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Public health advice says you should get at least 150 minutes of brisk walking, cycling, running or other moderate-to-vigorous exercise each week.
However, a new study suggests that the target is just the bare minimum.
The widely cited 150-minute goal is not wrong. The new study found it offers a reliable first layer of protection against heart disease. But for people seeking a much larger reduction in cardiovascular risk, the amount of exercise associated with that benefit was far higher: roughly 560 to 610 minutes a week, or about 80 to 90 minutes a day.
A Minimum, Not a Magic Number
The study analyzed more than 17,000 adults in the UK Biobank who wore wrist activity monitors and completed a fitness test. Over nearly eight years of follow-up, researchers tracked heart attacks, strokes, heart failure and atrial fibrillation.
They found that meeting the current guideline was linked to a modest 8 to 9 percent reduction in cardiovascular risk across fitness levels. A reduction greater than 30 percent was associated with about three to four times as much weekly exercise.
The findings do not mean that 150 minutes a week is useless — quite the opposite. The study suggests it works as a simple public health floor, one that benefits people regardless of whether they start out fit or deconditioned.
But the results also challenge the way many people understand the guideline. The number is often treated as a target to reach and stop at.
The researchers studied moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, a category that includes exercise intense enough to raise the heart rate, such as brisk walking, running and cycling. They also measured cardiorespiratory fitness using estimated VO₂ max, a measure of how efficiently the heart, lungs and muscles deliver and use oxygen during exertion.
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This is a pretty important distinction. Fitness and physical activity are of course related, but they are not the same thing. Two people may report similar exercise habits and still differ in cardiovascular fitness because of genetics, age, health history, training response or earlier-life conditioning.
“Future guidelines may need to differentiate between the minimal moderate to vigorous exercise volume required for a basic safety margin and the substantially higher volumes necessary for optimal cardiovascular risk reduction,” they conclude.
Less Fit People Faced a Steeper Climb
Participants wore an accelerometer for seven consecutive days between 2013 and 2015. They also completed a submaximal cycling test used to estimate VO₂ max. The researchers then linked these data to hospital and death records through October 2022.
During a median follow-up of 7.85 years, 1,233 cardiovascular events occurred. These included 874 cases of atrial fibrillation, 156 heart attacks, 111 cases of heart failure and 92 strokes.
The pattern was not simply “more exercise is better” in a straight line. Instead, the researchers found a non-linear relationship between activity, fitness and risk. Higher fitness appeared to provide its own protective margin. At the same time, increasing weekly activity lowered risk across the fitness spectrum.
For a 20 percent reduction in cardiovascular risk, people with the lowest fitness needed about 370 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity per week. People with the highest fitness needed about 340 minutes. For a 30 percent reduction, the estimates rose to about 610 minutes per week for the least fit and 560 minutes for the most fit.
You might not like to hear this, but if you’re already unfit, you need to invest much more time and effort than someone who is fitter to reach the same cardiovascular protection. If that sounds like common sense, it is. But the new study is helpful because the figures it offers help frame things more clearly and offer a measurable goal.
Set Achievable Goals
The study was observational, so it cannot prove that exercising 600 minutes a week caused the lower risk. People who exercise more may differ in other ways, such as diet, income, sleep, access to care, smoking history or underlying health.
Also, not everyone can afford to exercise for 10 hours a week. In fact, most don’t. For older adults, people with heart disease, or those who have been inactive for years, that could be unrealistic or unsafe without medical guidance.
For broad public health, 150 minutes a week remains a useful and achievable goal. But if you can safely do more, the heart may keep benefiting well beyond that threshold.
The findings appeared in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.