How long is the appropriate time for home fitness every day?

For the vast majority of ordinary people who do not have clear needs to gain muscle or lose fat in preparation for competitions, 30-45 minutes of moderate-intensity home exercise every day is completely sufficient. It will not place additional burden on the body, but can also achieve the effect of maintaining health and adjusting state.

Of course, this number is not an iron-clad standard. There are two opposing views on this topic in the fitness circle that have been arguing for several years. One group says that you must exercise continuously for more than 40 minutes to activate the fat-burning mechanism. If you work less than this time, it will be in vain. The other group says that fragmented exercise is equally useful. Even if you exercise for 5 minutes each time, the effect is not bad if you do it three or four times a day.

I have two friends who take completely different routes, and the results are quite good. One is an administrative clerk who works a nine-to-five job. He doesn’t like to move. He read about the blogger’s “1-hour daily fat burning plan” and started practicing it. The high-intensity interval dancing made his legs tremble when he climbed the stairs at work the next day. Within a week, he was completely flat and stuffed the yoga mat under the bed. Later, she changed to standing and dancing to short videos of old songs for 20 minutes every day after dinner. After taking a shower, she spent 15 minutes rolling a foam roller to stretch her shoulders, neck and calves. It only took 35 minutes in total. She persisted in this way for three months. Not only was her rounded shoulders and hunchback mostly cured, but she also lost 6 pounds. The shoulder and neck pain that she often suffered before rarely occurred. The other is a fitness enthusiast who has been practicing for three or four years. During the months when the gym was closed last year, he practiced at home. He would do strength training for an hour each time, and trained the major muscle groups such as chest, back, and legs in groups. After three months, he has not lost any muscle mass, and his condition is not much different from when he practiced in the gym.

In fact, there is nothing wrong with both statements. The core still depends on your exercise purpose and physical condition. If you already have a foundation in exercise and the goal is to build muscle or improve your body fat rate in preparation for a competition, then you really need enough continuous exercise duration to give your muscles or heart and lungs enough stimulation. If the duration is too short, the training effect will not be achieved. If you just want to improve the back pain caused by sitting for a long time and control your weight so that it doesn’t skyrocket, then you really don’t have to stick to the “40 minutes straight” deadline. Even if you do two sets of squats while waiting for the water to boil, stand up and twist and jump for two minutes while watching TV dramas, and do a few sets of chest expansion exercises while fishing at work, these fragmented exercises together will have a much better effect than if you just practice hard for two hours a week, and you will not be easily injured due to excessive exercise. If you have strong yang health or have old injuries in the joints, then 20 minutes of slow walking and Baduanjin every day is enough. If you cram in the time, it will put a burden on the body.

To put it bluntly, the duration of home fitness is like how much you eat every day. There is no unified standard that applies to everyone. If you eat eight cents to feel full and comfortable, there is no need to force it to ten. If you do heavy work today and consume most of the food, it is okay to eat two bites. If you can persist for a long time and feel stretched after the exercise instead of being too tired to get out of bed, then this duration is the most suitable for you. There is really no need to add unnecessary KPIs to yourself just to make up for the duration.