Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity for Best Fitness

Data from the Framingham Heart Study—ongoing since 1948—shows that even short bouts of 17 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity leads to higher levels of cardiorespiratory fitness than achieving 4,000+ steps per day.

Boston University researchers looked at data from 2,070 subjects who were assessed at two intervals approximately 8 years apart. One group walked more than 4,300 steps per day. The second group participated in daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. The third group made an effort to reduce daily sedentary time by 4 hours per day.

The team found that moderate-vigorous physical activity was the most efficient way to improve fitness—three times efficient than walking at a slow pace and more than 14 times more efficient than reducing sedentary time.

Walking is a moderate-to-vigorous activity if it’s performed at a cadence of 100 steps per minute or more. Anything slower is considered low-level exertion. A valuable finding is that higher levels of inactivity can be offset by consistent moderate-to-vigorous exercise or by increasing daily step counts.

The study is available in the European Heart Journal (2021; 24 [2], 4565–75).

See also: Moderate Activity to Avoid Hypertension