SmarterFitter

Sam Murphy, of the Guardian, investigates how much exercise we have to do each week to stay fit and reduce our chances of dying from heart disease. It turns out to be more than we thought...

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), one of the major international organisations responsible for issuing health and fitness guidelines, became so concerned that its advice to "accumulate 30 minutes of moderate activity on most days of the week" was being misinterpreted (letting us believe that light activities were sufficient), that it went back to the drawing board earlier this year. The British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences (Bases), the UK's equivalent body, is doing the same.

The minimum recommendation is 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 days a week. You can mix or match that with 3 sessions of 20 minutes vigorous exercise.

How to determine the intensity of your workout?

"One of the simplest ways to rate intensity is the 'talk test'. If one is exercising hard enough to notice that one is breathing harder, but is still able to speak in complete sentences comfortably, then that is 'moderate' intensity. It should be a level that can be easily maintained for at least 30 minutes. A 'vigorous' intensity is one that makes it difficult to speak in complete sentences, but that can still be maintained continuously for several minutes."

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