[noelwelsh]

> Those adults who met the 150 minute a week guideline on exercise experienced a modest 8-9% reduction in cardiovascular risk, the study found. This was consistent across all levels of fitness.

> In order to achieve substantial protection, classed as a greater than 30% risk reduction, between 560 and 610 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise a week was needed.

So 30 minutes a day is still good, but more is better. Seems reasonable.

Also exercise doesn't mean planned / scheduled exercise, like going to the gym. Daily activities can count, like cycling to the train station for example. Which gets to one of my favorite hobby horses: increasing exercise at the population level is an urban design problem.

[giwook]

Urban design can help, but only for those who actually want to take the 'hard' route. Most people I know would rather take a subway or call an uber for anything above 20 minutes of walking (which makes me sad).

[noelwelsh]

The trick is to make the healthy option the easy route. That's what Paris did (creating more bike lanes, getting rid of parking spots, closing roads to cars) and cycling is now more popular than driving [1].

[1]: See, for example, https://bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2026/03/11/how-paris-...

[smartbit]

Indeed after the pandemic many more bike, for what I've seen a considerable percentage e-bikes, maybe understandably given the hills and distances in Paris, but imho not the everyday cardio exercise one needs.

[toasty228]

I got a group of 5 or so friends looking at me like I just came out of a spaceship when I told them me and my wife go for walks almost every evening for 30-60 min... walking for the sake of walking was truly alien to them.

[jimbokun]

Walking to subway station and from destination subway station to final destination is significantly more walking time than using a car from home to final destination.

[bluefirebrand]

I used to live in a very walkable part of Victoria BC, which was great! Unfortunately I was eventually priced out, and the job market there was very competitive so I had to move

I wound up in a fairly walkable part of Calgary. But Calgary is not a super walkable or bikeable city. Transit here is at best ok, and winter gets very cold. There are some good bike paths but you have to be pretty determined to use them when it snows or it's -40 out.

I guess what I'm saying is urban design is super important, but geography has a say too. We don't all get to live in the relatively mild west coast weather.

[skeeter2020]

Calgary could be much better, but the river pathway is really good. It doesn't snow that much and it is rarely -40 (as in pretty much never unless you go in for wind chill). They do a very good job of clearing snow from the core pathways; way better than they do the roads! I think the biggest challenges are that it's likely the non-car options are all managed by car driving bureaucrats. Things like commuter pathways that just end in construction, with convoluted or no detours; slow & widespread construction that seems to be focused on pretty landscaping vs. functional infrastructure; what it's like to ride a bike or scooter in close proximity to big volumes of massive trucks. This is not unique to Calgary, but if we made city managers walk, roll or bus to work for a month it would help IMO.

[bluefirebrand]

> It doesn't snow that much

I'm from Vancouver Island originally so Calgary snows a ton in comparison. :)

You're right it could be worse. It could be better too. That basically describes everywhere though! Overall I do love living here

> if we made city managers walk, roll or bus to work for a month it would help IMO.

Agreed. I think public servants should be encouraged (maybe required?) to dogfood public services now and then

[jauntywundrkind]

I think ebikes are amazing but it is more than a bit sad to me that less than half the people moving around in my neighborhood put in any energy. There's like two bicyclists under 25. Many many many scooters and ebikes.

Very torn on this one. I love it for them, but also, it seems super sad to me. I can't even really explain why it's so saddening.

[volkk]

i think that's a chicken and egg cultural problem. build cities in a way where bicycles/walking is encouraged, then over time you'll have people that want to do exactly that.

[bojan]

20 minutes of walking is a perfect bicycle distance.

[skeeter2020]

example: Calgary is currently debating removal of the free fare zone for the DT transit line. It's like 10 blocks of straight, flat walking but you hear things like "nobody will go out for lunch and support downtown businesses if we get ride of this!" Currently it's mostly used by homeless people to stay warm in the winter.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

9 hours of moderate to vigorous seems like a lot. When I do vigorous (2 times a week HIIT) I cannot do vigorous the next day, my body clearly needs recovery. I can do moderate. But I wonder what scientists mean by vigorous at this point. I am starting to suspect I set the bar too high

[cameldrv]

I think the definition of vigorous is roughly 75% of max heart rate. HIIT would generally be more strenuous than that. Roughly speaking for a lot of people, running faster than about a 10:00/mi pace is probably vigorous.

In the WHO recommendations, they say to get 75 minutes of vigorous or 150 of moderate per week. I believe in this study they use the same double counting of vigorous minutes.

I’ve seen other studies that say you get most all of the cardio benefit you can with about 150m vigorous/300m moderate. You could roughly get that by running about 2.5 miles per day.

[unglaublich]

Light and moderate are mostly just "activities of daily life" (walking, commuting), and vigorous is whenever you exercise explicitly (running, swimming, speed cycling, soccer, etc). So it's more like 9 hours of active movement, or 4.5 hours of exercise (40 mins a day).

[readthenotes1]

"exercise doesn't mean planned / scheduled exercise, like going to the gym."

Most of the people I see in the gym are sitting on the benches on their phone 9 minutes out of 10. I'm pretty sure going to the gym is not helping at all...

[mancerayder]

If you're doing heavy compound exercises like 3x5, 5x3 squats, you kind of need to wait three minutes in between! Even adding something in between like press or pullups is quite hard on the nervous system.

The people who walk 45m on the treadmill while watching a show, or people who sit around chit chatting, yes... A waste of space.

[readthenotes1]

So what sort of exercise regime legitimizes 10-minute pauses between short sets of moderate weight?

[nickburns]

Calling it 'the gym' sort of conflates its two distinct sections: the one containing cardio equipment, and the other containing strength training/bodybuilding equipment. So-called 'work capacity' aside, there's almost zero overlap between the two sections.

Whether someone's effectively strength training/bodybuilding or not, which is the section I think you refer to—nobody reasonably believes that does anything significant for cardiovascular health, which is the topic being dicussed here.

[forgotusername6]

At certain times of day the London underground deliberately directs people to longer paths around the stations to alleviate congestion. This kind of thing could be a health benefit.