We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about exercise. There’s a fitness community obsessed with constant optimisation and hacks: how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before.
It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress. Or people are overly concerned with what’s secretly holding them back, from sleep to “I had a couple of glasses of wine … it ruined three days of my life” (that’s Steven Bartlett’s podcast).
Much of the gym and fitness influencer world is about the already fit and active trying to get marginally fitter. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can be meaningful to have objectives and targets. But on the other hand, there are constant stories about finding the minimum amount a person can do to be fit. In the past few years we’ve seen studies argue that it’s not 10,000 steps per day that you need, but actually that 7,000 is enough. That you don’t need to exercise every day – and that you can just get your movement in over the weekend to reduce dementia as a weekend warrior.
Many of these are useful; with our busy lives, we should be aware if there’s an easier way to get the health benefits of exercise. But I have to draw the line at recent stories based on a Lancet study that say we can get by with just five minutes of exercise a day. It sounds too good to be true. And, in my opinion, it is.
Let’s unpick what the authors did. They looked at two sources of information: individual data from seven large studies in the US, Norway and Sweden with roughly 40,000 participants, as well as UK Biobank data with 95,000 participants. They modelled the proportion of deaths averted by a five-minute increase in moderate activity, and they estimated that there would be a 6%-10% reduction in deaths among participants in the multicounty studies (there was a similar but smaller effect seen in the Biobank data).
While methodologically sophisticated, this was not a study that looked at sedentary individuals and asked them to do five minutes of exercise every day and logged the results. They instead used existing data on physical activity to model the relationship between that activity and later death. They used this model to estimate the potential effect that an increase in five minutes of activity would have for anyone, regardless of their baseline. I would say that what they found reinforces that something is better than nothing, and the biggest health gains in more movement are found in those who are the most inactive, but I wouldn’t base a workout routine on it.
Plus, the focus on time increments ignores the type of movement we need. Our bodies need a triangle of types of movement, especially as the years go on: cardio, strength and flexibility. Each type brings something different to our health – and each (I would argue) is as important as the others. Cardio (think walking, cycling, swimming) strengthens our heart muscle and blood vessels. Strength training (think squats, press-ups, carrying heavy things) maintains our muscle mass. And flexibility (think stretching) reduces the risk of injury and chronic pain. And, yes, doing all three types of exercise over the course of the week takes time.
The World Health Organization recommends – based on extensive evidence from systematic reviews, meta-analysis and prospective cohort studies – that adults get roughly 20-40 minutes of moderate activity a day (150-300 minutes a week). This amount was recommended because it has the most significant impact on all kinds of different health measurements, while remaining achievable for most people.
While I love the idea of “only five minutes”, it’s simply not true from the data we have. I’d pose a different question: in the 24 hours of each day, how can we not find 20 minutes – what I’d consider the bare minimum – to move? If that’s how our society is structured, and how our daily lives and work is organised, then that’s the greatest travesty of all.
So, no, you don’t need to compete in the next Hyrox, or run 5K, or run at all. But also five minutes of exercise isn’t enough, per day, to stay healthy and fully fit into old age. The bar has come down to be accessible, but let’s not make the bar so low that it becomes meaningless.
