To Get Enough Exercise, Try Engaging in Three Different Activities a Week

[Mike B 625]

By Amby Burfoot

Even before the pandemic, Americans weren’t getting enough exercise, despite all the doctors, health organizations and government agencies encouraging us to get off the couch. The Department of Health and Human Services released its well-known 150-minutes-of-exercise-per-week guideline in 2008, while an American Heart Association handbook on exercise training dates all the way back to 1972. Still, chronic disease rates and health-care costs continue to rise.

 

 Now that most of us are rethinking our exercise regimens, it’s a good time to consider a different — and possibly more effective — approach to increasing our level of activity. A study published in January argues that we should obsess less about that 150-minutes-a-week goal and focus instead on a greater variety of exercise. “It may be that the current guidelines place too much emphasis on frequency and volume of exercise,” said Susan Malone, first author of a paper published in the journal Translational Behavioral Medicine. “If we refocus people to more varieties of exercise, they might have more success reaching the targets.”.... 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/wellness/study-to-get-enough-exercise-try-engaging-in-three-different-activities-a-week/2020/07/13/c168aeb0-c538-11ea-a99f-3bbdffb1af38_story.html