Get at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity or 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity each week. Or you could do a combination of the two.

• Try to spread your physical activity out over several days of the week. That's better than trying to do it all in one or two days.
• Some days you may not have long blocks of time to do physical activity. You can try splitting it up into segments of ten minutes or more.
• Aerobic activities include walking fast, jogging, swimming, and biking
• Moderate intensity means that while you are doing that activity, you should be able to say a few words in a row but not sing
• Vigorous intensity means that while you are doing that activity, you won't be able to say more than a few words without stopping for a breath

Also, do strengthening activities twice per week.

• Strengthening activities include lifting weights, working with exercise bands, and doing sit-ups and pushups
• Choose activities that work all the different parts of the body - your legs, hips, back, chest, stomach, shoulders, and arms. You should repeat exercises for each muscle group 8 to 12 times per session.

For preschool-aged children (ages 3-5):

Preschool children should be physically active throughout the day, to help with their growth and development.

They should get both structured and unstructured active play. Structured play has a goal and is directed by an adult. Examples include playing a sport or a game. Unstructured play is creative free play, such as playing on a playground.

Get 60 minutes or more of physical activity every day. Most of it should be moderate-intensity aerobic activity.

• Activities should vary and be a good fit for the child's age and physical development
• Moderate-intensity aerobic activities include walking, running, skipping, playing on the playground, playing basketball, and biking

Also, try to get each of these at least 3 days a week: vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, muscle-strengthening activity, and bone-strengthening activity.

• Vigorous-intensity aerobic activities include running, doing jumping jacks, and fast swimming
• Muscle-strengthening activities include playing on playground equipment, playing tug-of-war, and doing pushups and pull-ups
• Bone-strengthening activities include hopping, skipping, doing jumping jacks, playing volleyball, and working with resistance bands

For older adults, pregnant women, and people with chronic health problems:

Older adults, pregnant women, and people who have special health needs should check with their health care provider on how much physical activity they should get and what types of activities they should do.

Exercise tips:

People who are trying to lose weight may need to get more physical activity. They also need to adjust their diet, so they are burning more calories than they eat and drink.

If you have been inactive, you may need to start slowly. You can keep adding more gradually. The more you can do, the better. But try not to feel overwhelmed, and do what you can. Getting some physical activity is always better than getting none.

Regular exercise is one of the best things you can do for your health. It has many benefits, including improving your overall health and fitness, and reducing your risk for many chronic diseases. There are many different types of exercise; it is important that you pick the right types for you. Most people benefit from a combination of them:

• Endurance, or aerobic, activities increase your breathing and heart rate. They keep your heart, lungs, and circulatory system healthy and improve your overall fitness. Examples include brisk walking, jogging, swimming, and biking.
• Strength, or resistance training, exercises make your muscles stronger. Some examples are lifting weights and using a resistance band.
• Balance exercises can make it easier to walk on uneven surfaces and help prevent falls. To improve your balance, try tai chi or exercises like standing on one leg.
• Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and can help your body stay limber. Yoga and doing various stretches can make you more flexible.

Fitting regular exercise into your daily schedule may seem difficult at first. But you can start slowly, and break your exercise time into chunks. Even doing ten minutes at a time is fine. You can work your way up to doing the recommended amount of exercise. How much exercise you need depends on your age and health.

Other things that you can do to make the most of your workouts include

• Choosing activities that work all the different parts of the body, including your core (muscles around your back, abdomen, and pelvis). Good core strength improves balance and stability and helps to prevent lower back injury.
• Choosing activities that you enjoy. It's easier to make exercise a regular part of your life if you have fun doing it.
• Exercising safely, with proper equipment, to prevent injuries. Also, listen to your body and don't overdo it.
• Giving yourself goals. The goals should challenge you, but also be realistic. It's also helpful to reward yourself when you reach your goals. The rewards could be something big, like new workout gear, or something smaller, such as movie tickets.

Regular physical activity makes you look and feel better. More than that, it keeps your body healthy, and a healthy body can fend off disease much better than an unhealthy body. If you need to lose weight, many experts feel that exercise is better for you than dieting, because it's sustainable over the long term and provides lasting benefits.

Anaerobic Exercise

Anaerobic exercise, also called strength training, utilizes resistance to strengthen muscles and build bone mass. Popular forms of anerobic exercise include weight-lifting (with free weights or on machines) and exercise using elastic bands. Anaerobic exercise also adds to flexibility and helps balance. Ideally, you should do both aerobic and anaerobic exercise every day.

Working into Fitness

Optimally, people should exercise vigorously a minimum of 30 minutes a day, 3-5 times a week. But if you haven't been physically active, it's best to start slowly with a moderate activity like walking. You can start with as little as a 10-minute walk every day, and build up to half an hour. As you become more fit, you can start to do more energetic exercise, like swimming and jogging.

There are other ways to build exercise into your daily routine, as well. For instance:

• Do a squat instead of bending over every time you pick something up.

• When driving or riding in a train or bus, whenever you stop at a traffic light tighten and release your thighs and butt muscles as many times as you can.

• Whenever you're standing in line, lift one foot half an inch off the ground. Switch feet every few minutes.

Doing simple exercises like these throughout your day will improve your flexibility, increase your strength, improve muscle tone, and increase blood flow.

Aerobic means "oxygen-producing." Aerobic exercise, sometimes called endurance training, improves oxygen consumption by your body and strengthens your cardiovascular system and endurance. Activities like walking, running, swimming, and biking, in which you remain in motion and your heart rate increases for an extended period of time, are considered aerobic. When your heart is beating more rapidly, more blood is circulated around your body and more oxygen is provided to your tissues and cells.

Your heart is a muscle like any other in your body, and with regular exercise it will become stronger and slightly larger. (This is different from an enlarged, or hypertrophied, heart, in which the heart muscle thickens and actually becomes weaker.) A stronger heart can pump more blood with each beat, so that it takes fewer beats to circulate your blood. Your heart rate drops, and your heart is able to rest more between beats. But if you don't get enough exercise, your heart is weaker, has less muscle tone, and has to work harder to pump the blood. This raises your blood pressure and stresses your whole cardiovascular system.

As you progressively condition your heart with aerobic exercise, not only does your heart become stronger, but your entire body responds. New capillaries grow in your muscles and in the heart muscle itself. In fact, endurance-trained athletes have 40% more capillaries per muscle than untrained people. Your muscle cells themselves change in ways that allow them to extract greater amounts of oxygen and nutrients from the bloodstream and use them to produce energy. Your blood pressure lowers, and your body produces more red blood cells to transport oxygen.

Exercise strengthens bones ligaments and tendons by encouraging the laying down of connective tissue. Your joints become stronger and less prone to injury. Your bones will also lose less calcium as you age, helping to prevent osteoporosis.

Moderate Intensity vs. Short Bursts

It's long been thought that aerobic exercise works best when performed at moderate intensity over a long period of time. But new evidence shows that short, intense bursts of exercise may work just as well for cardiovascular health. In one study, doing about 50 minutes of moderate-intensity cycling 5 days a week provided the same benefits to the arteries as doing short, intense cycling sprints (resting between sprints) for a total of about 20 minutes, just 3 days a week. Consider this type of exercise if time is an issue for you, but consult your doctor first, as intense exercise may increase the risk of injury.

Physical activity is critical for the health of your body. The risks posed to your health by a sedentary lifestyle are similar to those posed by hypertension, high blood triglyceride and cholesterol levels, and obesity.

Why is physical activity so necessary? Your body was designed for movement. By moving your limbs and muscles, you massage your tissues and organs, bringing them oxygen and nutrients. Lymph must be moved through physical activity alone as there is no other pumping mechanism to circulate lymph fluid. Physical activity gets everything moving in your body: blood, oxygen, nutrients, cellular respiration.

Exercise:

• Raises level of endorphins for a feeling of well being and reduces stress
• Combats chronic disease and disorders like hypertension
• Accelerates your metabolism and helps control weight
• Improves heart and lung functioning, thereby increasing endurance and improving the efficiency of circulation throughout your body
• Improves sleep
• Gives you more energy
• Improves sex
• Decreases levels of LDL cholesterol and increases levels of HDL cholesterol
• Lowers risk of heart attack and stroke
• Increases flexibility and range of motion

What should you be doing, and how much is enough?

When you hear the word “exercise” you might think about lifting weights or hitting the treadmill to try to lose a few pounds. Weight loss can be one benefit of getting enough physical activity, but there are other important ways that exercise helps you stay healthy – including physical, emotional, and mental benefits.

Regular exercise can help you stay physically healthy by:

• Building strength – stronger muscles help with performing everyday activities
• Helping to manage and even prevent some diseases like arthritis, heart disease, stroke, and type 2 diabetes
• Helping you lose weight or keep you from gaining weight
• Giving you more energy and making you feel less tired
• Enabling you to sleep better
• Helping with balance and preventing falls

Emotional and mental benefits of exercise include:

• Less stress, anxiety, and depression
• Feeling more in control
• Improved self-esteem
• Finding it easier to plan, focus, and shift between tasks
• Enhanced reasoning and thinking
• Possibly lowered risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease

Being active: How much is enough?

Guidance from your healthcare provider can help determine how much activity is right for you based on your lifestyle. Here are some general suggestions:
60 minutes – The amount of daily moderate to vigorous activity children and teens should get. This includes activities like walking, running, and sports that make the heart beat faster. Adults who want to lose or want to maintain weight should aim for this amount as well.
150 minutes – The minimum amount of weekly moderate activity adults should get to stay healthy. Strengthening activities should also be included two or more days a week.
Moderate activity –Some activities include walking, biking, jogging, volleyball, climbing stairs, gardening, raking leaves, and dancing. A good test is to try to talk while doing the activity. Making conversation might be a little more difficult, but you shouldn’t be gasping for air.
Vigorous activity – Some activities include hiking, running, shoveling snow, carrying heavy loads, basketball, soccer, bicycling, and singles tennis. Making conversation should be difficult at this level.
Strength exercises—Some activities include lifting weights using large muscles like in the arms or thighs, using resistance bands, and using your body weight by doing push-ups, pull-ups, crunches, and squats. These exercises strengthen large muscles or make your muscles work harder than usual. Doing these activities at least two days a week can help build strength and keep or increase muscle mass.

The four types of exercise

The best way to get enough physical exercise is to find activities you enjoy doing. Finding different ways to exercise is an important part of staying healthy. Your health care provider might recommend some of the below activities.

Endurance exercises

What it does: Endurance exercises increase your breathing and heartbeat, which improves the health of your heart and lungs.
What to do in the gym: Use the treadmill, stationary bike, rowing machine, or stair climber. If a pool is available, swimming is a great option for individuals worried about their joints.
What to do at home: Go for a brisk walk, jog, bike ride, or hike. Play tennis or basketball with friends. Even routine yard work like mowing or raking can be beneficial. Watch and follow along to a dance workout video online. Climb up and down stairs if available.

Strength exercises

What it does: Strength exercises use body weight or physical weights to improve muscle strength and make everyday activity easier.
What to do in the gym: Find a buddy in the gym to help you safely lift free weights, use weight machines as directed (using machines improperly can cause back injury), or perform body weight exercises.
What to do at home: Get creative. Find exercises that use your own body weight, like squats, push-ups, and crunches. Use resistance bands and weights if available.

