How Little Exercise Can You Get Away With?

A growing body of research suggests that the amount of exercise you need to start seeing real health and fitness benefits is surprisingly small and eminently achievable.

The key is an approach researchers call “minimum effective dose” training. It may sound too good to be true, but you really can get stronger, fitter and healthier with bouts of exercise lasting just a few minutes — presuming you’re willing to work hard. Here’s what you need to know.

Super Short Strength Workouts

Plenty of studies show strength training increases longevity. And it doesn’t take much. A 2022 meta-analysis found that adults who spent just a few minutes a day doing resistance training could reduce the risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality and cancer mortality compared with those who did none.

Research suggests that so long as you are pushing to the point of fatigue (you should feel like you can’t do more than another repetition or two), as little as one hard set per muscle group per week seems to be enough to get meaningful strength gains, Dr. Androulakis-Korakakis said, adding that this is true for beginners as well as trained strength athletes.

Believe it or not, how you get there isn’t all that important. If your sets are challenging, you can get similar results from a few heavy reps or a lot of light ones, said Zac Robinson, a postdoctoral researcher at Florida Atlantic University. Free weights, machines, exercise bands and body weight exercises all work.

Super Short Cardio Workouts

Federal exercise guidelines recommend at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (like brisk walking) per week, or 75 minutes if that exercise is more vigorous (think running). But emerging evidence suggests you can get similar benefits in even less time, said Duck-chul Lee, the director of the Physical Activity Research Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

He and his colleagues have found that even five- to 10-minute bursts of an exercise with an intensity like running, and as little as 30 minutes total per week, significantly reduced the risk of all-cause mortality as well as deaths by heart attack or stroke.

Other small studies show similar effects. One such paper, published in 2016, found that previously sedentary men who did three hard 10-minute workouts, per week improved their insulin resistance and other health markers just as much after three months as a group who did three moderate 45-minute workouts per week.

If you’re new to exercise or aren’t interested in the gym, you can also boost your fitness by increasing the intensity of activities that are already part of your daily life. Experts call this VILPA: Vigorous Intermittent Lifestyle Physical Activity. For instance, you might walk a bit faster to run an errand, or climb a flight of stairs fast enough to get your heart rate up, said Thijs M. H. Eijsvogels, an exercise researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands.