Exercise Guidelines

Having clear exercise guidelines is incredibly helpful. Most people struggle with training because they are just so unsure of what to do. The fact that society has led people to believe that they don’t have to exercise (as if it isn’t a fundamental need), means that people can be very unsure of what to do for exercise. While nutrition is confusing, at least you have (hopefully) been consuming food your whole life, so you at least know how to ensure some basic food requirements are met. However, if you haven’t exercised in years (or indeed ever), it can be very difficult to even know where to start.

So, the place we generally start when discussing exercise program design is with the general exercise guidelines that are given out by various health organisations. These guidelines certainly aren’t perfect, and they aren’t the optimal way to organise your training if you have very specific goals. However, they do serve as a really helpful rough starting point for creating a fairly well-balanced training program. 

If you haven’t already, then reading our articles on why exercise is so important, what the goals of exercise are, and the different types of exercise we have available to us, then it would be incredibly helpful to go back and read them now. If you need more tailored and personalised advice on how to structure your own training, then we may be able to help you via online coaching.

If you are a coach (or aspiring coach) and want to learn how to coach nutrition, then consider signing up to our Nutrition Coach Certification course. We do also have an exercise program design course in the works, if you are a coach who wants to learn more about effective program design and how to coach it. We do have other courses available too.

Exercise Guidelines

Whenever you stumble into a conversation about exercise guidelines and how to design a program, quite often you can be left quite confused. People have extremely divergent thoughts about what is required to see improvements in health, performance and body composition. From the bodybuilder who says you have to be resistance training for 2 hours 5-6 days a week, to the endurance athlete running for 40 hours a week, to the individual who feels guilty when they don’t get their three 1-hour sessions done that week. The exercise guidelines are not meant to accomplish every single goal, they are simply to provide some guidance on what an effective dose for general health and fitness goals looks like. 

The most up to date exercise guidelines for health suggest that adults aim for the following: 

• 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity¹ aerobic exercise per week (half that for vigorous exercise²). 
• At least 2 resistance training sessions per week, strengthening all major muscle groups. 
• Beyond formal exercise – move more, sit less (no specific recommendation). 

¹ Moderate intensity would be rated as a 4-6 out of 10, with 10 being your absolute maximum effort. You should be able to talk, but not sing. 

² Vigorous intensity would be rated as a 7-8+ out of 10. You should not be able to say more than a couple of words in between heavy breathing. 

Now, of course, if you have ambitions to be as muscular as humanly possible, or to be as fit as you possibly can be, you will need to do more than that. But these serve as good baseline starting points.

The thing you should also remember is that just because you do more than the recommended resistance training or cardio training, it doesn’t exempt you from the other type of training. Just because you do 6 resistance sessions per week, doesn’t mean you can ignore your cardiovascular targets. Just because you run 600 minutes per week, doesn’t mean you can ignore any resistance training. For sure, there can be times when you focus on one more than the other, but you can’t ignore either forever and expect good outcomes.

We can consider these guidelines to be the rough, minimum effective dose of exercise that leads to robust health and fitness improvements in the general population. They are a good starting point, and if the vast majority of the population did this, we would see profound improvements in population health outcomes. 

So we have our minimum effective dose, the next thing we need to know is whether there is an upper limit! We would also ideally like to know whether there is a point of diminishing returns, where doing more leads to a drop off in the return on investment.

Unfortunately, because exercise can be so diverse, humans can be so diverse and because it is something that is trainable (meaning you can get better at it over time), it is very difficult to have very clear markers for these points. Clearly, the upper limit of cardiovascular training for someone who has been an avid runner for their whole life is going to be different than for someone who has been sedentary for the last 15 years. Similarly, the upper limit for resistance training is going to be different for a powerlifter compared to a bodybuilder compared to your average person in the streets. 

It is also difficult to define the upper limit, because it is not just exercise we have to consider. We have to consider whether you are adapted to the exercise and are eating enough calories to support that level of activity, along with sleeping enough to recover from that level of exercise. Most people find that they reach an upper limit with exercise because they generally aren’t eating to fuel that level of activity, they aren’t sleeping enough and generally their stress management practices aren’t dialled in either. So they reach an acute upper limit with their ability to recover from exercise as a result of a lack of focus on the things they need to do outside of training to allow them to train. 

