What is the recommended duration of exercise for someone who will be performing moderate intensity exercise?

Many physical activity guidelines suggest that regular, moderate exercise is important for health and wellness. Getting the minimum amount of moderate activity per week can help prevent disease, boost mood, support weight loss (or maintenance), and more. So understanding what moderate exercise is and how to measure it is valuable for your well-being.

"Anything that gets your heart beating faster" counts as moderate exercise, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. Moderate-intensity cardio exercise includes brisk walking, raking the yard or mopping floors, and playing tennis with a partner.

The American Heart Association (AHA) adds that, when doing moderate exercise, you should be breathing harder than if you were inactive, yet still be able to speak. So, using the talk test is a good way to monitor whether you're at a moderate intensity.

Getting moderate exercise regularly can:

• Reduce the risk of major medical conditions such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and dementia
• Improve sleep and sleep disorders
• Support better brain function (memory, focus, and processing of information)
• Help with weight loss or maintenance
• Improve bone health
• Reduce depression and anxiety symptoms and other mental health symptoms

The Department of Health and Human Services and AHA both give the same prescription for moderate exercise: 30 minutes a day for five days a week, or a total of two hours and 30 minutes per week.

Physical activity needs to continue for at least 10 minutes to be considered a session of exercise. So you can break up your 30 daily minutes into two to three shorter sessions, each at least 10 minutes long.

As you build your ability to exercise, aim to get even more moderate activity. If you can boost your moderate aerobic exercise time to 300 minutes (five hours) per week, you will have likely enjoy even more health benefits.

A moderate level of activity noticeably increases your heart rate and breathing rate. You may sweat, but you are still able to carry on a conversation. You can talk, but you can't sing. You feel you are exercising, but you are not huffing and puffing. You can use a couple of different scales to measure your exercise intensity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a moderate-intensity heart rate zone as 50% to 70% of your maximum heart rate. A person's maximum heart rate varies by age. Use a heart rate chart or calculator to determine yours.

To measure your heart rate mid-exercise, you can take your pulse or use a heart rate monitor, an app, a fitness tracker, or a smartwatch. This helps ensure that you are staying at a moderate intensity (not working too hard or taking it too easy).

The term "MET" is an abbreviation for "Metabolic Equivalent for Task" and refers to the amount of oxygen the body uses during physical activity. By assigning METs to an activity, we can compare the amount of exertion an activity takes, even among people of different weights.

During moderate physical activity, your breathing and heart rate become more rapid and your body burns about 3.5 to 7 calories per minute. The actual number burned depends on your weight and fitness level.

For reference, your body uses 1 MET for basic functions, like breathing. When you get to 7 METs of effort, your physical activity is considered vigorous. So the spectrum is:

• 1 MET: At rest
• 2 METs: Light activity
• 3-6 METs: Moderate activity
• 7 or more METs: Vigorous activity

You can also check your activity level using the Borg Rating of Perceived Exertion scale (RPE). Using this scale involves monitoring how you feel about your activity level.

At one end of this 14-point scale, which starts at 6, is absolute stillness. At the other (20) is sprinting as hard as you can. An RPE between 11 and 14 is considered moderate activity.

• 6: No exertion (sitting still or sleeping)
• 7-8: Extremely light exertion
• 9-10: Very light exertion
• 11-12: Light exertion
• 13-14: Somewhat hard exertion
• 15-16: Heavy exertion
• 17-18: Very heavy exertion
• 20: Maximum exertion

There are many activities that are generally counted as moderate-intensity exercise. Choose a few that appeal to you and work on adding them to your weekly routine.

If you are not able to use your legs, you can achieve moderate intensity by using a manual wheelchair or a handcycle (ergometer), in addition to swimming or water aerobics. If you can use your legs but you don't tolerate walking or jogging, try bicycling or swimming.

An easy walk of under 10 minutes doesn't count as moderate-intensity aerobic activity. You may accrue over 10,000 steps per day on your pedometer, but unless you do some sessions of 10 minutes or more at a brisk pace, you haven't met your daily exercise goal.

Many activity monitors, pedometers, and smartwatches track continuous movement at a pace they consider to be right for achieving moderate-intensity exercise to vigorous-intensity exercise. They report this as "active minutes" and exercise calories burned. It is a good way to see if you are getting enough exercise of the right kind.

There are many ways to build moderate activity into your lifestyle. These include:

• Try 10-minute bursts of activity: Walk briskly for at least 10 minutes at a time. Start by walking at an easy pace for a couple of minutes, then pick up the pace for 10 minutes. Try to walk during work breaks or lunch, and/or before or after the workday.
• Try walking workouts: You can walk indoors (at the mall or on a track at the gym), outdoors, or on a treadmill. Using good posture and walking techniques make it easier to achieve a brisk pace. After you are comfortable walking briskly for 10 minutes at a time, begin to extend your walking time. For variety, try different walking workouts that offer bursts of walking faster, jogging intervals, or adding hills or treadmill incline.
• Try a new activity: You may discover that you can't walk fast enough to boost your heart rate into the moderate-intensity zone. If so, consider cycling, swimming, or using an elliptical trainer to achieve a higher heart rate.

Enjoying moderate physical activity will help keep your body in working order. Don't be distressed if you can only do a little at first. Give yourself time to build your endurance. Then make time each day for the activities you like best.

Staying active regularly is essential for good physical and mental health and wellbeing. This is true no matter how young or old you are. But the amount of activity varies, depending on your age.

To help Australians understand how much activity they need, we have developed physical activity and sedentary behaviour guidelines for each age group and for pregnancy.

These guidelines outline:

• how much physical activity you should do each day
• ideas to fit more physical activity into your daily lives
• the importance of reducing and breaking up the time you spend sitting or lying down when not sleeping
• how much sedentary screen time is recommended
• how much sleep children and young people should get
• how children and young people can get good quality sleep.

Physical activity guidelines by age

Find the guidelines that apply to you.

• For infants, toddler and preschoolers (birth to 5 years)
  Read about how much activity small children should do each day, limiting sitting and screen time, and making sure they get enough sleep.

• For children and young people (5 to 17 years)
  Read about how much activity children and young people should do each day, limiting sitting and screen time, and getting enough sleep.
• For adults (18 to 64 years)
  Read about how much activity adults should do each day and limiting sitting time.

• For pregnancy
  Read about how much activity should be done each day and limiting sitting time during pregnancy for the health and wellbeing of both mum and bub.

• For older Australians (65 years and over)
  Read about how much activity older Australians should do each day, and how to build activity into daily life.
• For people with disability and chronic conditions
  While there are no formal guidelines for people with disability and chronic conditions, being active is important for everyone. Find out what you can do to include activity in your day according to your ability.

Order the guidelines

You can order the following printed resources by emailing health [at] nationalmailing.com.au or calling 02 6269 1080. Provide:

• the order ID number
• how many copies you need
• your delivery address.

Summary by age

Children and young people

Adults

How we developed the guidelines

We developed Australia’s physical activity guidelines based on:

• a rigorous review of scientific evidence from around the world
• extensive consultation with stakeholders, state and territory governments, and national and international experts.

We looked at how health is directly affected by:

• the physical activity people do – including the amount, frequency, intensity and type of activity
• the amount of time people spend sitting or lying down
• the amount and quality of sleep children and young people get.

We have summarised the scientific evidence that support each of the guidelines.