Balance exercises

What it does: Balance exercises strengthen the muscles that help keep you upright such as your legs and core. They are especially important for older adults as working on balance helps prevent falls.
What to do in the gym: Join a Tai Chi class or use a balance board, if available.
What to do at home: Stand on one foot or practice walking heel-to-toe.

Flexibility exercises

What it does: Stretching improves the flexibility needed for everyday activities like bending over to pick something up or looking over your shoulder to back your car out of the driveway.
What to do at the gym: Take a yoga class, and use stretching devices like boards and resistance bands.
What to do at home: Do stretches commonly found in yoga or those found online from trusted sources like the Mayo Clinic.

Health hack:

Daily activity can help you get enough physical exercise. Try making little changes like walking when running an errand that’s close to you, parking farther away from your destination, and using the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator when possible.

Like adults, kids need exercise. Most children need at least an hour of physical activity every day. Regular exercise has many benefits for children. It can help them

• Feel less stressed
• Feel better about themselves
• Feel more ready to learn in school
• Keep a healthy weight
• Build and keep healthy bones, muscles and joints
• Sleep better at night

As kids spend more time watching TV, they spend less time running and playing. Parents should limit TV, video game and computer time. Parents can set a good example by being active themselves. Exercising together can be fun for everyone. Competitive sports can help kids stay fit. Walking or biking to school, dancing, bowling and yoga are some other ways for kids to get exercise.

Whether you are starting a new fitness program, or fine-tuning your current workouts, thoughtful planning will help you get more benefits from exercise. You need to make sure that you are getting aerobic exercise, which uses large amounts of oxygen as you work—jogging, brisk walking, swimming and bicycling are aerobic exercise. You also need anaerobic exercise, muscle-building work which is performed in shorter, intense bursts of activity and draws on your body's glucose and fats for energy—weight-lifting and sprinting are good ones. Adding stretching activity to your workouts, such as yoga or Pilates, increases your range of motion and can work additional muscle groups that might otherwise be neglected. It is important to choose sports and activities that you really like, so you will have enough variety and engagement to stay interested and enthusiastic about exercising.

Weight training, rapid calisthenics and other activities that require fast, intense bursts of effort are Anaerobic, which means “without oxygen.” Your body must rapidly convert its energy stores into fuel. Anaerobic exercise builds muscle strength, bone density and more efficient metabolism. Lifting weights is a very efficient way to gain strength Anaerobically. Activities in which you use your own body weight as resistance, such as yoga, pushups and bursts of sprinting, are also good ways to gain Anaerobic fitness. And you need to include aerobic activities as well as Anaerobic for balanced fitness.

Exercise can be grouped into three different types: aerobic exercise, anaerobic exercise, and flexibility-enhancing exercise. They are categorized based on the effect they have on your body. Aerobic exercise, such as jogging and swimming, is great for cardiovascular health. Anaerobic exercise, for example weight training, improves muscle strength. Flexibility-enhancing exercise, such as stretching, can improve the range of motion of your muscles and joints. Here's a bit more on each type:

Aerobic Exercise

Exercise performed at a moderate pace over time—like light jogging, biking, cross-country skiing, and swimming—are aerobic, which means “with oxygen.” Aerobic exercise raises your heart rate and works your large muscle groups. All of this exertion requires your body to use extra energy. Your body must therefore take in large amounts of oxygen, a key ingredient in creating energy.

When your muscles demand more energy to keep working, your body gets the signal to take in more oxygen. As inhaled air reaches the lungs, the oxygen molecules it contains catch a ride on your red blood cells. Your heart pumps the blood through your blood vessels out so that oxygen can be distributed to cells throughout your body. Oxygen then combines with stored nutrients, such as fat, to create energy so your muscles and organs can work.

The increased activity in your circulatory system actually creates new blood vessels, and your accelerated heart rate strengthen your heart. Busy blood vessels are more likely to remain clear and flexible, too. All of this means more robust cardiovascular health!

