Cardio

• Intensity

  Mix hard and steady minutes; both build fitness.

• Frequency

  Fit your weekly minutes into as few as two sessions.

• Timing

  Pick a time for cardio you'll actually keep.

What It Is

How much aerobic activity you get each week, counting vigorous minutes double.

Why It Matters

People who get more aerobic activity die at lower rates from any cause, and this is the best-studied behavior in the whole field. The fall is steepest right at the bottom, so going from almost nothing to a little buys more than any increase after it.¹ Risk keeps dropping above the usual guideline, with no sign that a lot becomes harmful,² and where activity is measured by a worn device rather than recalled, the pattern is sharper still.³ Getting more of it may bring a large reduction in your risk of dying early.

How much of that is the exercise itself is a harder question, and the answer is less than the raw comparison suggests. Active people differ from inactive ones in more than their activity, and the studies built to separate the two keep finding less. Compare twins who move different amounts and the gap shrinks, in the largest of them to nothing once their other habits and their health are accounted for.^4,5 One twin study does find it holding, though weaker there than between strangers.⁶ Active people are also less likely to die in accidents, which exercise mostly cannot prevent.⁷ So this is well worth doing, but not a dial that moves your own risk by the figure above.

Aim for at least 150 minutes a week of moderate aerobic activity, meaning anything that leaves you breathing harder but still able to hold a conversation. Vigorous minutes, where talking gets difficult, count double, so 75 of those get you to the same place, as does any mix of the two.⁸ Treat 300 as the point past which the evidence stops clearly paying more, not as a wall. Read the lower figure as a floor rather than a finish line: the gap between nothing and something is far wider than the gap between a lot and a little, so the first minutes you add are the most valuable ones you will ever add.

• 1 García, L. et al. (2023). Non-occupational physical activity and risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and mortality outcomes: a dose-response meta-analysis of large prospective studies. British Journal of Sports Medicine. doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2022-105669
• 2 Arem, H. et al. (2015). Leisure time physical activity and mortality: a detailed pooled analysis of the dose-response relationship. JAMA Internal Medicine. doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2015.0533
• 3 Ekelund, U. et al. (2019). Dose-response associations between accelerometry measured physical activity and sedentary time and all cause mortality: systematic review and harmonised meta-analysis. BMJ. doi.org/10.1136/bmj.l4570
• 4 Kankaanpää, A. et al. (2025). The associations of long-term physical activity in adulthood with later biological ageing and all-cause mortality: a prospective twin study. European Journal of Epidemiology. doi.org/10.1007/s10654-024-01200-x
• 5 Karvinen, S. et al. (2015). Physical activity in adulthood: genes and mortality. Scientific Reports. doi.org/10.1038/srep18259
• 6 Carlsson, S. et al. (2007). Physical activity and mortality: is the association explained by genetic selection?. American Journal of Epidemiology. doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwm132
• 7 Zhao, M. et al. (2020). Recommended physical activity and all cause and cause specific mortality in US adults: prospective cohort study. BMJ. doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m2031
• 8 Bull, F.C. et al. (2020). World Health Organization 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour. British Journal of Sports Medicine. doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2020-102955