Tara De Leon: Hey, friends. So it's Tara here today, and it's just me. Elizabeth and Maria are not with me today. so I am hoping that this will be a fun and exciting, episode for you. Today, I wanna talk about the minimum effective dose for exercise. How much exercise do you actually need? the reason that I thought about this is because we had our second ever retreat this past weekend.
Inhale was amazing. You guys, like, stay on our radar for that because our retreats are actually turning out awesome. and people have said they're like the best wellness thing they've ever done for themselves and things like that. But at the retreat, somebody asked me, " How little exercise can I actually get away with?"
And it was in the context of a larger conversation about joy and time management and how she felt like, she knew she needed to exercise, but she didn't feel like she could even come close to meeting the recommended guidelines. so her question was, how little exercise can you actually get away with?
and the good news is, guys, it's pretty little. Trainers usually tell you to do more. I know that this sounds crazy coming from a personal trainer. I literally make my living off of helping people exercise more, not less. but sometimes more steps, more cardio, more lifting, more days per week, all that gets overwhelming.
And in general, we hear the recommended dosage of 150 to 300 minutes a week of cardio, in particular, but also several days of strength training. And people hear that and they go, "Dude, I just can't do that. Like, I know that I cannot fit that into my life." So they don't do anything. Guys, I hate that because 150 minutes isn't, like, this magic line where all of a sudden you get benefits.
that's great. If we could all get 150 minutes a week in, which by the way, guys, is like 30 minutes most days of the week. so it's not an outrageous amount of exercise, but it still counts if you do five minutes. It still counts if you do 10 minutes. It still counts if you only get one workout in per week.
it still counts if you only do one set of something. Like, all these little tiny things add up, which is why we talk about exercise snacks all the time. if you're ever at anything with me, you'll hear me talk about exercise snacks. We did a whole episode on it, where I definitely recommend just squeezing in little bits of movement here and there.
get up in those first five minutes, do like 10 squats, 10 pushups, and a minute plank, and repeat that a few times. and then in five minutes you have, like, a pretty good amount of workout in. And then maybe after lunch you go for a five-minute walk, you know, around the building. and then maybe while you're watching TV in the evening, you do, like, a 10-minute stretch sitting on the floor.
like, that's 20 minutes a day that probably didn't feel hateful for you to squeeze in there, but it adds up, right? If we do that every single day, what is that, 140 minutes a week? Like, that's pretty close to meeting that guideline. so I definitely am a huge fan of incorporating in exercise snacks.
But for those of us who want, like, concrete guidelines, I am definitely a person who appreciates a little bit of guidelines directions, so let's talk about it today. So the current federal guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity per week or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, plus strength training that hits all the major muscle groups at least twice a week.
so the deal is, guys, we just gotta move more. We gotta sit less. Some activity is better than none. The point of this, though, is that the recommended dosage does not equal the minimum effective dose. So I have something that I call the BAM, the bare ass minimum, and this is what makes me differents from many personal trainers.
I got really tired over the years of seeing people come into my office January 2nd and be like, "All right, it's the new year. I have to get in shape. I'm gonna come do an hour of lifting like five days a week, and then I'm gonna do like an hour of cardio right after, and then like twice a week I'm gonna fit in yoga.
and then I'm gonna take better care of my skin this year too because I've really been like letting my glow up routine fall off. So after my workout I'm going to shower and deep condition my hair and do like the fancy face routine with 27 steps in it. and then that should take me like three and a half hours.
I don't have time for that And then they're like, "All right, I'm just gonna power through anyway. I need to do these things. I have to do this stuff." so then they end up going really hard for, like, two weeks, and then they fall off the wagon, right? Because it's too much. Nobody has three and a half hours to fit fitness in their life, unless it's their job.
And to be honest, it literally is my job, and I don't have that much time every day to exercise. So, first, let's walk it back a step. So what is our bare-ass minimum? My recommendation to you is to look at what you're currently doing and see if it feels sustainable. And if what you're currently doing does feel sustainable, let's look for little places that we can add a little bit more in.
Maybe it's an exercise snack. maybe you're, like, awesome with the cardio, and you walk every day after work, or you take a spin class twice a week. You know, you're really hitting, like, your cardio guidelines, but you're not lifting. you know, women, If you are in midlife, dear listeners, we gotta be lifting weights, right?
Lifting weight is going to, increase our muscle mass a little bit. It is going to help prevent injuries. It's gonna help increase our bone density. Like, we gotta be lifting. It's gonna help us age the way that we wanna age, and that's really what I think it comes down to, is not so much that we wanna look a certain way, right?
You know we're not really about that here at Wellness Rebranded, or at Everybody Strong. but we're all about being able to live your life the way that you wanna live your life. When I am an old lady, guys, I wanna be at my water aerobics class with my friends. I wanna be going to concerts in the evenings and dancing.
