By: Thomas Pickering, MD, DPhil, FRCP, Director of Integrative and Behavioral Cardiology Program
of the Cardiovascular Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York.

The conventional recommendation for exercise is that it should be done for at least 30 minutes a day for five days a week to get the maximum cardiovascular benefit. But for many people, finding a 30-minute block of time during the day is difficult, and many people simple don’t enjoy exercising for that length of time.

A study of 32 sedentary adults randomly allocated them to one of three groups. For each group, the goal was to get a total of 30 minutes of walking on six days a week. One group did a single 30-minute bout each day, one did three 10-minute bouts and the third chose the duration of each bout, as long as they were for at least five minutes. Participants met with a counselor for 15-30 minutes once a week and were given goals to achieve, which involved gradually increasing the amount of walking over several weeks.

Over an eight-month period, all three groups gradually increased the duration of walking to the goal level of 180 minutes a week. Both blood pressure and body fat were decreased, and the changes in all three groups were about the same.

When the participants were asked what skills were most useful in maintaining their walking habits, there were six that ranked highly. These were:

• Making my walks part of my lifestyle
• Setting reasonable goals
• Support of family and friends
• Walking instead of doing sedentary things
• Having several alternative walking routes
• Having a structured walking route.

Doctor’s comments

This study showed that a walking program that allows people to walk for as little as five minutes at a time in several bouts throughout the day can be as effective as a single 30-minute bout, provided that the total amount of exercise at the end of the day is the same. The importance of this is that it makes it much easier for people to make walking a regular part of their daily habits. Walking to and from work, for example, can be incorporated into the daily exercise routine, or taking a 10-minute walk during the lunch break.

Where it was published