Thought Experiment: How to meet and exceed activity guidelines

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Hello Jordan, Austin and everybody else. I’m a long time lurker and follower of barbell medicine. I’ve noticed a lot of discussion in the past few years about meeting the physical activity guidelines, yet there’s very little clear instructions coming with that importance about how to achieve them or what’s the preferred best approach.

I guess this question is for Jordan - I really don’t want to come across as being critical or rude, forgive me if it sounds this way.:

I’d like to ask you for a thought experiment. But first some context:

Having read your log it seems that you do around two hours of conditioning each week and four training sessions with weights?

The current activity guidelines you speak of suggest 150 - 300 mins moderate , or 75 - 150 mins vigorous or some combination of both.

However, when apparently time limited people have asked about meeting this with the “vigorous component “ or you have discussed the guidelines ; it comes across that you’d want people to preferentially achieve the 150 mins moderate minimum exclusive of any vigorous activity?

This is in spite of research now demonstrating that harder activity for shorter durations has comparable, if not better benefits than longer moderate activity. Assuming they are capable of vigorous activity of course!

So assuming my assumption is correct, this would imply that you don’t meet your own preferred recommendation of 150 mins moderate, unless you do additional activity that meets the criteria outside of the gym.

But I could be wrong, as in fact you do track Zone 3 and 4 so I would presume your two hours of conditioning meets the activity for that third “combination of both” in the physical activity guidelines.

I just want to first understand any inconsistencies or rule out poor assumptions I’ve made.

Now to the thought experiment.

Imagine you’re very time limited, you can hit the gym quite frequently, maybe 4x per week, 5x at a push. You have all the problems of the modern world including a family and a desk job.

150 mins of moderate intensity might be hard to fit in weekly, but 75 minutes of vigorous is definitely achievable on top of 3 - 4 x resistance sessions. There will also be room for an extra 50 mins for a total of 120 mins/2 hours of conditioning per week.

So the thought experiment is you’re a time poor modern man who can get into to the gym just enough to lift and meet the minimum resistance goals ; whilst focusing on something else like bodybuilding or barbell strength training and you have exactly two hours to meet the CV physical activity guidelines in some form or another.

What would you do to meet those?

For full clarity I’m asking how you would meet those when 150 - 300 minutes of moderate activity alone is pretty much out of the question, but 75 - 150 mins vigorous is doable and/or a combo of the two is achievable?

It would appear possible that somebody with good health and conditioning could possibly achieve close to the top end with two hours per week available to them? But ultimately I concede that it’s probably gonna be pretty difficult for most people to stretch to the top end and beyond for most of their life, hence why you recommend the minimum. I would presume because the benefits of even just achieving that are hugely significant and much easier than vigorous activity as it will include accessible activities like brisk walking and some chores.

Many Thanks

Dave

2

Hey Dave,

Before getting to your thought experiment, I want to be sure we’re on the same page.

It comes across that you’d want people to preferentially achieve the 150 mins moderate minimum exclusive of any vigorous activity

No, and this is not our messaging. People should, at a minimum, perform 150 min/wk of moderate conditioning or 75 min/wk of vigorous conditioning, or some combination of the two in order to achieve a volume load of ~ 500 to 1000 MET-min/wk. Those are the current guidelines we repeat often.

That said, they’re pretty hard to understand unless someone is an exercise science nerd, so I’ll typically say do ~ 2.5 hours per week of moderate cardio or about half that of higher intensity cardio, whatever you like.

This is in spite of research now demonstrating that harder activity for shorter durations has comparable, if not better benefits than longer moderate activity. Assuming they are capable of vigorous activity of course!.

The research does not really show this, e.g. comparing HIIT/SIT outcomes vs MICT there are minimal differences in health outcomes like weight management, blood pressure lowering, glucose control, etc. when the studies are long enough and well-powered enough to capture these effects.

The only data showing a benefit of vigorous compared to moderate is based off accelerometer data using METs as the intensity anchor. I don’t think that’s super accurate for identifying vigorous (as you’re describing it) exercise vs moderate or light. Instead, I think it mostly delineates between exercise and not exercise.

So assuming my assumption is correct, this would imply that you don’t meet your own preferred recommendation of 150 mins moderate, unless you do additional activity that meets the criteria outside of the gym.

I do between 2.5-5 hours of moderate intensity conditioning per week depending on the training block.

Yes, people with reduced time resources can do higher intensity conditioning efforts to achieve a similar volume load and likely similar health benefit up to some point. This assumes they’re able to do higher intensity conditioning, too. While I think conditioning outcomes are similar if volume is equated, I do think higher volumes of moderate intensity conditioning are likely necessary to maximize endurance performance. This is very challenging to do exclusively with HIIT/SIT

3

Hey Jordan, thank you for your rapid response!

No, and this is not our messaging. People should, at a minimum, perform 150 min/wk of moderate conditioning or 75 min/wk of vigorous conditioning, or some combination of the two in order to achieve a volume load of ~ 500 to 1000 MET-min/wk. Those are the current guidelines we repeat often.