Anaerobic Exercise

Lifting weights, sprinting, jumping, and other activities that require short bursts of increased effort are forms of anaerobic exercise. Because the action happens in short bursts, the body can't take in oxygen fast enough to create usable fuel in the same way it does during aerobic exercise.

Instead, your body generates fuel by a process that does not rely on taking in large amounts of oxygen. Specifically, it uses a fuel that is already stored in the muscles that are being worked. This fuel is glycogen, a carbohydrate, which can be broken down into glucose and used directly by the muscles. These supplies of glycogen don’t last very long, and they also create byproducts which cause that familiar “burn.”

Resistance work, such as weight training, is a common type of anaerobic workout. Resistance exercise can change your appearance by defining muscles and improving your overall tone. But the benefits are more than skin deep. Your body has a natural tendency to lose muscle mass as you age. People tend to lose about 0.5-1% of their muscle mass every year after the age of 35. Getting in the habit of lifting weights or performing other anaerobic work will make it easier for you to keep up your strength and lean-to-fat ratio in later years. In fact, by engaging in this type of exercise and eating a proper diet, you can prevent most of the muscle loss associated with age. In a 2011 study, researchers found that the greater a person's total muscle mass, the lower his or her risk of having insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes.

Flexibility-Enhancing Exercise

Flexibility-enhancing exercise most often takes the form of stretching. This type of exercise can improve the range of movement of your joints and lengthen the muscles that cross your joints. As you age, your muscles gradually become shorter and tighter, reducing your overall flexibility. You become more susceptible to muscle, tendon, and joint injuries. Stretching can increase flexibility and reduce the risk of injury, allowing you to exercise more easily.

Stretching has many other benefits. It increases blood flow and circulation so that more nutrients can be shuttled to your muscles and joints. This can help reduce muscle soreness and that’s why you should always stretch after any aerobic or anaerobic exercise. Stretching can also help to strengthen the muscles in your back, enabling you to have better posture and balance. Lower back pain may be alleviated by stretching. Finally, flexibility-enhancing exercise, like all forms of exercise, can help relieve stress. Gentle stretching exercises can ease muscle tension associated with stress, improving your mood and helping you to relax both physically and mentally.

The Three-Pronged Approach to Fitness

For complete fitness and to reap all the rewards of being physically active, you need to include aerobic and anaerobic activities in your regular exercise routine along with flexibility-enhancing exercise. You need aerobic exercise to strengthen your heart and lungs as well as improve your stamina. Anaerobic exercise is required to increase muscle strength, speed, and power. You also need to stretch and incorporate side-to-side movement for balance and flexibility as well as to keep your joints limber. Mixing up your workout routine helps protect you from injury and keeps you motivated to stick with your exercise regimen.

Continue reading to delve more into the benefits of exercising.

Exercise and physical activity are good for just about everyone, including older adults. There are four main types and each type is different. Doing them all will give you more benefits.

• Endurance, or aerobic, activities increase your breathing and heart rate. Brisk walking or jogging, dancing, swimming, and biking are examples.
• Strength exercises make your muscles stronger. Lifting weights or using a resistance band can build strength.
• Balance exercises help prevent falls
• Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles and can help your body stay limber

If you have not been active, you can start slowly and work up to your goal. How much exercise you need depends on your age and health. Check with your health care provider on what is right for you.

Sports can be a great way to get in shape or stay that way. Having a specific goal can be a great motivator. Physically, you need strength and endurance. Your training will vary with your sport. You would not train the same way for pole vaulting as for swimming. You might, however, cross train. Cross training simply means that you include a variety of fitness activities in your program. Research shows that cross training builds stronger bones.

Remember to listen to your body. If you frequently feel exhausted or you are in pain, you may be overdoing it. Injuries can be the result. And be sure that you use your body and your equipment safely. What you eat and drink is also important. Water is the most important nutrient for active people. Drink it before, during and after workouts.