Consider the issue of “RED-S”, which stands for “Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport”, a condition where athletes don’t consume enough calories for their training needs. It can lead to various health issues including impaired performance, increased injury risk, menstrual irregularities, bone loss, and psychological problems. It affects athletes of all genders and sports, and can actually happen in the general public too.

Similarly, excessive exercise without adequate rest and recovery can lead to “overtraining syndrome”, which is characterised by persistent fatigue, decreased performance, mood disturbances, and increased risk of injury. Overtraining can weaken the immune system, increase inflammation, and contribute to chronic stress, which may have negative implications for overall health and longevity.

However, even if someone were to eat enough, sleep enough and manage their stress, there does still seem to be upper limits for exercise which when pushed past, can lead to issues. 

Excessive exercise volume or intensity can raise the risk of musculoskeletal injuries, such as stress fractures, tendonitis, and muscle strains. Injuries can lead to temporary or permanent limitations in physical activity, negatively impacting overall health and quality of life.

While moderate amounts of exercise are beneficial for cardiovascular health, excessive endurance exercise, such as ultra-endurance events or prolonged high-intensity training, may increase the risk of adverse cardiovascular events, including arrhythmias, myocardial damage, and even atherosclerosis. Some studies suggest that extreme endurance athletes may have higher levels of coronary artery calcification, a marker of cardiovascular risk (however, this may actually be protective against cardiovascular disease). 

Intense or prolonged exercise can temporarily suppress immune function, leaving individuals more susceptible to infections and illnesses. Over time, chronic immune suppression associated with excessive exercise may have negative implications for overall health and longevity.

Excessive exercise can also contribute to psychological stress, especially if individuals feel pressured to meet performance goals or maintain a certain level of fitness. Chronic stress can negatively impact mental health, immune function, and overall well-being, potentially even affecting longevity.

Spending excessive time exercising may detract from other important aspects of life, such as social relationships, leisure activities, and relaxation. Neglecting these areas of life in pursuit of exercise goals may have negative consequences for mental health and overall happiness, which are important factors in longevity. Practically speaking, after about 10 hours of exercise per week, most people will likely run into issues. Usually, these are just practical issues, such as interference with work or family, lots of time commuting, having to shower frequently and that sort of stuff.

Ultimately, it is very difficult to determine where the upper limit is for exercise, however, realistically, most of you are unlikely to ever hit it anyway. It is much better to just start at a more moderate place, and then adjust our program based on objective and subjective recovery, rather than sticking to some theoretical limits. You may find your exercise tolerance is quite high or quite low, but either way, by starting at a moderate level, we can more easily adjust as needed. 

However, what is more important to understand than where the upper limit is, is where the point of diminishing returns is. We know what the minimum effective dose is, and as we have established, it is difficult to determine exactly where the upper limit for exercise is (unless we are discussing it on an individual case-by-case basis, in which case, we can be more accurate). But what would be great to know is whether there is a level of exercise where for each extra unit of work that you do, you start getting less return on investment than the previous units of work. This way we can allocate our work accordingly. If we know we only have so much exercise recovery capacity each week, we want to ensure we are “spending” that recovery capacity wisely.

You see, you certainly can do more volume of work than is needed to achieve your goals (i.e. you aren’t actually getting more benefit and you are really only taxing your recovery). While we are definitely biased towards getting people to exercise more, we do understand that most people have other things going on in their life that prevents them from either being able to or wanting to exercise more than is needed. Most people want to do somewhere between the minimum effective dose and the point of diminishing returns. This way you ensure you at least cover your bases, and you are training enough so that you are progressing along very nicely towards your goals without having to get into the realm of work that someone who is trying to be an athlete would have to do. 

Unfortunately, this is also context specific, and it is heavily dependent on your individual recovery capacities and specific goals. There is also a difference between someone who is predominantly pushing for progress in a specific area using a specific training modality (i.e. resistance training) and someone who is trying to progress everything at once. It is easier to describe the point of diminishing returns for each modality individually, and it can be assumed that when someone is combining multiple modalities, the point of diminishing returns for each modality individually is likely lowered (due to the body only having so much recovery capacity).

