To maintain or improve your health, adults need to do aerobic and strength exercises every week.
As a minimum adults aged 19 to 64 should try to be active daily and should do:
or
or
One way you can achieve 150 minutes of weekly physical activity is to do 30 minutes on 5 days a week.
Aerobic activities help to protect and maintain heart, lung and circulatory health. This can:
Moderate aerobic activity will
Moderate aerobic activities can include:
It can also include simpler things like:
Anything that isn’t intense enough to increase your heart rate and breathing speed, like day to day housework or cooking, doesn’t count towards your recommended amount of activity. However, if it breaks up long periods of sitting it’s still beneficial.
One way to tell if you’re working at a moderate level is to try the ‘walkie, talkie test’. For example, if you can still talk when walking briskly, but you can’t sing the words to a song, you’re working at a moderate intensity.
If you’re struggling to say more than a few words between breaths then you’re likely to be working vigorously.
Vigorous physical activity can bring health benefits over and above that of moderate activity. During vigorous physical activity your heart will beat faster and your breathing rate will also increase.
Moderate and vigorous intensity is subjective, what is moderate to one person may be vigorous to another. It all depends on how fit you are. Generally, the types of activity that require vigorous effort for most people include:
In general, 75 minutes of vigorous activity can give similar health benefits to 150 minutes of moderate activity. Or simply one minute of vigorous is equal to two minutes of moderate activity. Therefore, the more you do, the greater the benefit to your health.
You’ll know when you are being vigorously active as, unlike moderate activity, you won’t be able to say more than a few words without pausing for breath. There will be no singing during the ‘walkie talkie test’.
Muscle strength is necessary in order to build and maintain strong bones so that we can easily do everyday tasks. It also regulates blood sugar and blood pressure and helps us to maintain a healthy weight.
Muscle strengthening activities are counted in repetitions and sets. A repetition is one complete movement of an activity, like a bicep curl, sit-up or push-up. A set is a group of repetitions. Muscle strengthening activities are not considered an aerobic activity, so should be done in addition to them.
Muscle strengthening activities may sound like they have to be intense, however activities focused on improving flexibility and mobility in your muscles also count towards your recommended amount. As long as you start off slowly and at pace that feels comfortable you can build up to more intense strengthening or muscle building activity if you wish.
Strength exercises include:
Some activities count as both an aerobic activity and a muscle-strengthening activity, such as:
Last updated:
30 November 2022