The 600-Minute Exercise Rule
Why the government guidelines are a don't-die minimum, not a perfect prescription
The federal government tells us we need “at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week, such as 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week.” Doctors, scientists, fitness apps, and more repeat this.
But a new British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM) suggests that figure may be far too low. Multiples too low.
The study made the rounds online, leading many health influencers to say we need to revise the exercise guidelines. (And I assume that RFK Jr. is right now stacking up a new Federal Exercise Guidelines committee with these influencers.)
Today, we’ll look at why the government tells us to exercise 150 minutes a week, how much movement we really need, and the psychology of getting more movement. We’ll cover:
Why the 150-minute guideline was created in the first place. (Hint: Scientists were optimizing for something other than biology).
Findings of the new BJSM study and what they can tell us.
The amount of movement the human body evolved to get for health.
How to use the BJSM findings in a way that helps your health in the long run without making exercise a part-time job. Pure Two Percent mindset stuff.
Quick housekeeping
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ICYMI:
On Wednesday, we ran an updated Misogi Guide. Read it. Get some great bad ideas for your next Misogi.
Friday’s Gear Not Stuff covered 11 pieces of gear for Misogi. I’ll be taking them on a fall Misogi, and they’re necessary for any outdoor Misogi.
💪 Check out David Protein Bars. They the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. They’re a stellar option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Also, a PSA: David now makes ice cream, and it’s excellent. Visit DavidProtein.com.
🎙️ Two Percent Pod: Cal Newport on Deep Work, Slow Productivity, and the Three Rules of Better Work. If you don’t listen to this episode, you will be busier, more stressed, and your work will suck.
The history of the physical activity guidelines, or how to help a lazy population
Influencer types used the new BJSM study as more evidence that the government is knowingly failing our health.
But the guidelines were never meant for optimizer types looking for the greatest reductions in disease risk.
In 1995, the CDC and American College of Sports Medicine published1 a recommendation that set the foundation for the modern exercise guidelines.
The report’s purpose was to deliver “a clear, concise public health message” to an increasingly sedentary nation. At that time, more than 75% of people didn’t meet basic fitness targets: roughly a quarter of the US was totally sedentary, and half were only active in brief, easy spurts.
The report noted that this level of mass sedentary behavior was estimated to kill about 250,000 Americans annually, making up about 12% of all deaths.
Importantly, guidelines before 1995 recommended that we all get 20 to 60 minutes of continuous high-intensity cardio a few times a week (defined as 60-90% heart rate).
Hardly anyone did that. Imagine asking a person who hasn’t exercised in 20 years to go for a hard run at 80% heart rate for an hour straight.
The panel of scientists realized: We gotta do something different. And they knew two things.
First, more exercise is better. Six hundred minutes a week beats 150.
Second, the biggest benefits of exercise come early. I.e., getting a person to go from 0 minutes to 150 minutes a week of nearly anything has a massive impact on health. The minutes thereafter have diminishing returns.
They thought of it like this: Telling a nation of mostly sedentary people to rack up hours and hours of exercise each week was ridiculous. It was like asking someone who’s never hiked to climb Mt. Everest.
Instead, they figured, telling us to walk up a small hill was far more doable. If they could get enough people to do that, the improvements in public health would probably be larger.
They shifted from a “exercise-fitness” model to a more approachable “physical activity-health” paradigm.
The recommendation became 20 to 30 minutes of anything physical a day, or 150 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. That could be a run. But yard work, a walk, chores, dancing, etc, also all counted, so long as they were done with at least the effort of a brisk walk.
Which is all to say: The guidelines are based partly on biology, partly on psychology.
Of course, many Americans mistook that small, 150-minute hill for Mt. Everest—many thought it was optimal when really it was the bare minimum.
The new study
Researchers2 in China analyzed data from the UK Biobank, a massive British health project frequently used in research.
Their sample had about 17,000 people who completed a fitness test and also wore a research-grade activity tracker for a week. That gave them two measurements: How much the people moved and how fit they were.
Then they tracked the people for about eight years, looking for cardiovascular problems: heart attacks, strokes, heart failure, atrial fibrillation.
The findings3:
Hitting the 150/minutes-a-week activity guidelines was associated with an 8 to 9 percent reduction in cardiovascular risk compared to being sedentary. That held whether your fitness was low or high. Good.
Hitting 340 to 370 minutes of activity a week gave people a 20 percent risk reduction. Better.
People who got four times the guidelines—around 600 minutes of activity a week—had a 30 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease. Best.
