Heart health
All-round cardio for a strong heart.The sweet spot for health is about 150 minutes of moderate cardio a week — a brisk 30 minutes, five days over. The jump from nothing to this is the single biggest win in the whole book.
Your plan at a glance
150 min a week
Moderate effort — brisk enough that singing is off the table.
Spread over 5 days
Or fewer, longer sessions — whatever fits your week.
Any activity counts
Brisk walking, cycling, swimming — all of it adds up.
Mostly moderate
You can talk in sentences the whole way through.
How hard should it feel?
Your breath is the simplest intensity meter there is — no heart-rate strap required. Match the effort to the session: easy for warm-ups and recovery, moderate for most of your minutes, and short vigorous bursts when you want to boost fitness.
What a week looks like
Five 30-minute sessions — or three longer ones. A brisk daily walk covers it beautifully.
Your sample session
The dose above stays the same whichever way you move. Pick your activity and grab a ready-made session to match.
The most accessible cardio there is. Walk briskly for moderate effort; add hills or short fast bursts to push harder. Kind on the joints and easy to keep up.
See the walking session →Efficient and easy to scale — jog gently for base fitness, or add fast intervals to spike it. Build up slowly and mix in walk breaks early on to stay injury-free.
See the running session →Low-impact and interval-friendly, indoors or out. Gentle on the knees, and hills or a turbo trainer make hard efforts easy to dial in exactly.
See the cycling session →Can't do it all? Do a little.
Even short bouts count — three brisk 10-minute walks add up to the same as one 30-minute session. The biggest step is simply starting; build from there.