I wanna be able to get off the toilet without having to, like, hoist myself up. You know? I want to be able to travel. I wanna be able to pick up my grand babies without worrying about losing my balance and killing both of us. You know? I wanna have enough energy to watch out for my grand babies, and take some of that load off of my son and his partner.
you know? Like- I wanna be active as I'm aging, and if I'm not taking steps to get active now and strong now in my 40s, I don't think that it's gonna be there when I'm in my 60s, 70s, and beyond, right? So I like to look for little places that you can add in more for that reason. It's very motivating for me to have that be my why instead of I just wanna look better on the beach.
Not that there's anything wrong with that goal, but that's just not motivating for me personally. So let's talk about this minimum effective dose or our bare-ass minimum. First of all, the minimum for what? For longevity? For heart health? For strength? For muscle? For blood pressure? For independence? To run a marathon?
Like, different goals have different doses, right? so how much we do of each thing depends on what our goals are. For most of us here, my, imagination says that you guys are here because you wanna be healthier, and you wanna live your life the way you wanna live it. You wanna be independent, for as long as possible.
If that's not you, and you have, like, a very specific goal, like you're gonna climb Mount Everest in 2028, you know, come talk to me. We can get you there, too. But for today's purpose, we're gonna say that your minimum effective dose is for longevity, right? and that's what we're gonna be talking about today.
So let's talk about cardio to start because let's be honest, guys, your heart and lungs are really freaking important. if your heart and lungs give out, bad things happen to our bodies, so we wanna keep those healthy. I know that sounds a little crazy coming from your resident strength training guru, and I'm always talking about lifting weights and getting strong.
We also have to have a strong cardiovascular system, even if it feels a little hateful to do it sometimes. So I wanna read this study to you, so listen to this, guys. a 2026 study followed roughly 594,000 American adults for a median of nine and a half years. Compared with people reporting no
moderate to vigorous physical activity, people reporting just five minutes per week had a 13% lower relative risk of death during follow-ups. Five minutes a week had a 13% lower relative risk of death. That's crazy, guys. Five minutes is nothing. It's, like, literally almost nothing. And then it continues, at 150 minutes per week, so way more, right?
It was about 19% lower, and at 300 minutes per week, it was 24% lower, and at 600 minutes per week, 26% lower. So I know some of y'all type As out there are gonna listen to this, and you're gonna go, " Well, I gotta do 600 minutes per week because that's 26% lower risk of all-cause mortality." That is not what I'm saying, guys.
This should be here, to give you some hope that, like, every little bit counts. And this is also an observational study, so I'm not saying that five minutes of exercise makes you 13% less likely to die. This is just, like, a correlation, not a causation But let's look at the pattern here. So if five minutes gives us more benefit than zero minutes, and 150 minutes gives us more benefit than five minutes, and, uh, and 150 minutes gives us less benefit than 300 minutes, right?
This isn't a cliff. Do you see what I'm saying there? It's not like, oh, we got to 150 minutes, and then it just skyrocketed it up in the benefits. This is a dose-response curve, right? So that means even if we do five minutes, great. If we do 20 minutes, even better. If we do 150 minutes, even better. And if you look at those numbers, guys, at 150 minutes per week, it was 19% lower.
But the difference between 300 and 600 minutes a week is only 2%. So this isn't like it keeps getting exponentially more beneficial. 150 minutes a week is a really good goal. Something is disproportionately better than nothing Right? So just get out there and start moving. we really like any sort of movement, and we know, that the biggest gains occur at the bottom of the curve. So going from nothing to something is super, super important. More still helps, but it's diminishing returns at that point.
where I see a lot of people get trapped is they don't do anything. They literally do zero minutes because they think they can't do enough. Like, "Oh, I can only fit in one half hour a week, so anything because it's not 150 minutes." Right? I also want to give you some context for, like, 150 minutes honestly sounds like a lot to me.
But I take a belly dancing class once a week that's 90 minutes long. So even if I just do my one 90-minute class, which by the way, guys, is way harder than it sounds like, but even if I just do my 90-minute class, like, that's at least half of my minutes for the week. Not to mention the benefit of being in a group.
It is fun. There's a community. It's interesting music. I'm learning more about a different culture. Like, there are benefits to this outside of just the physical. but then you only have to add in a little bit more. I do my 90 minutes of belly dancing, and then maybe I do, like, a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood with my family at some other point during the week.
Like, I'm almost there. That's 120 minutes. You know? So this doesn't have to be a crazy situation. Something else I want to address is you don't need to work out five days per week. You can, absolutely. but there is, like, a benefit to being a weekend warrior here. even if you don't have time to work out Monday through Friday, which I would argue that all of us could probably find the time, but let's just go with that for right now, your total activity matters more than a perfect schedule.
Your body doesn't necessarily know that Mondays are leg days and Tuesdays are chest days. Your body's just thinking about the minutes, right? It all adds up, and there's no, like, good or bad. The good is that you do it. The bad is that you don't do it, right? So even if you only have time on the weekends, go ahead.
