Someone with low fitness levels should exercise at which of the following levels?

Physical activity is anything that gets your body moving. Each week adults need 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity and 2 days of muscle strengthening activity, according to the current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.

We know 150 minutes of physical activity each week sounds like a lot, but you don’t have to do it all at once. It could be 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week. You can spread your activity out during the week and break it up into smaller chunks of time. See tips for getting started.

Physical activity supports physical and mental health. The benefits of physical activity make it one of the most important things you can do for your health.

Adults should move more and sit less throughout the day. Some physical activity is better than none. Adults who sit less and do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity gain some health benefits.

Adults should follow the exercises as specified in the following options. Check out this print-friendly age chart for a quick snapshot of the recommended amount of weekly activity for adults.

Moderate-intensity aerobic activity

(such as brisk walking) for 150 minutes every week (for example, 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week)

AND

Muscle-strengthening activities

on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms).

Vigorous-intensity aerobic activity

(such as jogging or running) for 75 minutes (1 hour and 15 minutes) every week

AND

Muscle-strengthening activities

on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms).

An equivalent mix of moderate- and vigorous-intensity aerobic activity

on 2 or more days a week

AND

Muscle-strengthening activities

on 2 or more days a week that work all major muscle groups (legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms).

If you go beyond 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity activity, or 75 minutes a week of vigorous-intensity activity or an equivalent combination, you’ll gain even more health benefits.

Aerobic activity or “cardio” gets you breathing harder and your heart beating faster. From pushing a lawn mower, to taking a dance class, to walking or biking to the store – these types of activities and more count. As long as you’re doing aerobic physical activities at a moderate- or vigorous-intensity, they count toward meeting the aerobic guideline.

Intensity is how hard your body is working during a physical activity.

Moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity means you’re working hard enough to raise your heart rate and break a sweat. One way to tell if it’s a moderate-intensity aerobic activity is that you’ll be able to talk, but not sing the words to your favorite song. Here are some examples of activities that require moderate effort:

• Walking fast
• Doing water aerobics
• Riding a bike on level ground or with few hills
• Playing doubles tennis
• Pushing a lawn mower

Vigorous-intensity aerobic activity means you’re breathing hard and fast, and your heart rate has gone up quite a bit. You may use the Talk Test to gauge the intensity of your aerobic physical activity. If you’re being active at a vigorous level, you won’t be able to say more than a few words without pausing for a breath. Here are some examples of activities that require vigorous effort:

• Jogging or running
• Swimming laps
• Riding a bike fast or on hills
• Playing singles tennis
• Playing basketball

If you are doing moderate-intensity physical activity, such as walking or hiking, you can talk, but not sing during the activity.

Build Up Over Time
If you want to do more vigorous-level activities, slowly replace those that take moderate effort like brisk walking with more vigorous activities like jogging. Learn more about getting started with physical activity to improve health.

You can do moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or a mix of the two, each week. A rule of thumb is that 1 minute of vigorous-intensity activity is about the same as 2 minutes of moderate-intensity activity.

Some people like to do vigorous activity because it gives them about the same health benefits in half the time. If you haven’t been very active lately, however, increase your physical activity level slowly. If you have a history of a chronic disease, consider telling your doctor you are planning to increase your physical activity, including moving to more vigorous activity. You need to feel comfortable doing moderate-intensity activities before you move on to more vigorous ones. Learn more about additional types of physical activity that are right for you.

Want more tips on how you can add a variety of activities to your life? Check this out.

Physical activities to strengthen your muscles are recommended at least 2 days a week. Activities should work all the major muscle groups of your body—legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms. Muscle-strengthening activities should be done in addition to your aerobic activity.

To gain health benefits, you need to do muscle-strengthening activities to the point where it’s hard for you to do another repetition without help. A repetition is one complete movement of an activity, like lifting a weight or doing a sit-up. Try to do 8-12 repetitions per activity, which counts as 1 set. Try to do at least 1 set of muscle-strengthening activities. To gain even more benefits, do 2 or 3 sets.

You can do activities that strengthen your muscles on the same or different days that you do aerobic activity—whatever works best for you.
There are many ways you can strengthen your muscles, whether it’s at home or the gym. You may want to try the following:

• Lifting weights
• Working with resistance bands
• Doing exercises that use your body weight for resistance (e.g., push-ups, sit-ups)
• Heavy gardening (e.g., digging, shoveling)
• Some forms of yoga

For children and young people, being active every day has many social, emotional, intellectual and health benefits, including:

• a chance to have fun with friends and family
• reduced antisocial behaviour
• stronger cooperation and teamwork skills
• better self-esteem and confidence
• lower anxiety and stress
• better concentration
• healthy growth and development
• strong muscles and bones
• improved fitness, including coordination and movement skills
• lower risk of disease
• lower risk of unhealthy weight gain.

All children and young people should get the right mix of physical activity, inactivity and sleep in each 24-hour period.

Moderate to vigorous physical activity

We recommend children and young people do at least 60 minutes each day of moderate to vigorous physical activity that makes the heart beat faster. More is better.

It doesn’t have to be a full 60 minutes at once – several shorter sessions through the day work too.

At least 3 days per week, children and young people should incorporate vigorous activities and activities that strengthen muscle and bone in the 60 minutes.

These activities don’t have to be organised or formal, and can include:

• football
• basketball
• netball
• bike riding
• scooter riding
• swimming
• dancing.

Muscle-strengthening activity

As part of the 60 minutes of daily activity, we recommend children and young people include muscle and bone strengthening activities 3 days per week, like:

• running
• climbing
• swinging on monkey bars
• push-ups
• sit-ups
• lifting weights
• yoga.

Light physical activity

Children and young people should also do several hours of various light physical activities each day. These can include:

• walking to school
• walking the dog
• going to the park with friends
• helping around the house
• playing handball.

Limiting time sitting

Limiting the time spent sitting or lying down (sedentary behaviour) – especially in front of screens – helps children grow and develop good habits for life.

Long periods of sitting can lessen the benefits of being physically active. So, it’s important to break these up as often as possible.

Screen time during childhood can have long-term impacts on a child’s development. For children and young people, we recommend no more than 2 hours of sedentary recreational screen time per day. This does not include screen time needed for school work.

Ensuring good sleep

Getting enough good-quality sleep is essential to healthy growth. We recommend that each night:  

• children aged 5 to 13 years get 9 to 11 hours of uninterrupted sleep
• young people aged 14 to 17 years get 8 to 10 hours of uninterrupted sleep.

To establish and maintain healthy sleep patterns, we recommend:

• having a consistent bedtime and wake-up time
• avoiding screen time 1 hour before sleep
• keeping screens out of the bedroom.

Learn more

For more information about our activity recommendations for children and young people, see:

For adults, read our physical activity and sedentary behaviour recommendations for people aged 18 to 64 years.

We acknowledge the Canadian Society for Exercise Physiology as the originator of the Canadian ‘24-hour movement guidelines for children and youth (aged 5–17 years)’, which were used in the development of these recommendations.