What is physical activity?

Physical activity is any activity that you may do that helps to improve or maintain your physical fitness as well as your health in general.

It can include:

• Everyday activities. For example, walking or cycling to work or school, doing housework, gardening, DIY around the house, or any active or manual work that you may do as part of your job.
• Active recreational activities. This includes activities such as dancing, active play amongst children, or walking or cycling for recreation.
• Sport. For example, exercise and fitness training at a gym or during an exercise class, swimming and competitive sports such as football, rugby and tennis, etc.

How much physical activity should adults do?

Adults should aim to do a mixture of aerobic activities and muscle-strengthening activities.

Current recommendations

During the daytime, all age groups should minimise the amount of time spent sitting (being sedentary).

Under-5s

• Physical activity should be encouraged from birth, particularly through floor-based play and water-based activities in safe environments.
• Children of preschool age who are capable of walking unaided should be physically active daily for at least 180 minutes (three hours), spread throughout the day.

Children and young people (aged 5-18 years)

• Moderate- to vigorous-intensity physical activity for at least 60 minutes and up to several hours every day.
• Vigorous-intensity activities, including those that strengthen muscle and bone, should be incorporated at least three days a week.

Adults (aged 19-64 years)

• Over a week, activity should add up to at least 150 minutes (2½ hours) of moderate-intensity activity in bouts of 10 minutes or more. For example, 30 minutes on at least five days a week.
• Comparable benefits can be achieved by 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity activity spread across the week or combinations of moderate-intensity and vigorous-intensity activity.

Older adults (aged 65 years and older)

• Older adults who participate in any amount of physical activity gain some health benefits. Some physical activity is better than none and more physical activity provides greater health benefits.
• Older adults should aim to be active daily and, if possible, aim for the same amount of physical activity as younger adults.

Aerobic activities

Aerobic activities are any activity that makes your heart and lungs work harder. To gain health benefits, government experts in the UK suggest that you should do at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days of the week.

• 30 minutes is probably the minimum but you do not have to do this all at once. For example, cycling to work and back for 15 minutes each way adds up to 30 minutes. A recent study showed that even less time may have some health benefits.
• Moderate-intensity physical activity means that you get warm, mildly out of breath  and mildly sweaty. For example, brisk walking, jogging, swimming, cycling, dancing, badminton, tennis, etc. However, as mentioned above, normal activities that are part of your daily routine (everyday activities) may make up some of the 30 minutes. For example, fairly heavy housework, DIY, climbing the stairs, or gardening can make you mildly out of breath and mildly sweaty.
• On most days means that you cannot store up the benefits of physical activity. You need to do it regularly. Being physically active on at least five days a week is recommended.

The amount of physical activity that you do may need to be a little more in some situations:

• If you are at risk of putting on weight, you should ideally build up to 45-60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days to help to manage your weight.
• If your body mass index (BMI) was in the obese category and you have lost a lot of weight, or if you are in this situation and you are trying to lose weight, you should ideally build up to 60-90 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most days to help manage your weight.

Muscle-strengthening activities

In addition to the above aerobic activities, adults should also aim to do a minimum of two sessions of muscle-strengthening activities per week. However, these should not be on consecutive days.

Muscle-strengthening activities can include climbing stairs, walking uphill, lifting or carrying shopping, digging the garden, weight training, Pilates, yoga or similar resistance exercises that use the major muscle groups. Ideally, the activities and exercises should not only aim to improve or maintain your muscle strength but also aim to maintain or improve your flexibility and balance. A session at a gym is possibly ideal but activities at home may be equally as good. For example, stair climbing, stretching and resistance exercises can be done at home without any special clothing or equipment.

A session should be a minimum of 8-10 exercises using the major muscle groups. Ideally, to help build up your muscle strength, use some sort of resistance (such as a weight for arm exercises) and do 8-12 repetitions of each exercise. The level (weight) of each exercise should be so that you can do 8-12 repetitions before the muscle group gets tired. So, for example, for the upper arm muscles, hold a weight in your hand and bend (flex) your arm up and down 8-12 times. This should make your arm muscles tire.

You can do the exercises one after another to complete a session. Or, you can split a session up over a day in, say, bouts of 10 minutes.

What about older people, children and teenagers, and pregnant women?

Older people

If you are over the age of 65 you should still aim to do the same amount of aerobic activity and muscle-strengthening activity as younger adults, depending on your ability. As well as this, a particular goal for older people should be, where possible, to do activities to help with flexibility and balance.This is to help reduce the risk of falls, and injury from falls. Examples of activities to help flexibility include yoga, housework such as vacuuming, and DIY. Examples of activities to help balance include dancing, t'ai chi or keep fit classes. Special keep fit classes for older people are available in many areas and will usually include activities for flexibility and balance.

Children and teenagers

Children and teenagers should have at least 60 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per day. The 60 minutes can be made up from various shorter sessions and a mixture of different activities. For example, a mixture of play, physical education (PE) at school, games, dance, cycling, a brisk walk to school, sports, various outdoor activities, etc.