How Often Should I Exercise?

In my article “Why Time Magazine Has It Wrong”, I touched on the basic recommendations for cardiovascular, and resistance exercise. However, that does not actually answer the question of how much you (specifically) should exercise. A good trainer will use your health status, goals, and any other contributing information to determine the program frequency, intensity, time, and type of activity, or more easily remembered as F.I.T.T.

---Castro and King's study (2002) concluded that home-based, telephone-supervised programs were as effective as group- or facility-based programs in terms of increased functional capacity and adherence.---- Click here to learn more---------

Given you are healthy (no chronic conditions, free of injury), think about your goal(s). The goal will either fall into the avoidance of disease, fitness, or performance category. So here is a general breakdown:                    
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• Avoidance of Disease:
  • Frequency of exercise is 5 days per week
  • Intensity is of exercise is moderate
    • Moderate cardio (zone 1 or 2), is an intensity that you can perform and still carry on a conversation
  • Time spent is approximately 30 minutes a day
  • Type of exercise
    • Resistance- two session per week of each major muscle group, 8-12 reps, 15 or more repetitions with persons of 65 years of age and above, or frailty
    • Cardio- an example would be walking or other cardio activity where you’re moving at a pace where your heart rate is increasing but not so hard that you can’t hold a conversation
• Fitness/Weight Loss:
  • Frequency of exercise is 3 to 4 days per week
  • Intensity of exercise is mildly difficult to difficult
    • Difficult or vigorous cardio for example can be gauged by having difficulty speaking while performing the workout. This is called the talk test.
  • Time spent is 30-45 minutes per workout
  • Type of exercise
    • Resistance (8-12 reps, 3 sets,) some sources recommend a greater range of repetitions whether you’re focusing on muscular endurance/weight loss (12-20 reps) or muscular strength (8-12)
    • Cardio (20+ minutes), examples could be jogging or other vigorous type exercise that becomes intense enough as to make it difficult to hold a conversation (zone 3)
• Performance:
  • Frequency of exercise 7 days per week
  • Intensity of exercise is difficult or very difficult (depending on periodization)
  • Time spent per day on exercise will range but can be upwards of 2 hours per day
  • Type of exercise is solely dependent on the sport or event you’re training for

If your goal is fitness you do not want to start working out 3-4 times a week at a difficult intensity. While a program should be tailored to the person, beginning at the Avoidance of Disease intensity for someone who is just beginning may be most appropriate. This will provide the the person with some conditioning prior to moving into a difficult intensity training regimen.

Here’s why conditioning is important before increasing intensity:

• Allows the joints to strengthen thereby reducing risk of orthopedic injury
• Allows the muscles to condition also reducing the risk of muscle tear, pull
• Helps soreness of muscles to be more manageable
• Allows you to be more focused on form and less on shear performance
• As we age conditioning becomes increasingly more important. When you were 20 years old perhaps you could not exercise for a year, and just jump into a high intensity program, however, as we age the risk of injury climbs dramatically.

References:

Clark, M., Sutton B.G., & Lucett, S., NASM Essentials of Personal Fitness Training. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2014. Print
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American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), retrieved from:  https://www.acsm.org/docs/brochures/resistance-training.pdf