The main message is that any exercise is better than none. If you’re very inactive, you’ll start to see the benefits quite quickly. If you’re already very active throughout the day then you won’t necessarily see benefits from adding more exercise, but staying active will help to maintain the function of your immune system.
It’s about moving more, moving more often and moving in lots of different ways. Unfortunately, many people’s days tend to be quite sedentary, and it’s important to make the distinction between someone who’s inactive and not meeting the minimum government guidelines and someone who might regularly meet the requirements, but is otherwise sedentary. So that might be someone who sits for long periods of time at their desk and then goes to the gym and does a one-hour HIIT class.
What we know from the scientific research is that sedentary time is quite damaging for our health, particularly our immune system, and it can’t be undone by a one-hour workout – we need to break up sitting time during the day.
Ideally everyone should be trying to meet the government guidelines, unless there’s a specific reason why they can’t. This includes at least 150 minutes of moderate activity a week, such as walking, cycling, dancing or tennis, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, including running, swimming, team sports or circuit training.
This also includes two sessions of muscle-strengthening exercises a week. Resistance training is something that’s long played second fiddle to cardiovascular exercise – we often think that we should be doing something that makes us sweat, but less frequently think about resistance exercise. It doesn’t have to be going to the gym and lifting weights – it could be bodyweight exercise, Pilates, yoga, heavy housework or just picking up your kids. We have 600 or more muscles in the human body and we need to engage all of them to be well and maintain a well-functioning immune system.