Exercise: How Much Do I Need Every Day?

By Staff Report
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Updated: January 22, 2019

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When it comes to working out, it’s incredibly easy to feel like you are doing enough. It’s also easy to feel like you are doing nowhere near enough. Often, we flit between the two with consummate ease. We can go from feeling like we are living a life of extreme comfort, to feeling like we have pushed our bodies beyond their natural limits. All within the same afternoon. So, that begs the question, what do you actually need from an exercise program?

What should you be doing in terms of exercise day-in, day-out?

The level of exercise you need is hard to understand

The first challenge is that you can read one ‘expert’ source, and then read another, and have two totally unique conclusions. First off, you need to take into account where a study would be held. For example, a nation that has high fitness levels and has many people doing strong, physically-active jobs, will need less extra fitness and exercise.

A nation built on IT jobs and fast food, though, will obviously need much more exercise per day than your average in the other country. This is why it can be hard to work out where you need to make changes.

That being said, we do have some generally universal tips that we can suggest to you. While you should always look to verify your regime with an exercise professional, the following tends to be generally accepted practice as a starting point.

How much aerobic workout exercises should you do?

First off, we recommend that you try and make sure you push your body with as much aerobic activity as you can. It’s recommended that you try and get around two and a half hours of moderate physical aerobic activity in every single week. Some of us will do this for small bursts per day, others will go for a 2-3 day session of really pushing for it.

Accumulation, though, is your friend her. You will soon find that if you just go and do a bit of aerobic exercising, you will feel the benefits more than you would by doing it once or twice a week before sitting and doing nothing for the rest of the week.

Aerobic exercises can be quite varied, too. We suggest that you try and include a happy blend of walking and swimming. Both are happy exercises, easy to do, low-impact and need very little tools to actually carry out. If you wish to push things a little bit more, then we recommend going for a run once per week or similar. This can help you to make sure that you can get some enjoyable workout experiences that will help you to feel the benefits in time.

What kind of strength training do I need?

For some reason, strength training is given a needlessly bad name. Many see strength training as something that you only need to do if you want to be a professional fighter or athlete. This simply is not the case. If you are intent on staying in a good and dependable physical shape, then you need to look to make some changes to the kind of strength training that you do.

We recommend that you spend, at least, two afternoons or evening per week carrying out strength training. This often could see you doing one full set of physical exercise, using weights or some form of resistance training, usually for reps of around 12-15. For a detailed list of exercises to try see the list below from Gym Equipment, their 55 exercises should provide plenty of inspiration.

This could include anything from using a rowing machine to heading outdoors and doing some rock climbing. If you like to go swimming, then take some resistance paddles in with you: this is a surprisingly beneficial experience that you will very much enjoy taking part in.

How much exercise do I really need?

So with the above in mind, you might be wondering where you should even start. The challenge here is trying to fit it all into a busy lifestyle. Regardless of what you do for a living, we recommend that you try and fit in around thirty minutes of activity per day. This could mean that you need to start making some changes to how you spend your days off or your evenings.

But, if you are worried about your physical health or your conditioning, you need to do something about it. We recommend that you try and spend a bit more time just being a touch more active physically. Get out there, spend a bit more time outside of the office.

Get out there, and do some more. Instead of driving to the store, walk and carry your groceries back. Get a bike to cycle around with. Walk to work. Whatever you can do, make sure that you start doing more of it. Ban the use of lifts and escalators: use your legs more, basically!

Making exercise part of your life

The aim that you should have for now is to reduce the amount of time that you spend sitting down. Many of us spend hours sitting down at any one time, and this can be very bad for the body. Not only will it reduce your metabolism from working as it should, but you will find it physically harder to get things done.

If you are someone who works from a PC or a laptop, then you should take more breaks. Try and throw in 5 minutes or so of exercise for every hour that you sit down. It’s a good starting point, and allows for you to get the blood flowing back into the muscles and bones without too much effort.

If you are serious about making a positive change to your lifestyle, then the following tips are well worth following alone with. The more that you can do to help your body, the better. Simply reducing the time that you spend sitting down is a fine starting point. By doing that, you will actively encourage yourself to get up and be a bit more active, creating a virtuous cycle that can only deliver good results!