It still counts Now, let's talk about strength training a little bit. As you know, this is my wheelhouse, and I love talking about strength training, and something really interesting just came out this year. in March, the American College of Sports Medicine, ACSM, released its updated resistance training position stand, and it has not been updated in 17 years.
so this is huge for us in the strength training industry. it basically looked at 137 meta-analysis, or reviews that were involving more than 300,000 people. Here is the gist. They want you to be lifting all the major muscle groups at least twice a week with some effort. That's it. If you can do that, you'll be well on your way to being strong If, for those of you who are a little bit more technical and you maybe are science nerds like I am, what we're looking for here is heavy loads.
and by the way, can we talk about heavy loads for a sec? Heavy loads are things that are considered heavy for you. there's no number. It's not like a 300-pound deadlift is really heavy, although for most of us it probably would be. but A heavy load is something where we're lifting at about 80% of our one-rep max.
For most of us, that's gonna be anything less than, like, eight reps is considered heavy weight. Even if that weight is, like, five pounds, it is still considered to be heavy weight if you can only do eight reps or less. So to get into that nitty-gritty, we want you doing about 80% of your one-rep max. We want you doing two to four sets of it with full range of motion twice a week.
most of my clients do this. The vast majority of my clients at Everybody Strong comes see me twice a week for, like, a half an hour each time. So from a minutes standpoint, that's only 60 minutes a week, right? So it doesn't sound like it's a lot. However, in those 30-minute sessions, we lift their entire body with heavy weight, usually somewhere in that four sets of eight realm.
and they get strong because of it. It sounds like it should be too easy. Like, oh, I just come here twice a week. The place is inviting. The trainer is fun and knowledgeable and occasionally funny. I enjoy my workouts, and I leave feeling better than when I came in the gym This can't be that effective.
Guess what? It is. everybody gets stronger there. That's kind of the whole deal, right? so if you've been wondering about strength training, and you're local to Annapolis, Maryland, I would love to chat with you about this. Come on in, you can visit the gym. I love just even having people visit me in the gym.
so you can come, you know, pick my brain about what might be good for you there. but really, guys, even if you are in your own gym, living your best life in somewhere exotic and amazing, that's not Annapolis, Maryland, maybe, twice a week, two to four sets, 80% of your one rep max, and you'll get there.
If you want to maximize hypertrophy, hypertrophy means muscle cells get bigger, right? Atrophy means our muscle cells get smaller. Hypertrophy means muscle cells get bigger. then we're just looking at a little bit more volume. it's going to be the same kind of guidelines, 80% of our one rep max. the difference is how many sets.
We're gonna do about 10 sets per muscle group per week. So if you're lifting twice a week, that might be, like, five sets of five both days, which is still not hateful. and for those of you sitting there thinking like, "Oh my God, why would I want muscle hypertrophy? I don't wanna be any bigger," because diet culture exists, right?
And we were all raised in it. this is also a really fancy way of saying muscle tone. So if the word toning vibes better with your soul, we are talking about hypertrophy and muscle gross. Muscle growth So here's what I care about, guys. Even one set counts. So if you're listening to this and thinking, "I'm never gonna make it to the gym twice a week to lift, that's outside of my wheelhouse," one set counts.
I'm not telling you that one set is optimal. I'm just telling you that optimal and effective are not the same thing
So if it feels like only one set is all you have the capacity for right now, do it. It will improve your life, I promise. the ACSM review found that one set produces greater adaptations than doing no resistance training at all, and two sets are generally better than one. After that, we see progressively diminishing returns.
So at least two sets is my kind of, like, hope for all of us. but if we can get up to four sets, even better
Now, let's talk about longevity a little bit. So that same study that I mentioned earlier that followed adults, for like nine and a half years, there was another study done with some of those same people, that followed 150,000 adults for about 30 years. so this was kind of like the OG of those two studies that I was talking about.
and compared with doing no resistance training, doing about 90 to 120 minutes per week was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality, and a 19% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality, and a 27% lower risk of neurological disease mortality. So if you don't wanna die of neurological stuff or of like heart disease, lifting is gonna be helpful.
90 to 120 minutes, that's like two hours a week. An hour and a half to two hours a week of lifting is gonna be helpful for that. Like I said though, guys, if that feels unattainable in your schedule at the moment, every little bit counts. You don't need to live at the gym for this to work
So let's talk about steps too. We've already talked about how 10,000 steps is a myth, right? if you didn't listen to that episode, go back and check it out because it's kind of interesting, how the 10,000 steps was started because there was a pedometer company in Japan, and the symbol for 10,000 kind of looks like a walking person.
so there was never any like real like sciencey stuff to support 10,000 steps. Now, that's not to say that walking 10,000 steps is bad. Of course, there's benefits to moving your body, but we have newer data now. So the real benefit in my opinion would be about 7,000 steps. 7,000 steps per day was associated with a 47% lower risk of all-cause mortality, of cardiovascular mortality, and a 38% lower risk of dementia, 28% lower risk of falls when compared with 2,000 steps a day.
