Benefits of Vigorous Exercise

Exercise capacity linked to lower risk of dying

In the new study, researchers looked at two groups of women — those with good exercise capacity and those with poor exercise capacity.

Women with good exercise capacity were able to exercise at an intensity of 10 metabolic equivalents (METs) or better during a stress echocardiogram.

MET level is a measure of how much energy is burned during an activity — it’s also a proxy for the intensity of a physical activity.

Anything over 6 METs is considered vigorous exercise. Running a 10-minute mile is about 10 METs. Mountain biking uphill is 14 METs.

Researchers found that women with poor exercise capacity were almost four times more likely to die from cardiovascular disease compared to women with good exercise capacity.

Poor exercisers were also twice as likely to die from cancer and more than four times as likely to die from other causes, compared to women with a higher fitness level.

The study was presented December 7 at EuroEcho 2019, a scientific meeting of the European Society of Cardiology. The results have not been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal, so should be viewed with some caution.

Most of the women in the study were between 50 and 75 years old. Researchers followed the women on average for about 5 years.

While the study found that having a higher exercise capacity is a good thing, the researchers didn’t look at what women did to reach that level of fitness.

“MET level on the test used in this study is simply a marker of maximal capacity, not necessarily of ‘vigorous exercise’ training,” said Butcher.

So the study gives an idea of how fit the women were, but we don’t know how intensely they trained — or what physical activities they did.

Vigorous Physical Activity Examples

Many different types of exercise and sports can be performed at vigorous intensity, such as:

• Jogging or running
• Racewalking
• Hiking uphill
• Cycling more than 10 miles per hour or steeply uphill
• Swimming fast or lap swimming
• Dancing, fast dancing, and step aerobics
• Strength training
• Heavy gardening with digging, hoeing
• Shoveling heavy snow
• Martial arts
• Playing sports with lots of running such as basketball, hockey, soccer
• Singles tennis
• Court sports such as handball, racquetball, squash

Benefits of vigorous exercise

While many types of exercise lead to greater fitness, there are advantages to maxing out your effort, even if just for a few minutes at a time.

Ken Seldeen, PhD, a research assistant professor of medicine at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, said the body responds to exercise in a way that prepares it for similar challenges in the future.

“Vigorous exercise simply challenges the body more so than moderate exercise, and the response therefore is greater so as to better prepare for that next vigorous challenge,” said Seldeen.

These responses include a greater flow of blood to the muscles — which carries oxygen and fuel — as well as increased muscle mass and strength.

Body fat is also reduced as fat is converted to fuel, and insulin signaling improves, which can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes.

There’s also a boost to your exercise capacity.

“Vigorous exercise — for example, high-intensity training — tends to be superior to lower intensity exercise for increasing maximal MET level,” said Butcher.

It also takes less time to get similar health benefits from vigorous exercise than from moderate-intensity activities.

However, this doesn’t mean vigorous exercise is the only way to go.

“Moderate exercise … delivers some of these enhancements, albeit to a lesser degree,” said Seldeen, “but there are benefits of moderate exercise that are very important, such as reducing stress and chronic inflammation.”

Besides being more efficient, turning up the heat on your fitness sessions can benefit your health in a variety of ways. Let’s take a closer look at some of the evidence-based benefits of a higher intensity workout.

• Higher calorie burn. According to the American Council on Exercise, working out at a higher intensity requires more oxygen, which burns more calories. It also contributes to excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) or the “afterburn effect” that allows you to continue burning calories even after you finish working out. This means your metabolism will stay elevated for longer after a vigorous exercise session.
• More weight loss. A higher calorie burn and an elevated metabolism will help you lose weight more quickly than doing low- or moderate-intensity exercise.
• Improved heart health. According to a 2012 studyTrusted Source, high- and moderate-intensity exercise appears to offer low chance of cardiovascular events, even in those with heart disease. Cardiovascular benefits may include improvements in:
  • diastolic blood pressure
  • blood sugar control
  • aerobic capacity
• Improved mood. High-intensity exercise may also boost your mood. According to a large 2015 study that analyzed the data of more than 12,000 participants, researchers found a significant link between strenuous exercise and fewer depressive symptoms.
• Lower risk of mortality. According to a 2015 study, researchers found that vigorous activity may be key to avoiding an early death. The study, which followed 204,542 people for more than 6 years, reported a 9 to 13 percent decrease in mortality for those who increased the intensity of their exercise sessions.

Vigorous exercise safe for all ages

Although high-intensity exercise like spin class and boot camps is often marketed to 20- and 30-somethings, vigorous exercise can be appropriate for any age group.

“Aging exercisers often have the potential for even greater benefits to health than their younger counterparts, mostly because they tend to be more de-conditioned,” said Butcher.

