Background
This question addresses both physical and mental health and is highly practical. The answer of this question will be a guide on how much exercise to do per week.
Deliberation
First, let’s start by stating the purpose or outcome. How much should you exercise per week for what? Why do you want to exercise? To be healthy? To feel great? To be productive? To win a boxing match? To lose weight? To gain weight? For the purpose of this article, let me determine the intended outcome: to be physically and mentally healthy.
Second, let’s define the types of physical exercises. Examples of the types of exercises include cardio, strength training, high-intensity interval training (HIIT), etc. A useful categorization I’ve found is to categorize these exercises by the amount of oxygen used by the body during the activity. Therefore, aerobic and anaerobic. Cardio exercises like jogging, swimming, and cycling belongs to aerobic exercises while strength training, weight-lifting, and high-intensity interval training belongs to anaerobic exercises.
Third, let’s determine how much to do per type of exercise per week in order to achieve the intended outcome. For aerobic activities, 150 mins per week of moderate-intensity activity, or 75 mins per week of vigorous-intensity activity is recommended according to American Heart Association. For anaerobic activities, 2-3 days per week with according to WebMD.
If you want to have aerobic exercise everyday, this means around 20 mins up to 40 mins per day.
Answer
- Aerobic Exercise:
- Moderate-intensity: 150 minutes/week
- Vigorous-intensity: 75 minutes/week
- Anaerobic Exercise:
- Strength training: 2-3 days/week
