Is it possible to achieve the same health benefit of Cardio through steps?

I recently listened to your 3-part series podcast on Conditioning. Thank you for that.

I have heard conflicting views claiming that someone who does 600 minutes of “Moderate” activity(such as Walking, Gardening, Weight lifting which is < 6 MET/min) will receive very similar health benefits as someone who does 300 minutes of “Vigorous” activity(which is zone 1/zone 2 activity like running, jogging and cycling >= 6 MET/min). And that beyond this there are heavily diminishing health benefits. I assume that the “moderate” activity will not lead to many improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, so this is confusing to me.

The person who claimed this is a PhD sports scientist, and the paper they referenced is this one - https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.121.058162 . I can also post the youtube video if you wish.

Thank you

Vivek,

Weightlifting does not count as conditioning and gardening probably doesn’t either most of the time. Brisk walking for extended periods of time likely represents a decent cardiorespiratory stimulus fro many, but it won’t work in perpetuity as people improve fitness levels. In that case, people will have to walk much faster or otherwise make the effort more challenging.

Moderate to vigorous intensity activity (not necessarily exercise) is 3-6 MET-minutes (MET- minutes is a product, not METs per minute) and vigorous is > 6 MET-minutes. Exercise that falls into the moderate to vigorous is z1 and most of zone 2, whereas z3-5 are vigorous. As mentioned in the podcast, MET prescription/rating is pretty flawed. I also think the different “zones” of conditioning are not particularly helpful. In my opinion, we’d want to really demarcate between the following points:

  1. Non exercise activity and exercise (probably ~50% vo2peak)
  2. Aerobic threshold
  3. Anaerobic threshold Obviously, it’s hard to do this without certain equipment and I think RPE +/- HR works well for the majority of folks, particularly those who aren’t endurance athletes.

Regarding the linked study, it is a large observational study that cannot possibly be instructive for intensity ranges to improve cardiorespiratory fitness. It does show the dose dependent relationship of exercise volume and reduced heart disease and mortality.

I would prefer people meet the conditioning guidelines through conditioning efforts that are ~80% in RPE 4-5 range and 20% higher than that. Most activities don’t count as exercise and while good for overall activity, should probably not be relied upon too heavily.

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Jordan,

This is a topic I was just considering recently. I’m finding that my work has me accumulating 10k+ steps per day, many of which are indeed quite active (running, ball sports, active play with youth athletes), and this leaves me feeling too worn out to summon the energy to do even LISS many days. I’m hoping to convince myself that my non-exercise activity is enough to cover my cardio bases, but based off this post, probably not.

It might be! I don’t know the intensity of that activity and it all certainly counts so…hard to say from here