I'm not gonna lie to you guys, sometimes I get like 2 or 3,000 steps per day, on my admin days. I spend a lot of time locked into my computer. I know that that is pretty normal for a lot of us who have, office jobs. Okay? If that is you, we need to figure out ways to get a few more steps into your life.
My best advice would be take the exercise snack route and make that a part of who you are and what you do. you know, get up in the morning and maybe like walk around the block once and do the same thing after dinner and walk around your office at lunchtime. definitely gonna have some benefit from that, guys.
you can also just take this a step further and be like, "I get my cardio in at the gym," and go hop on the treadmill after work or before work maybe, and get your steps in. Uh, what I don't want you to do with this is turn 7,000 steps into the new 10,000. this is very similar to exercise, or strength training where there's a curve to this.
Like 2,000 is good, 3,000 is better, and we really see the, gains start to drop off around 7,000. so anywhere in there is okay. Benefits accumulate below 10,000 steps.
So let's kind of wrap this all up and talk about what we're actually gonna do. So if you're currently doing nothing, don't listen to this episode and go, "All right, I'm gonna lift twice a week for 120 minutes, and I'm gonna do my 300 minutes of cardio, and, I'm going to get more steps in." Right? That's not what I want you to do.
I want you to just start very slowly. The reason I recommend this, guys, the reason I come back to the BAM, the bare-ass minimum, is because I want this to be sustainable for you. Consistency is the secret to, like, probably everything. so finding a way that you can add it in and keep it consistent is the most important part.
I would definitely start with a five to 10-minute walk If you're not doing anything right now, that's probably the best thing that you can add in I would take the stairs. I would park farther away at the store. I would just look for more opportunities to find movement. It doesn't need to be an hour.
Just a couple minutes is going to have benefits. Remember early in the episode we talked about five minutes being helpful? Let's start there if you're doing nothing. In terms of weight training, if you're doing nothing, come see me. I'm gonna hold you accountable and help you get in at least half an hour a week.
Okay? But if that doesn't feel feasible, start with a squat. It doesn't even have to be a full squat like what you're probably thinking of. we all squat every day, even those of us that are like, "I have bad knees." You still squat because you sit down. You just have to sit in your chair and stand back up or sit on your toilet and then stand back up, and that is a squat.
So try, like, three sets of 10 for some squats. Try three sets of 10 for some pushups. Maybe they're on the wall. Maybe they're on a bench. Maybe they're on the floor. you know, we modify until it gets easy, and then we figure out a way to make it a little bit harder. Eventually, we're gonna aim for that 150 minutes per week.
But for right now, I want you to start slow and build. So key takeaways right now, I want you to take an inventory of your exercise. How many minutes are you actually doing every week? How many of those minutes are cardio, and how many of those are strength? How many steps are you getting on a normal day?
And if you don't track your steps, I don't think this is the conversation where we go, "You need to start tracking your steps." I think if you're not tracking your steps, it's totally fine. Let's start with the actual minutes of movement first
So closing this all up, a couple things I want you to remember. Minimum effective dose does not mean optimal. We need a bigger dose if we're gonna have bigger goals. But if you're sitting there thinking you don't have five hours a week to exercise, so what is the point? I just want you to remember this.
Something counts. Five minutes counts. A 10-minute walk counts. One set counts. One workout counts. 6,000 steps count
You don't have to optimize your exercise. You need to stop letting perfect keep you sedentary We have to start embarrassingly small if you need to. And by the way, guys, there's no embarrassment here. All of us have been there, right? just start real small And then add a little bit more as your capacity increases. There's one last thing I wanna mention, is that I haven't talked about weight loss in this episode, and that's intentional.
The amount of exercise recommended for your health is not necessarily the amount of exercise that we would be required to produce substantial weight loss. those are very different conversations. Research on weight loss has looked at a much higher exercise volume, like three to 600 minutes per week.
Guys, that's like 10 hours of exercise. and this is one reason I desperately want women to stop judging whether exercise is working based on the scale, because you get really meaningful improvements in your cardiovascular health, in your fitness, in your strength, in your function, your longevity, with dramatically smaller doses.
so even if you're doing 60 minutes a week or 30 minutes a week, you're getting benefits even if your body isn't getting smaller. So I just wanna leave that with you today, guys. The minimum effective dose for health is not the minimum effective dose for certain fitness goals. It's not the minimum effective dose for maximizing performance.
and it doesn't mean that it might meaningfully change your body weight. These are all different things, but you have to decide what you want the term working to mean, right? Is it working? Working for what? That, my friends, is up to you. And if you wanna chat it out with me, I would love to have this conversation with you offline.
you can reach out to me on my website, taradeleonfitness.com. There's a Work With Me page on there, where you can fill it out, and we can have a free conversation to talk about your specific health and fitness and your specific goals, and figure out a plan on how to get you there. So that, my friends, is all I have for you.
