The Ideal Dose of Every Exercise
41 different exercises and how long you should do them to reduce your risk of death by 27 percent
Post summary
On Friday, we covered how 50 minutes of running a week reduces the risk of death from any cause by 27 percent.
A Two Percent community member asked how 50 minutes of running would translate to other activities.
Today we’re answering that question. We’ll help you figure out how long you’d have to do 41 different exercises to get the same health benefits and boost your performance.
Housekeeping
Spots for the Two Percent Don’t Die event in Las Vegas in November are going fast. They’re more than half taken after Monday’s post.
Learn more about the event and sign up for it here. Have fun, don’t die, see you in the desert …
Audio/Podcast version of this post
The post
Friday’s Expedition post featured an interesting item in our By The Numbers section. It explained:
50
That’s the number of minutes of running a week that one study found led to significant health upsides. The benefits included:
30 percent reduced risk of death by heart attack.
23 percent reduced risk of cancer.
27 percent reduced risk of death from any cause.
That data is from a systematic review and meta-analysis published in the British Medical Journal.
To conduct the work, the researchers pulled data from 14 studies that included 232,149 people.
Each of those 14 studies followed people for anywhere from 5 to 35 years and looked at how running influenced their disease risk. The scientists wrote of the findings:
Significant reductions in mortality risk can be expected for any dose of running, even just once a week or 50 minutes a week.
So, yeah, running is good!
But here’s the thing: Not everyone wants to run or can run.
This is why Two Percent reader Eric Nicholson posted a fantastic question/comment:
The short answer is yes. We can translate 50 minutes of running a week into other activities like swimming, rucking, and many, many more.
The longer answer is what today’s post is about. Today we will:
Explain how to translate the effect of different exercises. This will help you determine what different amounts of exercise are “worth” so you can make smart decisions about how frequently you should do your favorite exercises.
Translate 50 minutes of running a week to different fitness and everyday activities. That is to say, you’ll learn how long you’d have to do (insert activity) to get the same benefits you’d get from 50 minutes of running. We’ll cover:
Rucking
Swimming
Cycling
Weight lifting
Kettlebell workouts
Walking
Sports like golf, tennis, and basketball
Yoga
Everyday activities like cooking, yard work, etc …
… and much more.
Let’s roll …