Fitness

Exercise is Medicine initiative stresses your level of physical activity as a vital sign | CNN

Published

2 years ago

May 11, 2024

Exercise is Medicine initiative stresses your level of physical activity as a vital sign | CNN

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Has your doctor quizzed you about your level of physical activity? If so, you can thank Exercise is Medicine, a global health initiative managed by the American College of Sports Medicine.

Created in 2007, the initiative encourages health care providers to assess patients’ physical activity during visits, plus include regular exercise when designing care plans. The amount and types of exercise that medical professionals recommend should be based on each person’s current health and ability.

The philosophy behind the initiative is simple: Physical activity promotes optimal health. Regular movement also helps to prevent and even treat various medical conditions. Overwhelming evidence links physical inactivity to poor health and high health care costs, according to a 2020 article in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. The study concluded that health care and fitness programs should be merged.

In addition, people who were moderately to vigorously active for at least 150 minutes per week had nearly half the health care utilization compared with those who were sedentary, according to a study done by Salt Lake City-based health care system Intermountain Health that was presented at the 2019 annual meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine and accepted for publication.

The study also found the active people had half the total cost of health care compared with the sedentary folks, defined as those who engaged in one minute per week of moderate to vigorous activity, said Dr. Elizabeth Joy, chief medical officer at health technology company Lore Health and chair of the EIM governance board.

Unfortunately, while EIM has expanded and achieved many successes, only 22.9% of adult women and 17.8% of adult men were advised by health care professionals to increase their physical activity levels, according to the 2022 US National Health Interview Survey, Joy noted.

With the average primary care visit lasting less than 20 minutes and with health care providers needing to cover many issues, it’s not surprising that so few are addressing physical activity, Joy said.

“It takes very little time to write a prescription,” Joy said. “It takes a whole lot more time to do evidence-based behavior-change counseling.”

Despite EIM’s lack of progress in the doctor’s office, it has created numerous programs, initiatives and exercise prescriptions to help people outside of it.

EIM now includes Exercise is Medicine on Campus, for example, a program that helps colleges and universities promote and assess physical activity among students, faculty and staff. To date, more than 200 US schools and over two dozen international education institutions participate.

The EIM-OC program at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has achieved gold status, said Amy Campbell, associate director of recreation and wellness, which means the university routinely assesses and promotes physical activity on campus. The university offers perks such as free personal training via its exercise science majors, plus a wealth of group fitness classes and wellness coaching.

While some of these offerings were in place before GVSU signed on with EIM-OC, Campbell said the university is working more collaboratively to stress the importance of physical activity.

“The CARE team (which connects distressed students to support services) now always asks students, ‘What do you do outside of class? Are you staying physically active? What are activities you enjoy?’” Campbell said. “If they see an opportunity to work with our department, they’ll reach out. For example, if someone can’t afford to participate in an intramural program, we’ll make sure they have access.”

There’s also Moving Through Cancer, the first disease-specific initiative within EIM. The initiative assists with exercise and rehabilitation programming for those living with cancer and beyond. Most people who are physically active during cancer treatment have less severe side effects, feel better more quickly after treatment and, in some cases, have a lowered risk of their cancer returning, research has shown.

EIM also created the Rx for Health Series, which provides exercise prescriptions for people with a wide variety of common chronic conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, depression and anxiety, osteoarthritis, and heart failure.

“If you’ve had a heart attack, you’re at far greater risk of having another one if you spend most of your time on the couch versus going for a walk,” Joy said. “The couch is more dangerous than your walking shoes.”

While EIM will continue to educate health care providers and students in health care fields about the importance of assessing patients’ activity levels and creating physical activity prescriptions, it’s also looking at other options.

“People don’t respond well to being told to do something,” Joy said. “Rather, people are more likely to engage in and sustain healthy behavior changes when done within their community. If someone’s family, neighborhood, faith-based community or even work environment is supportive of regular physical activity, they’re likely to be more active.”