I see then, when you put it like that it makes more sense. My apologies.

I’m taking the view that most of the studies performed on minimum physical activity guidelines are self reported, and most people probably overestimated their weekly activity? This is given the fact the 2018 guidelines include daily tasks as activity. So by that I mean, can we infer the majority of people were counting activity like carrying shopping and leisurely walks to add to quite a few of those reported minutes beyond say running, rowing or cycling?

If you have somebody who truly does MET >3 for at least 150minutes or MET >6 for at least 75 minutes. Or better yet, 100,000 of those people and compared them to 100,000 from the self reported study who claim to exceed the guidelines - I would put money on the former reaping the most health benefits over the latter (assuming there was a way to measure this.)

Do you concur?

5 hours of conditioning seems like a lot? Curious as to how you implement that? I understand a lot of people could achieve that with 5 hours of cardio a week, but most in that demographic wouldn’t be likely to lift in addition to that, unless of course they dedicated significant time to it.

Hence why 2 hours of vigorous exercise (or MET >6 right?) might be more achievable for people who meet the resistance guidelines.

Like many of us are all just trying to cram as much as possible into available windows. It can be really unnerving sometimes to be repeatedly told you don’t reduce your risk of comorbidities by n% (yet you’ve already reduced it by the majority simply by coming close as possible) despite doing everything right for the most part and exercising to a level that the self reporting people who made up the 2018 study, never will.

What are your thoughts?

4

Yes, when discussing the rate of of individuals meeting the guidelines, we frequently point out that the self-reported data (~ 17% of adults worldwide) is about double what a US-based sample did with an accelerometer strapped to themselves.

I don’t think there’s likely to be a difference in health outcomes between moderate or vigorous based on my interpretation of the available evidence. For example, I don’t think zone 2 cardio is better for health than zone 3. I think it’s key benefit is that it’s less fatiguing, and so people can do a lot of it. I aso think METs leave a lot to be desired as far as measuring exercise intensity, and I’d be a lot more confident that people hitting the latter are actually exercising. Needless to say, I’d take that bet. Sorry to say, I do not agree.

5 hours is definitely a lot for me and many others. Of course, endurance athletes would laugh at this volume. I do think that “optimal” outcomes from exercise in the modern environment requires a lot more exercise than most people can do/are willing to do. I think there’s a dose-dependent relationship between it (exercise) and general goodness health-wise. So, more is better for he most part.

5

Thanks for your reply.

So just to clarify;

You would take a bet on a large population study c.100,000 people having demonstrably better health outcomes

- Who have self reported significantly exceeding the moderate intensity exercise guidelines.

- Where many of them via the guidelines have with a high degree of probability greatly counted ADLs that don’t promote or has significant limits on aerobic conditioning or vo2 improvements.

Over:

100,000 people who are studied and demonstrably meet or exceed the top end of vigorous activity guidelines via conditioning based exercise that does promote aerobic conditioning and vo2 max improvements?

I understand that the latter is probably less sustainable, less often than the former. It’s easier for the highest risk populations (elderly) to get 5 hours of moderate exercise over 2.5 vigorous. But surely people who run (or similar vigorous activity) for 2.5 hours a week are going to reap much better health benefits than MAYBE 2.5 hours of moderate concerted exercise and a further 2.5 hours of stuff like carrying shopping and/or walking?

I know your preference and consensus is for moderate intensity conditioning that involves actual exercise. Hence why I think this is something you could really refine in a podcast, article or similar.

Endurance athletes asides (as they represent a tiny fraction of the population), I want to see BBM actually highlight what’s realistic for the typical human and where they can get the most benefit with the time, lifestyle and other constraints facing them. There’s a NY times article perhaps?!

We might infer the minimum guidelines meet that - but they don’t cover concerted exercise in isolation - which we know promotes the most aerobic conditioning and vo2 max improvements.

The studies these guidelines are based upon simply don’t measure enough concerted exercise.

I’d like to see some that do focus on concerted exercise minutes. I’d really like to see what happens when we filter out the noise and look at conditioning activity only.

Food for thought, thank you for your thoughts!

6

You’re comparing moderate to vigorous physical activity (>3 METs < 6 METs) to vigorous (> 6 ETS). I don’t think there’s a difference between the two at the volume you mentioned, though at lower volumes, I’d favor the > 6 METs group.

We did define moderate intensity exercise in a number of places so far. I don’t think it’s reasonable to say “the studies these guidelines are based upon simply don’t measure enough concerted exercise” either.

Regarding what’s realistic for individuals, I don’t think we can say with great confidence what people should be able to complete given the heterogeneity of resources. We could make stuff up, for sure. But if you were to take anything away from this interaction, it should be that more exercise is generally better than less, and intensity distribution is not very important until someone’s doing a relatively high volume of conditioning.