Guide to Exercise: Do You Really Need to Break a Sweat? :

Health experts tend to agree that to be healthy, you need to exercise. But as soon as the questions get more specific, the experts get a lot more quarrelsome. One of the biggest debates: do you really have to do vigorous, sweaty, aerobic exercise for good health?

In their recently updated Physical Activity Guidelines , the American College of Sports Medicine and the American Heart Association took on this as well as other important questions. (The quick answer? Yep, looks like for optimal health, you may have to hit the showers after your workout.)

The authors explained that the guidelines haven't changed all that much since they were last issued in 1995. But then they went ahead and snuck in some new requirements. The full report contains a lot more information, including supporting studies and reasons for their recommendations.

But here are the basics (for healthy adults 18-65):

• Do some Aerobics: Thirty minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity five days a week; or 20 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic three days each week. Alternatively, you can mix and match and do some combination of these.

  And "moderate" exercise, for example, is brisk walking, while "vigorous" is jogging. (Note: "Surfing the Web," or "Walking Down the Hall to Visit the Vending Machines" or even "Energetically Shaking a Martini" did not make the list).

• Add some Strength Training: At least two non-consecutive days a week. (More specifically: 8-10 exercises using the major muscle groups, done on two non-consecutive days, with 8-12 reps of each exercise resulting in "willful fatigue.")
• More is Better! They suggest you exceed the minimum recommendations if you can for additional health benefits.
• But you can add up Short Bouts of Exercise. They suggest a minimum of 10 minutes for each "bout."

Sound reasonable? Well, not everyone agrees, according to this article . The World Health Organization is content with a minimum of 30 minutes of gentle exercise each day. And Dr. David Haslam, of the National Obesity Forum, was skeptical about the requirement that people do two weight training sessions each week. His view: "I'd rather see healthy habits built into daily life - gyms aren't a sustainable habit for all."

(Dr. Haslam has apparently never heard of those stretchy exercise bands, barbells, or other creative ways people have found to do twice weekly muscle strengthening at home).

While it would be nice to think that we could get all the health benefits of vigorous aerobic exercise and resistance training by just going about our daily activities, I'm not surprised that the Guidelines say otherwise. But then I already do all this stuff because of similar recommendations in the past.

What do you all think of this? Reasonable? Excessive? Not Enough?

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