A workout has to be at least 30 minutes to count
Short answerNo
On this page
No. Every minute of brisk or hard activity counts toward the guideline, however short the bout. The US guideline dropped its 10-minute rule in 2018, and in 25,241 adults who never exercised, about 4 minutes a day of hard bursts in daily life went with 26% to 30% lower risk of death.
What we’d do
Count every brisk minute, and go looking for them. Take the stairs fast, walk to the bus like you’re late, and add a 10-minute walk after a meal. When you have 30 minutes, use them. When you have 5, use those.
If you remember three things
- Bouts of any length count. The second edition of the US guideline removed the old 10-minute minimum.
- A few minutes of hard effort went a long way. Three bursts of 1 to 2 minutes a day went with 38% to 40% lower risk of death in people who didn’t exercise.
- Stairs are a workout. Three hard climbs a day, three days a week, raised fitness in a six-week trial.
Why it sounds true
For about a decade, it was close to the official line. The first US guideline, in 2008, counted only activity done in bouts of at least 10 minutes. Gym classes run 45 minutes, running plans start at 20, and the fitness world talks about warming up as if it takes half the session. So a quick climb up three flights at work never felt like it went on the scoreboard.
The 2018 guideline changed that. It removed the 10-minute rule “to encourage Americans to move more frequently throughout the day”, and its summary says Americans “can benefit from small amounts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity throughout the day.”
A picture from daily life
Your bank doesn’t care whether you deposit $30 at once or six $5 bills over a week. The balance comes out the same.
The weekly minutes work like that. A 30-minute walk and three 10-minute walks both add 30 to your 150. The short bursts of hard effort may even pay a little extra, because a hard minute counts as two.
What the study of non-exercisers found
In 2022, researchers looked at 25,241 people in the UK Biobank, mean age 62, who said they did no exercise in their leisure time. All of them had worn a wrist tracker for a week. The researchers searched the data for short bursts of hard effort in ordinary life, like a fast climb up the stairs or a hurried walk to catch a bus, and called it vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity (VILPA). Then they followed everyone for about 7 years, during which 852 died.
4 minutes a day
25,241 UK adults who didn’t exercise, about 7 years. Stamatakis and colleagues, Nature Medicine, 2022
The median was 4.4 minutes of hard bursts a day. That went with 26% to 30% lower risk of death from any cause and from cancer, and 32% to 34% lower risk of death from heart disease, against people with none.
An association. People who can climb stairs fast may be healthier to begin with.
Three bursts a day
The same people
At the median of three bursts a day, each 1 or 2 minutes long, the risk of death was 38% to 40% lower, and 48% to 49% lower for heart disease.
The bursts were measured over one week, then people were followed for years.
The stair trial
Sedentary young adults, 12 per group, 6 weeks. Jenkins and colleagues, 2019
Climbing a 60-step, three-flight stairwell hard, three times a day, 1 to 4 hours apart, three days a week, raised peak oxygen uptake against a group that didn’t.
A small trial, and the authors called the gain modest.
The researchers also checked people who did exercise, 62,344 of them, and found similar results for their vigorous activity. In their words, small amounts of vigorous activity outside of exercise “are associated with substantially lower mortality.”
Where the 30 minutes has a point
Longer sessions build more endurance, and if you want a higher fitness number, short bursts alone won’t get you far. The stair trial’s gain was real and small. And the big studies of short bursts follow people who chose how they moved, so some of the benefit may come from who those people were to start with. A short burst is the floor, and a good place to start. Most of your week can still be longer walks, rides or swims. What kind of cardio is best?
It fits the rest of the evidence. In 661,137 adults, doing less than the guideline went with 20% lower risk of death than doing nothing, the biggest single step on the curve. Short bursts are often the easiest way onto it.
More detail: how short bursts add up in a week
A hard minute counts as two toward the guideline. Three one-minute stair climbs a day, every day, is 21 hard minutes a week, which counts as 42 of your 150. Add three 10-minute brisk walks and you’re at 72. Your week counts it for you, and today’s session has a one-minute stair burst with a counter.
5 sources
- US Department of Health and Human Services, Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition, executive summary, 2018odphp.health.gov
- US Department of Health and Human Services, Top 10 things to know about the second edition of the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americansodphp.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
