How Much Exercise Do You Need Each Week for a Healthy Heart?

Key Takeaways: A new study suggests that people may need more than the recommended 150 minutes of exercise per week to significantly boost heart health. While 150 minutes of exercise is realistic and beneficial, tripling that weekly total to 560 minutes may lead to substantial reductions in cardiovascular issues. According to the study’s press release, “the researchers say that the current one-size-fits-all advice on exercise may need to be changed and replaced with personalized targets according to an individual’s fitness level.”

We all know that exercise is good for us. The baseline recommended 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week is endorsed by both the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the World Health Organization, and fewer than half of Americans, 47 percent, meet that baseline, according to a 2024 report from the CDC. Now, new research suggests those physical activity guidelines may not be enough to make meaningful improvements in heart health.

The study, published today, Tuesday, May 19, in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that people need up to three to four times the recommended weekly exercise to significantly reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. This means people would need to log between 560 and 610 minutes each week—that’s 80 to 87 minutes per day.

If you’re one of the 47 percent of Americans who already struggle to hit 150 minutes a week, tripling that amount may seem impossible. But cardiologists and sports medicine physicians say the takeaway from these findings is a little more nuanced.

Instead, the study suggests that you may need to go above and beyond when your goal is to make meaningful changes to heart health, especially if you’re someone who may have a family history of heart problems. Here’s what you should know.

How Much Exercise Do You Need Each Week to Optimize Heart Health?

The researchers analyzed data from 17,088 participants in the UK Biobank, a large biomedical dataset and research resource, between 2013 and 2015. Study participants, with an average age of 57, wore an activity tracker on their wrist for seven consecutive days to record their normal activity levels. They also did a cycling test to estimate their VO2 max, the maximum rate at which the body consumes and uses oxygen during intense exercise. The researchers relied on VO2 max to determine fitness.

During a follow-up of the participants after nearly eight years, 1,233 cardiovascular events (heart attack and stroke) were recorded. People, regardless of fitness level, who got 150 minutes of exercise each week had a nine percent reduction in cardiovascular event risk.

But to achieve substantial protection from cardiovascular events—defined as more than a 30 percent reduction in risk—the participants needed to log between 560 and 610 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous exercise a week. This works out to about nine to ten hours of weekly exercise. Just 12 percent of people in the study hit those numbers.

The researchers also discovered that people with the lowest fitness levels (a lower VO2 max) needed about 30 to 50 more minutes per week than those with high fitness levels to achieve the same benefits. To break it down with an example, that means people with the lowest fitness levels would need 370 minutes of exercise a week to achieve a 20 percent reduction in their risk of cardiovascular events; people with higher fitness levels would need around 340 minutes to see that same 20 percent reduction.

“What our findings suggest is that 150 minutes per week may function more as a minimum effective threshold, rather than the dose associated with substantial cardiovascular risk reduction,” says Ziheng Ning, a scientist involved in the study and researcher in the Department of Health Sciences and Sports at Macao Polytechnic University in Macao, China. In other words, getting 150 minutes of exercise is beneficial for heart health, but not as much as getting more.

The findings also suggest that baseline fitness matters, according to Dr. Kevin Shah, a cardiologist in Long Beach, California. So, the amount of exercise you need to be fit or maintain fitness depends on how fit you currently are; if you’re someone who’s already trained a lot, the better your brain, heart, and lungs are, says Dr. Bert Mandelbaum, a sports medicine doctor and orthopedic surgeon in Santa Monica, California.

There are a few limitations to keep in mind. The study is observational and found that people who reached higher weekly exercise levels were more likely to have better heart health. The results do not prove causation; they show only a potential association between more exercise and improved heart health. Cardiorespiratory fitness was estimated, and sedentary time or less vigorous exercise was not measured. Study participants were overwhelmingly white (96 percent identified as white), which makes it difficult to generalize the findings to the broader population. And the study group may have also been healthier and fitter than the general population.

Does This Mean That the Current Exercise Guidelines Are Wrong?

No. The study’s conclusions don’t mean that the current exercise guidelines are incorrect, Ning says: “The 150-minute guideline remains extremely important because it is realistic, achievable, and clearly beneficial.” For instance, doing the standard 150 minutes of exercise each week, according to the American Heart Association, may lead to better sleep, improved cognition and mental health, and a reduced risk of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

The main takeaway of this new study is that you need more exercise to make significant improvements in cardiovascular health.

Is 560 Minutes, or 9 Hours, of Exercise Each Week Realistic?

The idea of aiming for 560 to 610 minutes can be intimidating, but Ning says it’s more approachable than it sounds. “People hear ‘560 minutes’ and imagine they must suddenly become endurance athletes. That is not the message,” he says.

When you break it down, that means fitting 80 to 90 minutes of activity into your day. Ning says brisk walking, cycling, recreational exercise, hiking, and jogging count.  “For many people, sustainable accumulation may look like cycling or walking to work, taking stairs, a morning bike ride, an evening walk, weekend hiking, recreational sports, and reducing sedentary time throughout the day,” Ning says.

Dr. Tamanna Singh, a sports cardiologist and director of the Sports Cardiology Center at Cleveland Clinic, suggests simply trying to be more active in your daily life rather than doing the same thing every day. “Vary it after a few weeks so that the body is continuously challenged to become more efficient, aerobically and mechanically.”

What to Do If You Can’t Find Time to Work Out

Doctors say the messaging is still to do what you can. “The traditional 150 minutes per week recommendation remains an important minimum target,” Shah says.

While increasing your movement throughout the day will help, Singh stresses the importance of doing actual workouts, too. “Adding a challenge—even something as simple as intervals of jogs in your walk, or adding a little resistance to the stationary bike or riding up a hill instead of choosing downhills—is where you’ll start to encourage the body to become more efficient, which contributes to cardiovascular risk reduction and actually generates fitness,” she says.

Ning also says it’s important to avoid looking at exercise as a pass/fail threshold. “Instead, think of it as a continuum: more movement generally produces greater protection, and fitness level matters,” he says.

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