How Much Should You Exercise

How Much Should You Exercise? Have you ever asked yourself, how much exercise is ideal? Often we worry about not getting enough but could it be possible that we are getting to much? or What is the minimum amount? Well Tech Insider consulted Shawn Arent, an exercise scientist at Rutgers University about these very same questions.

How Much Exercise Do You Need To Reach Your Fitness Goals

While any amount of exercise is an improvement over none at all, if you're already in decent shape, exercising for just two days a week will not get you much additional benefit.

Here's what he told us when we asked him how often you should exercise:

"A minimum of three days per week, for a structured exercise program. Technically, you should do something every day, and by something I mean physical activity — just move. Because we're finding more and more that the act of sitting counteracts any of the activity you do.

"So let's say you go work out for an hour a day and then you sit for the rest of the day — the health consequences are awful from the sitting standpoint. There's a recent study that just came out on that.So, you need to be active at other points in the day as well besides just the exercise.

"In terms of resistance training — [you should do it] two to five days per week, it depends on the level you're at, in terms of how advanced you are and how you train your body. Early on we can get pretty good gains in kids and older adults with two days per week, but we still want to progress them pretty quickly to three or four days per week.

I recommend getting some sort of physical activity in everyday and outside if possible. Make it a social event and gather a few friends around for sand volleyball, disc golf, tennis or basketball! SO get outside while we still have this some summer left :)