blog post[0] about how the biggest barrier to starting exercise isn't improving too slowly, it's overtraining and giving up?
This article could be seen as a way to do the minimum exercise possible. I think a better reading is that all exercise is good, you can spend five minutes on the exercise bike or do a few leg raises and push-ups, no pressure, it's still good for you, and maybe tomorrow you'll go for a run or make it to the gym.
Yes. I ran a half-marathon few years back when I used to box actively (didn’t compete, but sparred competitors). I woke up early 3 times a week to do 5km run no matter the weather. These days I just lift heavy weights. I think I know every motivational technique there is at this point.
What matters is that you move, consistently, every week, for years, for rest of your life. I’m kinda person who wants to just lay on bed and eat potato chips drinking beer. I used to start some regime or another, always getting bored after few month. Then I just found types of sports and exercises that worked for me and company they are fun to do with, and guess what, I need almost zero motivation to lift some several thousands of kg’s of iron every week.
Consistency, intensity, motivation. Best motivation is fun, especially fun with other people.
Good for you, but that is entirely you describing your life and doesn't address the point.
Which was that, if "what matters is that you move, consistently, every week", then it's motivational to tell sedentary people that pretty much any amount of exercise will do. Once you get over the initial activation energy then exercise is easier.
It addresses the point exactly. I doscuss my experience to show I quote know what I am talking about. Any amount of exercise is pnly good for long run if you do it consistently, with enough intensity and for long time. Your 5min ab workout that you manage to keep up for two weeks is basically meaningless. 5000 steps, 15min workouts, 30min jogs, there has been plenty of this fads and no, they do not get people moving in the long term. Forcing yourself to put on running shoes every morning works up to a point when it doesn’t - you get injured, ill, meet someone, Christmas, summer vacation abroad, new job, anything. And you won’t go back, because you hated running in the first place.
What does, is getting a hobby where you move. It might be chasing butterflies or Freestyle Wrestling, doesn’t matter as long as you think it is fun.
I don’t know why you argue when I’m basically giving a cheat code how to start enjoying sports and exercising. If you enjoy something you do it more, what is here to argue?
That’s why it helps to reframe the gym as training for life by making one stronger at tolerating discomfort. Showing up, consistently, even when you don’t want to, and battling through discomfort, are transferable skills throughout life and progressive training is exactly that.
> That's not ever going to be enjoyable. Tolerable, perhaps, given focus on the goal, but few people would be willing to tolerate it.
This is wrong in multiple ways.
For one thing, lots of people enjoy pain and discomfort caused by exercise. Some people even enjoy pain directly! There's ample evidence of this. You're painting with way too broad a brush given that there's enormous variance between people.
Secondly, there's clear evidence that many people do enjoy exercising, because gyms/parks/basketball courts/whateverl are often very busy. Are all these people just waiting for it to end? They're there voluntarily.
Exertion does not actually imply discomfort for everyone (maybe it does for you , I'm not in your body). I would argue most people dancing in a club are doing it because it's fun, not painful. Same with kids splashing in a pool, or anyone playing DDR or beat saber, etc. People have voluntarily exercised throughout history. Certainly it was easier when I was younger, and the endorphins overpowered any pain. I have to be more deliberate now in my old age but there are still plenty of non painful ways to move my body.
>All physical exertion causes pain and discomfort, otherwise it isn't exertion.
Not really, it causes pain and discomfort only when you have fucked up your body to the point where even a small amount of exertion is over the limit. Children seek physical exertion and will do it even against orders. A 6 y.o. is running around not because he is overcoming pain for the future health benefits, he is doing it because it's enjoyable for a body that has not degraded through decades of bad habits. People spend thousands a year on running shoes or bikes or tennis rackets and club membership are not doing that to enhance their pain and suffering either.
It may sound crazy, but a properly installed pull up bar on your room doorway is a fun way to apply Pavel Tsatsouline ‘grease the groove’ principle. And it’s both easy and fun. You can do pull ups, and train your abdomen several times a day without getting psychological resistance (from google overview: "Grease the Groove" (GtG) is a strength training method popularized by fitness expert Pavel Tsatsouline. It involves performing a specific exercise frequently throughout the day using only 40–60% of your maximum reps. By avoiding muscle failure and staying fresh, your nervous system efficiently adapts to the movement.")