Why it matters: cardiovascular disease kills about 30% of people worldwide. The scientists wrote: “achieving larger relative risk reductions (eg, >30%) in this cohort appeared to require activity volumes 3–4times higher than current [guidelines].”
Of course, moving 10 hours a week is a lot. Most Americans don’t even get the recommended 150 minutes/2.5 hours a week, much less 600 minutes/10 hours.
In the study, only 11.6 percent of people got ~600 minutes. But, surprisingly enough, it’s a rest week by historical standards.
What the human body expects: lots of movement is normal
The human body evolved in the context of having a Mt. Everest-like amount of activity.
When researchers strap heart rate monitors to hunter-gatherer tribes—our best models of how humans lived for 99.9 percent of human history—they find the tribes get about 135 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per day.
That’s about 14 times more activity than the average American. Cardiovascular disease and other maladies are also rare among these groups.
Researchers like Dan Lieberman at Harvard have pointed out that the human body evolved in the context of lots of movement. When we remove that activity, sickness tends to set in.
I.e., we have a modern mismatch between how much we’re built to move and how much we now move in our modern environments.
Even the new BJSM study’s optimal dose of 600 minutes a week is low by historical standards. The study’s highest movement cohort is 60 percent of our ancestral norm.
So, what should we do?
Treat 150 minutes as it was originally meant to be treated: an absolute, don’t-die minimum per week.
But do what you can to double it, triple it, quadruple it.
The top end—600 minutes of activity a week—sounds like a ridiculous amount of exercise, but the BJSM study shows us it’s possible. The people who got 560+ minutes a week weren’t professional exercisers.
They were normal, middle-aged people who’d just built movement into their lives.
I.e., They’d adopted the Two Percent mindset. They walked places. They had hobbies that required movement rather than sitting (think: yard work, community sports, etc)
And so it is for us.
When you need a break from work, take a walk instead of doomscrolling.
Take phone calls while walking.
Always take the stairs.
Do a lap around the neighborhood when you get the mail.
Park in the absolute farthest spot away.
Carry your groceries.
Walk the terminals as you wait for a flight.
Do those physical chores instead of hiring out.
I’m not one of those fitness people who regularly goes out for 20-mile runs. But when I ran the numbers on my week, I realized I get 600-ish minutes of activity a week. And most of it isn’t from stuff I think of as a workout.
I walk my dogs briskly every day for 45 minutes: That’s 315 minutes.
I strength train twice a week for 45 minutes: That’s another 90 minutes.
I do relaxed cardio for 45 minutes twice a week: Another 90.
And on Sundays, I do a long trail run: 120 minutes.
The total: 615 minutes on average.
The dog walks are for my dogs, so they don’t act completely psychotic all day.
The Sunday runs are my weird form of church, and more for my brain than body.
And I do research for the podcast during the relaxed cardio sessions (often on a stair climber machine).
I’m also not a slave to this. If I have stuff to do, I’ll cut one of those cardio workouts. Or I might be traveling, and I won’t get in the dog walks or trail run. But, on balance, I always get 300 minutes a week. On an ideal week it’s 600+.
Have fun, don’t die, move, move, move,
-Michael
Pate, R. R., Pratt, M., Blair, S. N., Haskell, W. L., Macera, C. A., Bouchard, C., Buchner, D., Ettinger, W., Heath, G. W., King, A. C., Kriska, A., Leon, A. S., Marcus, B. H., Morris, J., Paffenbarger, R. S., Jr., Patrick, K., Pollock, M. L., Rippe, J. M., Sallis, J. F., & Wilmore, J. H. (1995). Physical activity and public health: A recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Sports Medicine. JAMA, 273(5), 402–407.
Liang Z, Du S, Zhao S, et al, Joint non-linear dose–response associations of device-measured physical activity and cardiorespiratory fitness with cardiovascular disease: a cohort and Mendelian randomisation study, British Journal of Sports Medicine 2026;60:1238-1249.
Worth noting: The Federal Guidelines toss out stats showing the 150/minute suggestion lowers heart disease risk by 20 to 30 percent. But this new BSJM study puts the figure at 8 to 9. Both figures are correct. Exercise gives us benefits from the the movement session itself and from improvements in fitness over time. The federal guidelines lump both of those together. This study separated movement sessions from improvements in fitness. It shows what movement alone does when fitness is held constant. That tells us the specific role of movement.
Just wondering: where does the.rucking fit in? During the walks with the dog?