Until next time, stay strong.
Inhale was amazing. You guys, like, stay on our radar for that because our retreats are actually turning out awesome. and people have said they're like the best wellness thing they've ever done for themselves and things like that. But at the retreat, somebody asked me, " How little exercise can I actually get away with?"
And it was in the context of a larger conversation about joy and time management and how she felt like, she knew she needed to exercise, but she didn't feel like she could even come close to meeting the recommended guidelines. so her question was, how little exercise can you actually get away with?
and the good news is, guys, it's pretty little. Trainers usually tell you to do more. I know that this sounds crazy coming from a personal trainer. I literally make my living off of helping people exercise more, not less. but sometimes more steps, more cardio, more lifting, more days per week, all that gets overwhelming.
And in general, we hear the recommended dosage of 150 to 300 minutes a week of cardio, in particular, but also several days of strength training. And people hear that and they go, "Dude, I just can't do that. Like, I know that I cannot fit that into my life." So they don't do anything. Guys, I hate that because 150 minutes isn't, like, this magic line where all of a sudden you get benefits.
that's great. If we could all get 150 minutes a week in, which by the way, guys, is like 30 minutes most days of the week. so it's not an outrageous amount of exercise, but it still counts if you do five minutes. It still counts if you do 10 minutes. It still counts if you only get one workout in per week.
it still counts if you only do one set of something. Like, all these little tiny things add up, which is why we talk about exercise snacks all the time. if you're ever at anything with me, you'll hear me talk about exercise snacks. We did a whole episode on it, where I definitely recommend just squeezing in little bits of movement here and there.
get up in those first five minutes, do like 10 squats, 10 pushups, and a minute plank, and repeat that a few times. and then in five minutes you have, like, a pretty good amount of workout in. And then maybe after lunch you go for a five-minute walk, you know, around the building. and then maybe while you're watching TV in the evening, you do, like, a 10-minute stretch sitting on the floor.
like, that's 20 minutes a day that probably didn't feel hateful for you to squeeze in there, but it adds up, right? If we do that every single day, what is that, 140 minutes a week? Like, that's pretty close to meeting that guideline. so I definitely am a huge fan of incorporating in exercise snacks.
But for those of us who want, like, concrete guidelines, I am definitely a person who appreciates a little bit of guidelines directions, so let's talk about it today. So the current federal guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity per week or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, plus strength training that hits all the major muscle groups at least twice a week.
so the deal is, guys, we just gotta move more. We gotta sit less. Some activity is better than none. The point of this, though, is that the recommended dosage does not equal the minimum effective dose. So I have something that I call the BAM, the bare ass minimum, and this is what makes me differents from many personal trainers.
I got really tired over the years of seeing people come into my office January 2nd and be like, "All right, it's the new year. I have to get in shape. I'm gonna come do an hour of lifting like five days a week, and then I'm gonna do like an hour of cardio right after, and then like twice a week I'm gonna fit in yoga.
and then I'm gonna take better care of my skin this year too because I've really been like letting my glow up routine fall off. So after my workout I'm going to shower and deep condition my hair and do like the fancy face routine with 27 steps in it. and then that should take me like three and a half hours.
I don't have time for that And then they're like, "All right, I'm just gonna power through anyway. I need to do these things. I have to do this stuff." so then they end up going really hard for, like, two weeks, and then they fall off the wagon, right? Because it's too much. Nobody has three and a half hours to fit fitness in their life, unless it's their job.
And to be honest, it literally is my job, and I don't have that much time every day to exercise. So, first, let's walk it back a step. So what is our bare-ass minimum? My recommendation to you is to look at what you're currently doing and see if it feels sustainable. And if what you're currently doing does feel sustainable, let's look for little places that we can add a little bit more in.
Maybe it's an exercise snack. maybe you're, like, awesome with the cardio, and you walk every day after work, or you take a spin class twice a week. You know, you're really hitting, like, your cardio guidelines, but you're not lifting. you know, women, If you are in midlife, dear listeners, we gotta be lifting weights, right?
Lifting weight is going to, increase our muscle mass a little bit. It is going to help prevent injuries. It's gonna help increase our bone density. Like, we gotta be lifting. It's gonna help us age the way that we wanna age, and that's really what I think it comes down to, is not so much that we wanna look a certain way, right?
You know we're not really about that here at Wellness Rebranded, or at Everybody Strong. but we're all about being able to live your life the way that you wanna live your life. When I am an old lady, guys, I wanna be at my water aerobics class with my friends. I wanna be going to concerts in the evenings and dancing.