With resistance training, especially in the context of trying to build some muscle while also generally getting stronger, roughly 20-25 sets per major body part per week seems to be the upper limit where the return on investment really drops off dramatically (assuming the sets are being taken sufficiently close to failure). 6-10 sets per major body part per week can be seen as a lower limit where you do get a lot of bang for your buck in terms of progress. Lower than that seems to be able to still produce some progress, and can be effectively used to maintain strength and muscle, but for most people, somewhere in the range of 6-25 sets per body part per week seems to be the range most people should be working within. However, this doesn’t mean you need to do the top end of this range to see results, and it certainly doesn’t mean you need to do this for every body part at the same time. 

There likely is a total body limit, as there is systemic fatigue across the whole body, however, this is hard to define. Somewhere in the range of 60-120 sets per week total kind of makes sense as the rough range we should be working within, however, this isn’t a very hard rule. We generally suggest people start at the lower end, and then adjust upwards in a few select areas, while assessing recovery capacity and results. 

For cardio, it can be a little bit trickier. In general, anaerobic work is more fatiguing, so you can do drastically less of this compared to aerobic work. We generally recommend that most people only really allocate 10% of their cardio training volume to anaerobic work, and the bulk of cardio training volume should be aerobic work. So, using this allocation of training time, 150-300 minutes of cardio per week seems to be the sweet spot for most people, and 500-600 minutes of cardio per week seems to be the upper limit where the return on investment drops off (although there may still be benefits to be had from doing more beyond this, especially if it is lower intensity cardio). 

For informal exercise, this is also difficult to be accurate with, as we don’t generally have good data for this. However, if we use the proxy of daily step count, it would appear that after about 15,000-20,000 steps per day, there is a point of significant diminishing returns. This level of activity generally transitions this light recovery promoting activity into something that can actually significantly hamper recovery. Most people also find that getting this level of daily steps is just a significant time investment, unless it is required for their job. 

So, the following seems to be roughly the exercise guideline parameters we are working within:

Resistance exercise: 

• Lower limit 6-10 sets per body part per week, generally divided into at least 2 workouts
• Upper limit 20-25 sets per body part per week
• Somewhere in the range of 60-120 sets per week total is seems to work well for most.

Cardio exercise:

• Lower limit 150 minutes per week, of 90% aerobic cardio and 10% anaerobic cardio 
• Upper limit 500-600 minutes per week, of 90% aerobic cardio and 10% anaerobic cardio
• Somewhere in the range of 150-500 minutes per week seems to work well for most.

Informal exercise:

• Lower limit 5,000 steps per day
• Upper limit 15,000-20,000 steps per day
• Somewhere in the range of 8,000-12,000 steps per day seems to work well for most.

So, somewhere in between these parameters lies the rough exercise guidelines for most people. These certainly aren’t perfect for everyone and every goal, and depending on how you mix and match the modalities, the specifics will change, however, these are a good starting point for guiding us. 

As you will remember from our article on the types of exercise, there is another type of exercise that hasn’t been mentioned here, which is organised sport/group training. This is difficult to create guidelines around, because it is actually an incredibly broad category. There is a big difference between doing something like rugby and doing yoga. However, doing this type of exercise can contribute significantly to your general activity levels, and potentially have effects that are similar to resistance training or cardio training. As such, if you intend to include this type of exercise, you will have to adjust the recommendations accordingly.

For example, if you are doing an intense grappling sport like wrestling, you may already be significantly taxing your muscles and cardiovascular system. As such, if you also want to include resistance training, you may need an even lower volume of work to see benefits, and you may also only be able to recover from a lower volume of resistance training. So the exercise guidelines for each type of exercise aren’t entirely additive, and you do have to take into account the entirety of your exercise habits.