I'm moving to a new place and my office will have an exposed I-beam and I'm stoked. The healthiest points of my life seem to correlate with industrial architecture that I can hang on directly or with rings!
Way back, working for the 2010 Census, I had an ex-Navy coworker who did something like that: whenever he was bored in the office, he would do a couple of push-ups before looking for new work to do.
Less than 5% of the population can do a pull-up. I can after having climbed for a bit and worked towards doing it, but you might be surprised to learn how few this would actually benefit.
This is where calisthenics comes into play. You can quite easily increase and decrease the leverage on the muscle to workup to the 'main exercise' and even past it. IE, for pull ups, you can hang under a table and do a 'horizontal' pull, you can 'cheat' up the movement (jumping), you can use resistance bands, etc. This is the same for almost every muscle group.
A few friends and I did this during Covid. We'd do 10 pushups at the top of the hour all day long. Each effort was pretty easy, but overall we'd end up doing 100ish pushups a day. After a while we'd increase the number per set a bit.
It was a fun way to bond and share in exercise therapy.
I live on 3rd floor with no elevator so I usually have to walk up these twice a day, this along with walking and hanging from a door frame is just enough to keep alive.
Folks should be getting out for a brisk >20 minute/1mile/2km early/late walk everyday when its cool outside, and if you have a dog it is 2 to 3 times a day with shorter <10min sessions if you value the carpets.
Many that complain about neck or back problems are almost always suffering from stress/burnout, RSI, and or a sedentary lifestyle. Take it slow at first to avoid injuring yourself, and head home if you feel out of breath each journey. And remember to stay hydrated with normal clean water.
Getting outside regularly will help most folks live better longer lives. Have a wonderful day. =3
Find something you enjoy doing, then "hack" it to make you participate more.
For example, I play a lot of ultimate in the summer. I play with a lunchtime pickup group, so there is a forcing function to play. I like to bike, and helping coach my daughter's high school mountain bike team ensures I get a lot more miles than I would otherwise. In the winter, I have friends that I ski with. I also enjoy exercising on my own, but some activities are better as a group.
Lift weights. Do it multiple times a day and chase that pump. Do it for stress relief. Do it to help you fall asleep. Do it to wake up.
It's not all about cardio. Your muscles are such a significant part of your metabolism and far too many people avoid strength training. A ton of problems that arise while aging are ultimately hormonal. Even your skin improves. Cardiovascular health begins here. People are literally running before they can walk.
That's the realistic answer for most people under 65 trying to make it to at least 80 with a decent quality of life.
Lifting weights is sore and exhausting. You're never going to persuade rhe plurality of people to improve their physical condition by enduring pain, it needs to be engaging and appealing.
I'll respond anyway, but please don't do this here.
Unless you have an injury or disability, there's always a weight you can lift that doesn't hurt for a decent amount of reps.
You already lift your own weight all the time. You can always add more and keep going at your own pace from there. The whole point of strength training is to be comfortable lifting increasing amounts of weight over time.
For all the reasons I already listed in other comments, it's the simplest and fastest known way to not feeling like shit all the time. This is a form of exercise that can be done effectively with minimal sweating indoors. It doesn't get any simpler than this. Consider that all forms of exercise involve weight. If even this "hurts", you might have an injury you weren't aware of.
I think the key thing is to make people aware of the consequences of their choices. If people are completely aware of how much they are fucking up their life fine, that’s on them. Many people don’t realise just how much of a big impact it has. Is not just physical health. For mental health nothing beats exercise.
I love to run, and even in winter, in the dark, in the rain, I will get home from work at 6pm, eat a small dinner, and head out for a 40-60 minute jog or interval session a few days a week. I do a aerial circus class once a week, too.
I am single and have no children or care giving obligations yet. I bet that when I (hopefully) have small children one day, it will be much harder for me to fit in 3-4 hours a week of running, especially when sleeping enough to feel rested. It would be nice to know what I can do to keep up my health during that phase of life.
