By Kassia Garfield
How Much Activity is Enough?
A lot of people ask me how much activity they should be doing to stay healthy. People still need to be generally active in their day, and then ALSO add in a higher intensity workout. The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week or 75 minutes a week of vigorous intensity exercise. Benefits continue to increase up to 300 minutes a week of exercise. This is just 30 minutes, five days a week or 60 minutes five days week. At 30 minutes a day, that is only 8% of your waking hours. This seems like a reasonable amount of activity to reduce the risks of heart attack, stroke and decline in cognitive function. At age 60, the recommendations for time do not change, but the ADDITION of strength and balance training are now vital to maintain current function, reduce fall risk and prevent the natural loss of muscle mass, called sarcopenia, that begins in your 40s.
How to Decide Which Activity?
A good way to identify the proper intensity, is to look at heart rate. Someone’s maximum heart rate is calculated by: 220 – age. For a 75-year-old, their max heart rate will be 145. We use that heart rate and find a percentage that fits ‘moderate intensity.’ Moderate intensity is considered 50-70% of your max heart rate. So, for our 75-year-old, a heart rate of 72-101 BPM is the target. For an 18-year-old, the target heart rate would be 101-141. A huge difference. Our exercise of choice will vary based on our age. For a younger adult, a run or light jog might bring up the heart rate to the goal level, but for the 75-year-old man, a brisk walk will hit the same target. Strength training can profoundly increase your heart rate and helps increase your cardiovascular efficiency without having to run or jog which puts 7-8 x the amount of stress on your joints compared to walking.
How to get started?
If starting from no activity, begin with 15-minute walks, 4 days a week to start building up stamina. Light, free-weight, strength-training routines can also increase the heart rate in controlled bursts. This allows the body to start to acclimate to an increase in activity.
Finding a buddy or accountability partner can help and is a good way to be successful. Set small goals during this process to encourage the change in behavior. You got this!
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