I wanna be able to get off the toilet without having to, like, hoist myself up. You know? I want to be able to travel. I wanna be able to pick up my grand babies without worrying about losing my balance and killing both of us. You know? I wanna have enough energy to watch out for my grand babies, and take some of that load off of my son and his partner.
you know? Like- I wanna be active as I'm aging, and if I'm not taking steps to get active now and strong now in my 40s, I don't think that it's gonna be there when I'm in my 60s, 70s, and beyond, right? So I like to look for little places that you can add in more for that reason. It's very motivating for me to have that be my why instead of I just wanna look better on the beach.
Not that there's anything wrong with that goal, but that's just not motivating for me personally. So let's talk about this minimum effective dose or our bare-ass minimum. First of all, the minimum for what? For longevity? For heart health? For strength? For muscle? For blood pressure? For independence? To run a marathon?
Like, different goals have different doses, right? so how much we do of each thing depends on what our goals are. For most of us here, my, imagination says that you guys are here because you wanna be healthier, and you wanna live your life the way you wanna live it. You wanna be independent, for as long as possible.
If that's not you, and you have, like, a very specific goal, like you're gonna climb Mount Everest in 2028, you know, come talk to me. We can get you there, too. But for today's purpose, we're gonna say that your minimum effective dose is for longevity, right? and that's what we're gonna be talking about today.
So let's talk about cardio to start because let's be honest, guys, your heart and lungs are really freaking important. if your heart and lungs give out, bad things happen to our bodies, so we wanna keep those healthy. I know that sounds a little crazy coming from your resident strength training guru, and I'm always talking about lifting weights and getting strong.
We also have to have a strong cardiovascular system, even if it feels a little hateful to do it sometimes. So I wanna read this study to you, so listen to this, guys. a 2026 study followed roughly 594,000 American adults for a median of nine and a half years. Compared with people reporting no
moderate to vigorous physical activity, people reporting just five minutes per week had a 13% lower relative risk of death during follow-ups. Five minutes a week had a 13% lower relative risk of death. That's crazy, guys. Five minutes is nothing. It's, like, literally almost nothing. And then it continues, at 150 minutes per week, so way more, right?
It was about 19% lower, and at 300 minutes per week, it was 24% lower, and at 600 minutes per week, 26% lower. So I know some of y'all type As out there are gonna listen to this, and you're gonna go, " Well, I gotta do 600 minutes per week because that's 26% lower risk of all-cause mortality." That is not what I'm saying, guys.
This should be here, to give you some hope that, like, every little bit counts. And this is also an observational study, so I'm not saying that five minutes of exercise makes you 13% less likely to die. This is just, like, a correlation, not a causation But let's look at the pattern here. So if five minutes gives us more benefit than zero minutes, and 150 minutes gives us more benefit than five minutes, and, uh, and 150 minutes gives us less benefit than 300 minutes, right?
This isn't a cliff. Do you see what I'm saying there? It's not like, oh, we got to 150 minutes, and then it just skyrocketed it up in the benefits. This is a dose-response curve, right? So that means even if we do five minutes, great. If we do 20 minutes, even better. If we do 150 minutes, even better. And if you look at those numbers, guys, at 150 minutes per week, it was 19% lower.
But the difference between 300 and 600 minutes a week is only 2%. So this isn't like it keeps getting exponentially more beneficial. 150 minutes a week is a really good goal. Something is disproportionately better than nothing Right? So just get out there and start moving. we really like any sort of movement, and we know, that the biggest gains occur at the bottom of the curve. So going from nothing to something is super, super important. More still helps, but it's diminishing returns at that point.
where I see a lot of people get trapped is they don't do anything. They literally do zero minutes because they think they can't do enough. Like, "Oh, I can only fit in one half hour a week, so anything because it's not 150 minutes." Right? I also want to give you some context for, like, 150 minutes honestly sounds like a lot to me.
But I take a belly dancing class once a week that's 90 minutes long. So even if I just do my one 90-minute class, which by the way, guys, is way harder than it sounds like, but even if I just do my 90-minute class, like, that's at least half of my minutes for the week. Not to mention the benefit of being in a group.
It is fun. There's a community. It's interesting music. I'm learning more about a different culture. Like, there are benefits to this outside of just the physical. but then you only have to add in a little bit more. I do my 90 minutes of belly dancing, and then maybe I do, like, a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood with my family at some other point during the week.
Like, I'm almost there. That's 120 minutes. You know? So this doesn't have to be a crazy situation. Something else I want to address is you don't need to work out five days per week. You can, absolutely. but there is, like, a benefit to being a weekend warrior here. even if you don't have time to work out Monday through Friday, which I would argue that all of us could probably find the time, but let's just go with that for right now, your total activity matters more than a perfect schedule.
Your body doesn't necessarily know that Mondays are leg days and Tuesdays are chest days. Your body's just thinking about the minutes, right? It all adds up, and there's no, like, good or bad. The good is that you do it. The bad is that you don't do it, right? So even if you only have time on the weekends, go ahead.