That's a reasonable start for some people but it lacks the resistance training necessary to prevent sarcopenia later in life. Some people get that as part of their job but most of us need to do at least some weight training. Carrying groceries isn't nearly enough.
I looked into the return on investment of exercise in terms of hours spent exercising and expected hours of waking life you gain. In short, it's a good investment, especially if you do vigorous exercise (both cardio and resistance training). It's an even better time investment if you can do it at home and cut out the commute time to the gym. You don't actually need more than maybe a couple hundred dollars worth of equipment.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 36.1 ms ] threadI find all of the studies of “how little exercise” is needed sad. Instead we should be focusing on how to restructure modern lifestyle to allow everybody to achieve the minimum of cardiovascular and strength exercises.
But this is not what the research for minimum is for. There are all those “20 minutes a week”, “7 minutes a day” programs to basically just avoid croaking from not moving at all.
Whereas minimizing the amount of free time people spend on their health, allowing people more time to labor or consume, is profitable.
1. Ban overworking. Make it a federal offense. Actually jail CEOs if their employees work >50 hours a week
2. These exercise tracking apps should pay people for the exercise they do. The money will come from health insurance. They pay $1 per mile you run or hike, they save $10 on your future hospitalization.
The solution is right here, above. Whether the politicians choose to listen, is not something I can influence.
That said, looking around my office, I don't think it's very effective. It's hard to get people to exercise and a few hundred bucks doesn't change that.
Recent research highlights a number of things, but what sticks out is that it's important to maintaining muscle mass because we lose a bunch as we get older, and loss of muscle is a leading morbidity factor.
For me that's 20 minutes a day on a rowing machine plus some body weight strength exercises.
Which is about a YouTube video long and as a result I basically only watch YouTube content when I'm doing it (hey I'd like to watch this -> I should go start rowing) is a surprisingly good motivator.
For example if you are doing arm exercises Monday, don't do arm exercises again Tuesday, work another muscle groups like your legs.
I had to learn this the hard way when I was starting out..
Want to be able to get on the floor and play with your grandkids? That's going to require a certain amount of mobility work.
Want to be able to hike up Mount Whitney? You'll need regular cardio.
I also hate the phrasing that exercise is something to "get away with". Most people who exercise regularly enjoy it. Moving your body is fun, especially once you get fit enough to do it without pain or immediate exhaustion.
There's a huge selection effect here.
I wasn't claiming to have run a damned study. Just making an observation. The thing is, people who don't enjoy exercising but start exercising anyway tend to find they enjoy it after a while. Saying people enjoy exercise is like saying "ice cream tastes good". There's a bit of activation energy required, but it's not a huge stretch to notice that something that is good for our bodies gives us pleasure.
You might be in a bubble. I know many people who exercise regularly, and I'd say most of them only do it because it's healthy. If they found a way to stay healthy without exercise, they'd drop it in a heartbeat.
And because the most people don't exercise, it's easy to conclude, that the most people don't enjoy it. One can even conclude reverse, that only people who enjoy exercising, are doing it.
And what best helps you in that is enjoying what you do, as well as doing it with a friend.
People will eventually realize it causes cancer. Weight training literally generates inflation.
Inflation? I don't think this comment could have better intentionally illustrated how ill-informed it is if you tried.
having a well-rounded diet and getting an hour of walking in daily is like 90% of the way there for good health.
Also, have you read Dynomight's blog post[0] about how the biggest barrier to starting exercise isn't improving too slowly, it's overtraining and giving up?
This article could be seen as a way to do the minimum exercise possible. I think a better reading is that all exercise is good, you can spend five minutes on the exercise bike or do a few leg raises and push-ups, no pressure, it's still good for you, and maybe tomorrow you'll go for a run or make it to the gym.
[0] https://dynomight.net/2021/01/25/how-to-run-without-all-the-...
What matters is that you move, consistently, every week, for years, for rest of your life. I’m kinda person who wants to just lay on bed and eat potato chips drinking beer. I used to start some regime or another, always getting bored after few month. Then I just found types of sports and exercises that worked for me and company they are fun to do with, and guess what, I need almost zero motivation to lift some several thousands of kg’s of iron every week.