Seldeen and his colleague Dr. Bruce Troen, chief of the division of geriatric and palliative medicine in the Jacobs School at University at Buffalo, carried out research in which older veterans did high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on a recumbent bicycle three times per week.

Both researchers are affiliated with the VA Western New York Healthcare System.

The workout sessions involved alternating minute-long bouts of intense and less intense pedaling. The entire workout, with a 3-minute warmup, was only 10 minutes long.

Seldeen said vigorous exercise — along with strength training — can slow and sometimes reverse the decline in muscle mass that begins after age 30 and becomes more pronounced with age.

This is important for everyone, but especially for women. Women are also at greater risk for osteoporosis. Exercise is a key way of maintaining bone health.

“Women are more likely to be frail as they age — a condition of greater susceptibility to illnesses, falls, and disability,” said Seldeen. “Boosting muscle function and quality with exercise is the best way to stave off frailty.”

Vigorous activity comes in many styles

There are many types of vigorous workouts. These all push your muscles and cardiovascular system to their limits.

One of the most well-known is HIIT, the alternating intense-moderate exercise that the older veterans did in Seldeen’s and Troen’s research study.

Few studies have compared HIIT to just continuous vigorous exercise — like biking up a mountain for half an hour — but Seldeen said they likely offer similar benefits.

He said many people find HIIT attractive for two reasons — the exercise sessions can be short and there’s a built-in low-intensity “recovery” period.

Some HIIT workouts, though, involve a lot of movement — think burpees and jumping jacks. This can be hard on the joints, especially if you are middle-aged or older, or have more weight.

But there are other options for vigorous exercise.

Elise Joan, a Beachbody Super Trainer, developed an online exercise program called Barre Blend that is high-intensity but low-impact.

“It’s actually designed to stabilize your joints, support your spine, and build your core, along with providing that vigorous exercise,” said Joan.

She said a test group of men in their 50s who wanted to lose weight adapted well to this workout.

They were “having fun, getting their heart rates up, getting all the results they wanted, without ever doing anything high-impact,” said Joan.

Seldeen said these shorter, intense workouts may give people “a greater sense of accomplishment, and that may be the motivating factor to keep [exercising] throughout life.”

Exercising harder, but safely

Vigorous exercise can offer greater benefits than less intense workouts, but there are some downsides.

“The risk of injury increases with greater amounts and intensities of activity beyond the guideline-recommended minimum level,” said Michael LaMonte, PhD, a research associate professor of epidemiology and environmental health at the University at Buffalo’s School of Public Health and Health Professions.

But done appropriately, vigorous exercise can be safe.

Seldeen recommends that people check with a doctor before starting a vigorous exercise program. And “listen to your body and stop if something doesn’t feel right.”

Increasing the intensity of your workouts gradually is usually safer. It also helps you stick with it.

“There is nothing to be gained by going ‘all out’ several times a week,” said Butcher. “In general, it is usually considered best to do a combination of exercise intensities; some lower and longer, with some higher and shorter.”

But even if vigorous exercise is not your thing, don’t trade in regular movement for binge watching television.

“The casual exerciser shouldn’t despair,” said Butcher. “There are great benefits to even a little bit of exercise, even if it doesn’t increase your fitness to a high degree.”

LaMonte said older adults who are limited by disease or frailty can benefit even from light-intensity physical activity.

For the general public, many of whom don’t meet the recommended amount of physical activity, LaMonte offers a simpler approach to staying active: “Sit less, move more — every minute counts.

What is considered strenuous exercise?

When it comes to exercise, the intensity of how hard you work out is just as important as the duration of your exercise session. In general, exercise intensity is divided into three categories:

• low
• moderate
• vigorous or strenuous

For an activity to be vigorous, you need to work at 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate, according to the American Heart AssociationTrusted Source. Examples of vigorous exercise include:

• running
• cycling at 10 mph or faster
• walking briskly uphill with a heavy backpack
• jumping rope

Low to moderate exercise is easier to sustain for longer periods since you work below 70 percent of your maximum heart rate and, sometimes, well below that level.

To reap health benefits, the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans recommends that people age 18 and older get one of the following:

• 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week
• 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic activity per week
• combination of both types of activity spread throughout the week

Strenuous exercise vs. moderate exercise

Increasing your exercise intensity is fairly simple to do. You can still participate in your favorite activities — just at a more vigorous pace.

One of the benefits of more strenuous exercise is that you can reap the same rewards as moderate-intensity exercise but in less time. So, if time is of the essence, doing a more strenuous 20-minute workout can be just as beneficial as doing a slower 40-minute workout session.

Here are some examples of strenuous vs. moderate exerciseTrusted Source.