It still counts Now, let's talk about strength training a little bit. As you know, this is my wheelhouse, and I love talking about strength training, and something really interesting just came out this year. in March, the American College of Sports Medicine, ACSM, released its updated resistance training position stand, and it has not been updated in 17 years.
so this is huge for us in the strength training industry. it basically looked at 137 meta-analysis, or reviews that were involving more than 300,000 people. Here is the gist. They want you to be lifting all the major muscle groups at least twice a week with some effort. That's it. If you can do that, you'll be well on your way to being strong If, for those of you who are a little bit more technical and you maybe are science nerds like I am, what we're looking for here is heavy loads.
and by the way, can we talk about heavy loads for a sec? Heavy loads are things that are considered heavy for you. there's no number. It's not like a 300-pound deadlift is really heavy, although for most of us it probably would be. but A heavy load is something where we're lifting at about 80% of our one-rep max.
For most of us, that's gonna be anything less than, like, eight reps is considered heavy weight. Even if that weight is, like, five pounds, it is still considered to be heavy weight if you can only do eight reps or less. So to get into that nitty-gritty, we want you doing about 80% of your one-rep max. We want you doing two to four sets of it with full range of motion twice a week.
most of my clients do this. The vast majority of my clients at Everybody Strong comes see me twice a week for, like, a half an hour each time. So from a minutes standpoint, that's only 60 minutes a week, right? So it doesn't sound like it's a lot. However, in those 30-minute sessions, we lift their entire body with heavy weight, usually somewhere in that four sets of eight realm.
and they get strong because of it. It sounds like it should be too easy. Like, oh, I just come here twice a week. The place is inviting. The trainer is fun and knowledgeable and occasionally funny. I enjoy my workouts, and I leave feeling better than when I came in the gym This can't be that effective.
Guess what? It is. everybody gets stronger there. That's kind of the whole deal, right? so if you've been wondering about strength training, and you're local to Annapolis, Maryland, I would love to chat with you about this. Come on in, you can visit the gym. I love just even having people visit me in the gym.
so you can come, you know, pick my brain about what might be good for you there. but really, guys, even if you are in your own gym, living your best life in somewhere exotic and amazing, that's not Annapolis, Maryland, maybe, twice a week, two to four sets, 80% of your one rep max, and you'll get there.
If you want to maximize hypertrophy, hypertrophy means muscle cells get bigger, right? Atrophy means our muscle cells get smaller. Hypertrophy means muscle cells get bigger. then we're just looking at a little bit more volume. it's going to be the same kind of guidelines, 80% of our one rep max. the difference is how many sets.
We're gonna do about 10 sets per muscle group per week. So if you're lifting twice a week, that might be, like, five sets of five both days, which is still not hateful. and for those of you sitting there thinking like, "Oh my God, why would I want muscle hypertrophy? I don't wanna be any bigger," because diet culture exists, right?
And we were all raised in it. this is also a really fancy way of saying muscle tone. So if the word toning vibes better with your soul, we are talking about hypertrophy and muscle gross. Muscle growth So here's what I care about, guys. Even one set counts. So if you're listening to this and thinking, "I'm never gonna make it to the gym twice a week to lift, that's outside of my wheelhouse," one set counts.
I'm not telling you that one set is optimal. I'm just telling you that optimal and effective are not the same thing
So if it feels like only one set is all you have the capacity for right now, do it. It will improve your life, I promise. the ACSM review found that one set produces greater adaptations than doing no resistance training at all, and two sets are generally better than one. After that, we see progressively diminishing returns.
So at least two sets is my kind of, like, hope for all of us. but if we can get up to four sets, even better
Now, let's talk about longevity a little bit. So that same study that I mentioned earlier that followed adults, for like nine and a half years, there was another study done with some of those same people, that followed 150,000 adults for about 30 years. so this was kind of like the OG of those two studies that I was talking about.
and compared with doing no resistance training, doing about 90 to 120 minutes per week was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality, and a 19% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality, and a 27% lower risk of neurological disease mortality. So if you don't wanna die of neurological stuff or of like heart disease, lifting is gonna be helpful.
90 to 120 minutes, that's like two hours a week. An hour and a half to two hours a week of lifting is gonna be helpful for that. Like I said though, guys, if that feels unattainable in your schedule at the moment, every little bit counts. You don't need to live at the gym for this to work
So let's talk about steps too. We've already talked about how 10,000 steps is a myth, right? if you didn't listen to that episode, go back and check it out because it's kind of interesting, how the 10,000 steps was started because there was a pedometer company in Japan, and the symbol for 10,000 kind of looks like a walking person.
so there was never any like real like sciencey stuff to support 10,000 steps. Now, that's not to say that walking 10,000 steps is bad. Of course, there's benefits to moving your body, but we have newer data now. So the real benefit in my opinion would be about 7,000 steps. 7,000 steps per day was associated with a 47% lower risk of all-cause mortality, of cardiovascular mortality, and a 38% lower risk of dementia, 28% lower risk of falls when compared with 2,000 steps a day.
