How Much Should You Exercise Per Day?

Trainer Sam Wood explains. - by Sam Wood

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'How much should I exercise per day' is one of my most commonly asked questions.

Gone are the days where it was mostly believed that in order to get results or enjoy the benefits of exercise, you needed to train for an hour a day. I’m a big believer that the quality of your workouts is more important than the quantity and this has long been my approach when it comes to training. Instead of trying to log as many hours in the gym as possible or double up on your daily workouts, you need to make every workout count as opposed to counting every workout.

During my time in the fitness industry, I’ve learnt that consistency, variety and intensity will yield better results than volume. Obviously if you’re training for an endurance event or something of the like, you may need to train longer, harder and more often but for the average joe or jane – it’s about training smarter, not harder.

So, how much should you exercise per day?

I definitely think we should aim to do something active every single day but this doesn’t mean you need to push your body to the max 7 days a week. Adopting a balanced attitude and giving your body the rest it needs is imperative if you want to avoid injury or burnout. Personally, I try to do 3-5 challenging workouts a week that are either HIIT or strength based. I compliment these with two lower impact, lower intensity workouts that could be anything from walking my dog to a swim, a yoga session or even just some nice mobility work on the foam roller.

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I truly believe that 28 minutes is the magic number. The reason for this is three fold. It is long enough to get brilliant results but short enough to genuinely train at high-intensity and very importantly and often overlooked is it’s under that 30 minute psychological barrier that so many of us have so we stop telling ourselves we don’t have time and consistency is better than ever.

So guys, move every day, make your higher intensity sessions quality not quantity and of course some days I go for a little bit extra but knowing my minimum requirement is 28 minutes means I get it done.

Sam Wood

Sam Wood is the founder of online training and nutrition program 28 by Sam Wood and Australia’s largest personal training gym ‘The Woodshed’.