Clear Goals

Now, to actually use the exercise guidelines, you have to have clear goals. It makes sense for most people to at least do the bare minimum (150-300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise per week (half that for vigorous exercise), at least 2 resistance training sessions per week that strengthens all major muscle groups, and to move more and sit less (10,000 steps per day is a good goal here)). However, how you allocate your efforts after this is going to be dictated by your goals.

While we spend a lot of time discussing effective goal setting with our coaching clients, this is beyond the scope of this article. However, I do believe it is really important to cover some points related to goals here, as it will actually help you to better understand how you can potentially adjust the exercise guidelines to better accomplish your goals.

I do want to note that you can’t ride two horses with one ass. What I mean by this is that while you can certainly develop multiple attributes at once, generally speaking, you are much better off working towards a single goal and doing the minimum effective dose for the other goals you may have. You can sometimes get away with working towards 2 goals at once, if those goals are synergistic (e.g. getting stronger while also getting bigger), however, what most people try to do is work towards 2 antagonistic goals at once (e.g. build muscle while losing fat), and this tends to just lead to poor results. 

For most people, this will be easy enough to do with 2-4 resistance training sessions per week, combined with 2-4 cardio sessions per week, and supplemented with generally good activity levels (NEAT/steps). Deciding what they should prioritise or how they can adjust the guidelines can be tricky though.

If you want/need to push muscle building more, then do more resistance training. If you want/need to push cardiovascular fitness more, then do more cardio.

If you do other stuff that generally strengthens the body in less formalised ways than resistance training (i.e. you do something like pilates), then you may only need one resistance training session per week.

If you do sports, then you may not need to do as much cardio (although you could still benefit), as most sports have a larger cardiovascular component than a strength component. So in this case, your sports will potentially cover some of your cardio needs, so would potentially prioritise resistance training. However, if you really want to maximise your sporting performance, it probably makes sense to do more cardio. Your sports may also have significant muscle stimulating properties, and as such, you may not need to prioritise more resistance training. You will have to use your best judgement here.

If you would like a tailored training program, you should consider getting coaching. This can be really valuable in teaching you how to organise your training for your goals, and a good coach will always strive to create a tailored program for you, while also teaching you how to modify it specifically for your needs.

Exercise Guidelines Overview

The general exercise guidelines are as follows:

• 150-300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic exercise per week (half that for vigorous exercise). 
• At least 2 resistance training sessions per week, strengthening all major muscle groups. 
• Beyond formal exercise – move more, sit less (no specific recommendation). 

These are good rough starting points, and can be thought of as the minimum exercise goal.

However, we can actually get a bit more specific with our recommendations. As such, the following guideline parameters seem to make sense for most people.

Staying somewhere between the lower limit and the upper limit will put you in a good place. However, depending on your specific goals, you may wish to do more or less of one of these exercise types.

If you would like more help with your training (or nutrition), we do also have online coaching spaces available. You can further build your knowledge on all things exercise by interacting with our free content. We recommend reading our foundational nutrition article, along with our foundational articles on sleep and stress management, if you really want to learn more about how to optimise your lifestyle. If you want even more free information on exercise, you can follow us on Instagram, YouTube or listen to the podcast, where we discuss all the little intricacies of exercise.

You can always stay up to date with our latest content by subscribing to our newsletter.

Finally, if you want to learn how to coach nutrition, then consider our Nutrition Coach Certification course and if you want to learn to get better at exercise program design, then consider our course on exercise program design. If you don’t understand something, or you just need clarification, you can always reach out to us on Instagram or via email.

The previous article in this series is about the different types of exercise and the next article in this series is about resistance training for muscle and strength, if you are interested in continuing to learn about exercise program design. You can also go to our exercise hub to find more exercise content.

Paddy Farrell

www.triagemethod.com

Hey, I'm Paddy!

I am a coach who loves to help people master their health and fitness. I am a personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, and I have a degree in Biochemistry and Biomolecular Science. I have been coaching people for over 10 years now.

When I grew up, you couldn't find great health and fitness information, and you still can't really. So my content aims to solve that!

I enjoy training in the gym, doing martial arts and hiking in the mountains (around Europe, mainly). I am also an avid reader of history, politics and science. When I am not in the mountains, exercising or reading, you will likely find me in a museum.