I'm not gonna lie to you guys, sometimes I get like 2 or 3,000 steps per day, on my admin days. I spend a lot of time locked into my computer. I know that that is pretty normal for a lot of us who have, office jobs. Okay? If that is you, we need to figure out ways to get a few more steps into your life.
My best advice would be take the exercise snack route and make that a part of who you are and what you do. you know, get up in the morning and maybe like walk around the block once and do the same thing after dinner and walk around your office at lunchtime. definitely gonna have some benefit from that, guys.
you can also just take this a step further and be like, "I get my cardio in at the gym," and go hop on the treadmill after work or before work maybe, and get your steps in. Uh, what I don't want you to do with this is turn 7,000 steps into the new 10,000. this is very similar to exercise, or strength training where there's a curve to this.
Like 2,000 is good, 3,000 is better, and we really see the, gains start to drop off around 7,000. so anywhere in there is okay. Benefits accumulate below 10,000 steps.
So let's kind of wrap this all up and talk about what we're actually gonna do. So if you're currently doing nothing, don't listen to this episode and go, "All right, I'm gonna lift twice a week for 120 minutes, and I'm gonna do my 300 minutes of cardio, and, I'm going to get more steps in." Right? That's not what I want you to do.
I want you to just start very slowly. The reason I recommend this, guys, the reason I come back to the BAM, the bare-ass minimum, is because I want this to be sustainable for you. Consistency is the secret to, like, probably everything. so finding a way that you can add it in and keep it consistent is the most important part.
I would definitely start with a five to 10-minute walk If you're not doing anything right now, that's probably the best thing that you can add in I would take the stairs. I would park farther away at the store. I would just look for more opportunities to find movement. It doesn't need to be an hour.
Just a couple minutes is going to have benefits. Remember early in the episode we talked about five minutes being helpful? Let's start there if you're doing nothing. In terms of weight training, if you're doing nothing, come see me. I'm gonna hold you accountable and help you get in at least half an hour a week.
Okay? But if that doesn't feel feasible, start with a squat. It doesn't even have to be a full squat like what you're probably thinking of. we all squat every day, even those of us that are like, "I have bad knees." You still squat because you sit down. You just have to sit in your chair and stand back up or sit on your toilet and then stand back up, and that is a squat.
So try, like, three sets of 10 for some squats. Try three sets of 10 for some pushups. Maybe they're on the wall. Maybe they're on a bench. Maybe they're on the floor. you know, we modify until it gets easy, and then we figure out a way to make it a little bit harder. Eventually, we're gonna aim for that 150 minutes per week.
But for right now, I want you to start slow and build. So key takeaways right now, I want you to take an inventory of your exercise. How many minutes are you actually doing every week? How many of those minutes are cardio, and how many of those are strength? How many steps are you getting on a normal day?
And if you don't track your steps, I don't think this is the conversation where we go, "You need to start tracking your steps." I think if you're not tracking your steps, it's totally fine. Let's start with the actual minutes of movement first
So closing this all up, a couple things I want you to remember. Minimum effective dose does not mean optimal. We need a bigger dose if we're gonna have bigger goals. But if you're sitting there thinking you don't have five hours a week to exercise, so what is the point? I just want you to remember this.
Something counts. Five minutes counts. A 10-minute walk counts. One set counts. One workout counts. 6,000 steps count
You don't have to optimize your exercise. You need to stop letting perfect keep you sedentary We have to start embarrassingly small if you need to. And by the way, guys, there's no embarrassment here. All of us have been there, right? just start real small And then add a little bit more as your capacity increases. There's one last thing I wanna mention, is that I haven't talked about weight loss in this episode, and that's intentional.
The amount of exercise recommended for your health is not necessarily the amount of exercise that we would be required to produce substantial weight loss. those are very different conversations. Research on weight loss has looked at a much higher exercise volume, like three to 600 minutes per week.
Guys, that's like 10 hours of exercise. and this is one reason I desperately want women to stop judging whether exercise is working based on the scale, because you get really meaningful improvements in your cardiovascular health, in your fitness, in your strength, in your function, your longevity, with dramatically smaller doses.
so even if you're doing 60 minutes a week or 30 minutes a week, you're getting benefits even if your body isn't getting smaller. So I just wanna leave that with you today, guys. The minimum effective dose for health is not the minimum effective dose for certain fitness goals. It's not the minimum effective dose for maximizing performance.
and it doesn't mean that it might meaningfully change your body weight. These are all different things, but you have to decide what you want the term working to mean, right? Is it working? Working for what? That, my friends, is up to you. And if you wanna chat it out with me, I would love to have this conversation with you offline.
you can reach out to me on my website, taradeleonfitness.com. There's a Work With Me page on there, where you can fill it out, and we can have a free conversation to talk about your specific health and fitness and your specific goals, and figure out a plan on how to get you there. So that, my friends, is all I have for you.
Until next time, stay strong.