Moderate intensity	Strenuous intensity
bicycling at less than 10 mph	bicycling at more than 10 mph
walking briskly	running, or hiking uphill at a steady pace
jog-walk intervals	water jogging/running
shooting baskets in basketball	playing a basketball game
playing doubles tennis	playing singles tennis
raking leaves or mowing the lawn	shoveling more than 10 lbs. per minute, digging ditches
walking stairs	running stairs

How to measure exercise intensity

So, how do you know for sure that you’re exercising at a strenuous level? Let’s look at three ways to measure the intensity of your physical activity.

1. Your heart rate

Monitoring your heart rate is one of the most reliable methods for measuring exercise intensity. Exercising at 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate qualifies as vigorous exercise intensity.

WHAT IS YOUR MAXIMUM HEART RATE?

Your maximum heart rate is the fastest your heart can safely beat. To find out what your maximum heart rate is you need to subtract your age from 220. For example, for a 40-year-old person:

• 220 bpm (beats per minute) minus age
• 220 – 40 = 180 bpm

To work out at a vigorous pace, you’ll want to exercise within 70 to 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. For example:

• 180 x 0.70 (70 percent) = 126
• 180 x 0.85 (85 percent) = 153

For a 40-year-old person, a vigorous training range is 126 to 153 bpm.

2. The talk test

The talk test is one of the easiest ways to measure exercise intensity.

• If you find it difficult to carry on a conversation, you’re probably working out at a vigorous or strenuous pace.
• If you can talk fairly easily with some breathlessness, you’re likely exercising at a moderate pace.
• If you find it easy to sing out loud, your pace may be too slow. To get more benefits from your workout, you may want to consider picking up the pace.

3. Rate of perceived exertion (RPE)

The rate of perceived exertion (RPE) scale is a subjective measure of exercise intensity.

When using RPE, you’ll pay attention to your heart rate, breathing, and muscle fatigue, and rate your exertion level based on a scale that ranges from 1 to 10. No exertion is rated as a 1 and maximum effort is rated as 10.

To be considered vigorous, an activity should meet or exceed a level of 6 to 7, which is considered hard on the RPE scale. This includes jogging, biking, or swimming. Running without stopping is ranked as 8 to 9 on the RPE scale.

Ivan Gener/Stocksy United

How to add vigorous activity to your workout

Adding strenuous activity to your weekly workout routine requires some careful planning. Fortunately, many of the activities that you do at a moderate level can easily be performed at a higher intensity.

One way of incorporating vigorous aerobic activity into your routine is to do a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout. This type of workout combines short bursts of intense activity — typically performed at 80 to 95 percent of your maximum heart rate — with recovery periods at 40 to 50 percent maximum heart rate.

To sustain this level of training, consider following a 2:1 work to rest ratio. For example, a treadmill workout or outdoor running session could include:

• running at 9 to 10 mph for 30 seconds
• followed by walking at 3 to 4 mph for 60 seconds
• alternating this work-to-rest ratio for 20 to 30 minutes

Playing a fast-paced sport like soccer, basketball, or racquetball is another effective way to add strenuous activity to your fitness routine. Participating in cycling classes or swimming laps are other ways to build more strenuous exercise into your workouts.

Safety tips

Before you turn up the intensity on your workouts, it’s important to keep the following safety tips in mind.

Check with your doctor

If you have a health condition or you haven’t been active in a while, make sure you talk to your doctor before you start a high-intensity exercise routine. Your doctor can advise you on a safe level of exercise or how to become more active in the safest way possible.

Build up the intensity slowly

Going from low- or moderate-intensity workouts to vigorous exercise requires time and patience. While you may be ready to jump in with both feet, the safest way to add more vigorous exercise is to do it in bite-size increments. Pushing yourself too quickly can result in injuries and burnout.

For example:

• Week 1: Swap out one moderate-paced cardio session for a HIIT workout.
• Week 2: Swap one moderate-paced session with a HIIT workout, and also add a circuit strength training session to your weekly routine.
• Week 3 and 4: Repeat weeks 1 and 2 before you start adding more high-intensity exercise to your weekly routine.

It’s also a good idea to space out your vigorous workouts throughout the week. Try not to do two strenuous sessions back-to-back.

Don’t forget the recovery time

Your body requires more time to recover from a vigorous workout compared to a low- or moderate-intensity session.

To help your body recover, make sure to always include a cooldown and stretch routine after strenuous physical activity.

Stay hydrated

Staying hydrated is especially important when you’re exercising hard. Not drinking enough fluids can affect the quality of your workout and make you feel tired, lethargic, or dizzy. It may even lead to headaches and cramps.

The bottom line

Turning up the intensity of your workout sessions can be an effective way of boosting your overall health and fitness. It’s also an easy way to save time when trying to fit a workout into your day.

To play it safe, always start slow and pay attention to how your body feels.

While vigorous exercise offers many health benefits, it’s not appropriate for everyone. If you have a health condition or you haven’t been active in a while, make sure to talk with your doctor before working out at a more strenuous level.

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