When it comes to exercise, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, "How much exercise do I need?". The amount and type of exercise required can vary depending on individual goals, fitness levels, and health conditions. However, there are general guidelines that can help you determine how much exercise you should aim for each week to maintain or improve your overall well-being.
The General Guidelines for Exercise
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide baseline recommendations for physical activity as follows:
For Adults (18-64 years old):
At least 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity (like brisk walking or cycling) OR 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity (like running or swimming laps) per week.
Muscle-strengthening activities, such as lifting weights or doing bodyweight exercises, that involve major muscle groups on two or more days per week.
For Older Adults (65+ years old):
The same recommendations as for younger adults, but with additional focus on activities that improve balance, especially for those at risk of falls. As we age, our muscle mass and bone density tend to decline, so it becomes increasingly important to include strength training and balance exercises to maintain muscle strength, coordination, and flexibility.
For Children and Adolescents (6-17 years old):
At least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity every day, with most of it being aerobic activity. Include muscle-strengthening and bone-strengthening activities at least three days per week.
These guidelines provide a foundation, but how much you should exercise can depend on your individual goals and circumstances.
Your Fitness Goals Influence How Much You Should Exercise
For Health and Wellbeing
If your goal is to maintain overall health and wellness, following the general guidelines is usually sufficient.
I find that my beginner clients see incredible improvements in strength from just one hour of personal training per week. I will often encourage them to supplement their gym sessions with some at home activity to focus on areas where they need to strengthen them most. In addition to this I encourage additional cardiovascular activity for general wellness – such as swimming, cycling or running, and we set goals around these.
For Cardiovascular Fitness
For improving cardiovascular fitness, you’ll need to focus on increasing frequency and/or intensity of training over time, to ensure your body continues to adapt and progress to your training. This may mean you are more aligned to the upper end of the cardiovascular guidelines, or higher.
If training for a specific event, such as a marathon, you may find yourself exceeding the guidelines. If doing so, make sure you have increased your training gradually to avoid over-use injury and overtraining.
For Muscle building
If your goal is to build muscle, you need a more targeted approach to exercise, with a greater focus on resistance training as well as nutrition and recovery.
Generally speaking for optimal results you should look to train each muscle group 2-3 times per week (I won’t delve into the deeper detail of optimal volume, sets, and experience level factors here as that’s a whole blog post in itself!). As a topline example, this could be done as 2-3 full body sessions per week, or as a higher volume plan with body part splits such as 2xleg day, 2xupper body and core, 1x full body – or going further down into muscle group splits.
How much you train will depend largely on your starting fitness levels and how much time you are able to (or want to) commit.
Start Small and Build Up From Your Current Fitness Level
Whatever your fitness goal is, beginners should always build up the frequency and intensity of their training gradually. Jumping from zero into a 5days a week training plan is a recipe for injury or burn out (overtraining).
If you are largely sedentary then adding 2 exercise sessions per week is a good start point for most people, as it allows plenty of rest time between sessions for recovery. Over time you can increase the frequency and intensity of sessions.
Listen to your body and adjust as needed. If you are feeling burnt out at the end of the week and dreading your next session, this may be a sign you need to pull things back a bit with your training, or work on other areas that impact your progress such as sleep, stress and nutrition.
Is it possible to Exercise Too Much?
While regular physical activity is essential for good health, there is a point where too much exercise can do more harm than good. This condition, known as overtraining syndrome (OTS), occurs when the volume and intensity of exercise exceed the body's ability to recover.
Overtraining can lead to physical, mental, and emotional burnout, reducing performance and increasing the risk of injury or illness. Signs of OTS include persistent fatigue, even after a full nights sleep, frequent illness (such as colds, infections, stress fractures), reduced performance (strength, speed, endurance), disturbed sleep and loss of motivation.
There isn’t a set amount of exercise that constitutes ‘too much’. Just because somebody is perceived to train a lot, doesn’t necessarily mean that they are overtraining as the condition is relative to the individual and what their body is adapted to handle. Some well adapted athletes can train multiple times per day and not suffer with OTS.
How I train as a personal trainer
I am often asked by my clients what my own training looks like. As someone who has trained for over a decade, how I have trained has varied over the years depending on what my goals are. For example, when training for a marathon I was running three times per week and strength training around 2-3 times per week. When I was training in muay Thai, I attended classes three time a week, and supplemented it with running and strength. As you can see that's more than the guidelines because I had specific goals I was training towards, beyond solely health.
Currently I have more of a strength and muscle building focus to my training, which looks like this:
2 x lower body strength
2 x upper body and core
1 x run
1 x whatever I feel like – an extra rest day :), run, mobility, stretching, calisthenics skills.
My many years of consistent training mean my body is well adapted to handle the volume of training I do currently, with just 1 or 2 rest days a week. So remember that a beginner would need to spend a good deal of time building up their fitness to do this same level of activity.
Still unsure where to start?
For those who have never strength trained before, it can be daunting to see the guidelines for health recommend two strength sessions per week. Many of the client I train in the Stoke Newington and Shoreditch studios have started personal training to shift away from a sedentary lifestyle and have the support and guidance to help them reach the exercise guidelines and beyond, in order to improve their health and feel fitter, stronger and more confident. You can read some of their stories on my testimonials page.
If you’re still unsure whether you are exercising in a way that optimises your health then feel free to drop me a message to chat about it further.
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