Consistency, intensity, motivation. Best motivation is fun, especially fun with other people.
Which was that, if "what matters is that you move, consistently, every week", then it's motivational to tell sedentary people that pretty much any amount of exercise will do. Once you get over the initial activation energy then exercise is easier.
What does, is getting a hobby where you move. It might be chasing butterflies or Freestyle Wrestling, doesn’t matter as long as you think it is fun.
I don’t know why you argue when I’m basically giving a cheat code how to start enjoying sports and exercising. If you enjoy something you do it more, what is here to argue?
Small doses of psychedelics invert this, and I find myself running and doing push-ups and enjoying it. I have no idea how that works.
All physical exertion causes pain and discomfort, otherwise it isn't exertion.
That's not ever going to be enjoyable. Tolerable, perhaps, given focus on the goal.
This is wrong in multiple ways.
For one thing, lots of people enjoy pain and discomfort caused by exercise. Some people even enjoy pain directly! There's ample evidence of this. You're painting with way too broad a brush given that there's enormous variance between people.
Secondly, there's clear evidence that many people do enjoy exercising, because gyms/parks/basketball courts/whateverl are often very busy. Are all these people just waiting for it to end? They're there voluntarily.
This is just ridiculous. If this is actually true to ypu, please seek medical care immediately. You might not have long left.
Not really, it causes pain and discomfort only when you have fucked up your body to the point where even a small amount of exertion is over the limit. Children seek physical exertion and will do it even against orders. A 6 y.o. is running around not because he is overcoming pain for the future health benefits, he is doing it because it's enjoyable for a body that has not degraded through decades of bad habits. People spend thousands a year on running shoes or bikes or tennis rackets and club membership are not doing that to enhance their pain and suffering either.
Dance. Sex. Climbing things. Playing a sport you enjoy.
Demonstrably wrong.
It was a fun way to bond and share in exercise therapy.
Many that complain about neck or back problems are almost always suffering from stress/burnout, RSI, and or a sedentary lifestyle. Take it slow at first to avoid injuring yourself, and head home if you feel out of breath each journey. And remember to stay hydrated with normal clean water.
Getting outside regularly will help most folks live better longer lives. Have a wonderful day. =3
For example, I play a lot of ultimate in the summer. I play with a lunchtime pickup group, so there is a forcing function to play. I like to bike, and helping coach my daughter's high school mountain bike team ensures I get a lot more miles than I would otherwise. In the winter, I have friends that I ski with. I also enjoy exercising on my own, but some activities are better as a group.
It's not all about cardio. Your muscles are such a significant part of your metabolism and far too many people avoid strength training. A ton of problems that arise while aging are ultimately hormonal. Even your skin improves. Cardiovascular health begins here. People are literally running before they can walk.
That's the realistic answer for most people under 65 trying to make it to at least 80 with a decent quality of life.
Yes, because it hurts.
Lifting weights is sore and exhausting. You're never going to persuade rhe plurality of people to improve their physical condition by enduring pain, it needs to be engaging and appealing.
Unless you have an injury or disability, there's always a weight you can lift that doesn't hurt for a decent amount of reps.
You already lift your own weight all the time. You can always add more and keep going at your own pace from there. The whole point of strength training is to be comfortable lifting increasing amounts of weight over time.
For all the reasons I already listed in other comments, it's the simplest and fastest known way to not feeling like shit all the time. This is a form of exercise that can be done effectively with minimal sweating indoors. It doesn't get any simpler than this. Consider that all forms of exercise involve weight. If even this "hurts", you might have an injury you weren't aware of.
I am single and have no children or care giving obligations yet. I bet that when I (hopefully) have small children one day, it will be much harder for me to fit in 3-4 hours a week of running, especially when sleeping enough to feel rested. It would be nice to know what I can do to keep up my health during that phase of life.
Live in a "fifteen minute city." Work someplace that’s either a thirty minute walk or thirty minute bike ride from home. Carry your groceries.
If you get your minimal daily requirement of exercise by just living your normal life, any additional exercise you do is bonus, icing on your cake.