How long should a beginner workout be?
10 to 20 minutes is plenty to start. The US guideline stopped requiring 10-minute bouts in 2018, so even a 5-minute walk counts. A short session you repeat three times a week does more for you than a long one you dread and skip.
Classes run 45 or 60 minutes, and gym plans online run longer, so people assume anything shorter is a warm-up. Beginners who can’t spare an hour wait until they can, and that day rarely comes. The people who keep going are usually the ones who started with something they could do on a bad day.
What we’d do
Make your first sessions 10 minutes of brisk walking, or a strength circuit of six moves for 40 seconds each, which takes about 12 minutes at two rounds. Stop while you still feel like you could do more. Once three sessions a week feel routine, add 5 minutes a week to your walks and move the circuit to three rounds, about 18 minutes.
A short workout is like a short phone call to an old friend. Three quick calls a week keep you closer than one long call you keep putting off.
The 10-minute rule is gone
The first US guideline, in 2008, only counted activity done in stretches of at least 10 minutes. When the 2018 committee reviewed the evidence, it found that small amounts of activity through the day help too, and the second edition dropped the rule “to encourage Americans to move more frequently throughout the day.” The same review found benefits that start right away, like less anxiety, lower blood pressure and better sleep after a single session.
How short can it be?
It can be shorter than most people would guess.
- 4 minutes a day. In 25,241 UK adults around 62 who never exercised, wrist trackers caught short bursts of hard effort in daily life, like a fast flight of stairs. A median of 4.4 minutes a day went with 26% to 30% lower risk of death over about 7 years.
- One minute, three times a day. In a 2019 trial, inactive young adults climbed a 60-step stairwell hard three times a day, three days a week. After 6 weeks their fitness had risen, though the researchers called the gain modest.
- Under 150 minutes a week. In 661,137 adults, people doing less than the guideline still had 20% lower risk of death than people doing nothing.
The first is a study of people who chose how to move, and the second was small, 12 people in each group. Both point the same way as the guideline.
The sessions, by length
These are the sessions in Today’s session, and what each one adds to your week:
| Session | How long | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Stair burst | 1 minute | One hard minute, which counts as two |
| Balance set | About 6 minutes | Balance work |
| Strength circuit | About 12 minutes at 2 rounds, 18 at 3 | A strength day |
| Brisk walk | 10, 20 or 30 brisk minutes, plus 2 easy minutes at each end | Those brisk minutes |
| Interval walk | 30 minutes, 3 fast and 3 easy, five times | 15 brisk minutes |
Pick the shortest one you’ll do today, and do it again in two days.
5 sources
- US Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Top 10 things to know about the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americansodphp.health.gov
- US Department of Health and Human Services, Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition, executive summary, 2018odphp.health.gov
- Stamatakis E and others, Association of wearable device-measured vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity with mortality, Nature Medicine, 2022europepmc.org
- Jenkins EM and others, Do stair climbing exercise snacks improve cardiorespiratory fitness?, Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism, 2019europepmc.org
- Arem H and others, Leisure time physical activity and mortality: a detailed pooled analysis of the dose-response relationship, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2015europepmc.org
