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New WHO Guidelines On How Much Exercise You Should Get



If “getting more physical activity” is one of your New Year’s resolutions for 2021, then you may want to be more specific. After all, reaching over to click the mute button on Zoom is technically some physical activity. The question is how much more physical activity should you get?

Well, if you are an adult, aim for at least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity physical activity each week. This is according to the World Health Organization (WHO) 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behavior, the first such update in a decade, which are detailed in a publication in the British Journal of Sports Medicine

One difference between the 2010 guidelines and the 2020 ones is that the WHO offers a range rather than just a single threshold of 150 or 75 minutes. This is, in part, for those who may aim to exercise much more than the recommended threshold, who believe that more is better. Exercise can be like hedgehogs at a New Year’s Eve party. More can be better. However, at some point, an unlimited amount is not necessarily a good thing. Too much exercise could lead to wear and tear and injury, and exercising close to 10,080 minutes a week wouldn’t leave much time to sleep or eat. The WHO established upper limits to show that if you go above the range you may not necessarily gain additional benefits in terms of decreased risk of chronic medical conditions. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t exercise for more than 300 minutes a week. Just don’t expect 600 minutes to be twice as good as 300 minutes.

To determine what constitutes moderate versus vigorous physical activity, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offers the “Talk Test.” The “Talk Test” is fairly straightforward. When doing an activity, ask yourself out loud, “can you talk?”

Moderate-intensity activities are ones that allow you talk but not sing. So, for example, when you walk briskly at about 3 miles per hour or a little faster, ride a bicycle at less than 10 miles per hour, engage in water aerobics, garden, play doubles tennis, or ballroom dance, you probably can still talk but not sing. So, you may be able to tell your doubles partner, “watch out, that ball is about to strike you in the head,” or inquire “what is that lion doing on the tennis court?” And while ballroom dancing, you probably can ask your partner, “are you a parking ticket? Because you’ve got fine written all over you.” But in both situations, it may be considerably more difficult to sing, “Near, far, wherever you are, I believe that the heart does go on.”

Therefore, use the singing criterion to determine whether something is less than a moderate-intensity activity. For example, try singing One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful” with everything that you do each day. Do this until your roommate or housemate asks you to leave. For example, it’s easy to sing, “Baby you light up my world like nobody else,” when you are sitting on the toilet. So that doesn’t count as moderate-intensity activity no matter what you ate the night before.

By contrast, vigorous-intensity activities make it difficult for you to say any more than just a few words without pausing for a breath. For example, you may be able say “YOLO” or “where...is...bathroom...please,” while jogging but not much more consecutively. Other activities that may qualify include race walking, singles tennis (meaning playing against one opponent, rather than playing with people who are romantically unattached), jumping rope, and sprinting away from the year 2020. Swimming laps typically counts as well because “had a deep conversation while swimming” is not something that you typically hear, unless you are talking about deep in the water.

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