We have got to March, where gym attendance starts to drop and the New Year enthusiasm begins to fade. For me, I am stepping things up as I am extra motivated after a personal best time in Hyrox last week. As most people do not share my love and obsession for exercise, it raises the question, what is the minimum amount you can do and still get the benefits. I think most people would be pleased to see how little you really need to do.
I have spoken many times about exercise and the power of consistency being the most potent secret no one ever talks about. The minimum levels below show just how little it takes to make progress, but this only applies if you are doing it regularly long term.
You also need to factor in the influence of your current lifestyle. If your aim in life is to literally get up, drive to work, sit at your desk and come home to watch TV then this 2000 steps a day lifestyle is against you. The modern world is designed so that you can easily get by living this way. However, this is many miles away from thriving.
Minimum Exercise Dose For Sedentary People – The great thing is, if you are doing very little, it takes almost nothing to progress. You can make great aerobic gains just being slightly out of breath for 5-10 minutes a week. You could just walk quickly up a hill for 8 minutes, or say do a gentle 5 minute jog. As you get fitter over time you can still work within this 10 minutes a week frame. For strength, you could make great gains on a similar 5-10 minutes a week. If you did my daily strength routine video for life, just once a week, you will progress. Results wise nothing happens in one week of doing it, but many months will create results. You will be surprised by how much this would separate you out from most people who genuinely do not move at all.
Minimum Exercise Dose for Fit People – I still think people over estimate how much time it takes to get really fit. It is not the time per week that is huge, more the patience to let it compound for many months to years. You can get really good aerobic fitness on two sessions a week, less than an hour in total. Likewise you can grow a nice amount of muscle on 30-60 minutes a week. The key element is barely missing any time during the year. You may also need to use the most effective exercise strategies for results on this amount of time.
Minimum Exercise Dose For The Super Fit – The conversation for minimum amount of exercise is not really that relevant to super fit people. There is a reason they are super fit and it is because they enjoy moving. It is often about actually whether they have more time in the schedule over finding motivation to do more. The pareto 80:20 rule does exist in exercise. So for the minimum amount to do you would focus on that 20% that brings the best results.
Developing fitness when super fit is not about trying to minimise what you put in, it is about doing more. However, for maintenance of your high levels, what is the least you need to do? The truth is it does not take that much, you could do maybe 1 good fitness session a week, or one intense all body strength workout and you would maintain most of your abilities. You see this all the time when athletes come back from injury, months of doing not that much and it takes relatively hardly any time for them to get back to where they were.
What Does This Means For You
You do not have to exercise. But living in the real world is easier if you are reasonably strong, mobile and aerobically fit.
If you have barely exercised in your life, you simply just have to learn the skills of how to do it while starting off gently. If you are a Yo-Yo exerciser then focus on the above minimum criteria, your goal is to not to smash the sessions but to just get the basics done until it is absolutely embedded into your habits. This will often involve you having to go through a readjustment in how exercise can feel much easier or shorter than what you are used to.
For people doing loads of exercise regularly…. life is good already no doubt! Taking it to the next level if you so desire is about using an approach that will encourage the body to make that jump. The higher your level, the more sport science principles need to be applied, and the more time needs to be devoted to it
Photo – Hyrox in Poland last weekend, the best time I had as part of a open doubles running doing it in 1 hour 6 mins. Albeit, a penalty that did not affect the time at all gave us a 1.09 on the official record.
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