Absolutely, said Gerren Liles, a certified personal trainer and owner of Gerren Liles Vision Fitness in New York. Various New York City companies have brought in Liles to teach fitness classes for their employees, and he has seen the benefits.

“It’s always good to unite people into working out,” he said. “That can inspire people to take charge of their fitness. It would be great if companies would invest in fitness, if schools would create programs and events for students and even parents, and if media and movies were all promoting physical activity.”

“Healthy behaviors are contagious,” Joy said. “We also have some personal responsibility around physical activity — to really think about how we influence the people around us.”

So the next time you head out for a walk, Joy said, invite a friend or neighbor along.

Melanie Radzicki McManus is a freelance writer who specializes in hiking, travel and fitness.

Fitness

Higher fitness levels linked to lower risk of depression, dementia – Harvard Health

Published

7 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

Higher fitness levels linked to lower risk of depression, dementia – Harvard Health

research review

People with high cardiorespiratory fitness were 36% less likely to experience depression and 39% less likely to develop dementia than those with low cardiorespiratory fitness. Even small improvements in fitness were linked to a lower risk. Experts believe that exercise’s ability to boost blood flow to the brain, reduce bodywide inflammation, and improve stress regulation may explain the connection.

Fitness

These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique

Published

19 hours ago

April 21, 2026

Press Room

These 20-Minute Burpee Workouts Replaced His Entire Gym Routine – and Transformed His Physique

While many swear by them, most people see burpees as a form of punishment – usually dished out drill sergeant-style by overzealous bootcamp PTs. Often the final blow in an already brutal workout, burpees are designed to test cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and mental grit. Love them or loathe them, they deliver every time.

For Max Edwards – aka Busy Dad Training on YouTube – they became a simple but highly effective way to stay fit and lean during lockdown. Once a committed powerlifter, spending upwards of 80 minutes a day in the gym, he was forced to overhaul his approach due to fatherhood, lockdown and a schedule that no longer allowed for long, structured lifting sessions.

‘Even though I was putting in hours and hours into the gym and even though my physique was pretty good, I wasn’t becoming truly excellent at any physical discipline,’ he explained in a YouTube video.

‘I loved the intentionality of training,’ says Edwards. ‘The fact that every session has a point, every rep in every set is helping you get towards a training goal, and I loved that there was a clear way of gauging progression – feeling like I was developing competence and moving towards mastery.’

Why He Walked Away From Powerlifting

Despite that structure, Edwards began to question whether powerlifting was sustainable long-term.

‘My sessions were very taxing on my central nervous system. I was exhausted between sessions. It felt as if I needed at least nine hours of sleep each night just to function.’

He also noted that his appetite was consistently high.

But the biggest drawback was time.

‘I could not justify taking 80 minutes a day away from my family for what felt like a self-centred pursuit,’ he says.

A Simpler Approach That Stuck

‘Over the course of that year I fixed my relationship with alcohol and I developed, for the first time in my adult life, a relationship with physical training,’ says Edwards.

With limited time and no access to equipment, he turned to burpees. Just two variations, four times a week, with each session lasting 20 minutes.

‘My approach in each workout was very simple. On a six-count training day I would do as many six-counts as I possibly could within 20 minutes. On a Navy Seal training day I would do as many Navy Seal burpees as I could within 20 minutes – then in the next workout I would simply try to beat the number I had managed previously.’

This style of training is known as AMRAP – as many reps (or rounds) as possible.

The Results

Edwards initially saw the routine as nothing more than a six-month stopgap to stay in shape. But that quickly changed.

‘I remember catching sight of myself in the mirror one morning and I was utterly baffled by the man I saw looking back at me.’

He found himself in the best shape of his life. His energy levels improved, his resting heart rate dropped and his physique changed in ways that powerlifting hadn’t quite delivered.

‘It has been five years since I have set foot in a gym,’ he says. ‘That six-month training practice has become the defining training practice of my life – and for five years I have trained for no more than 80 minutes per week.’

The Burpee Workouts

1/ 6-Count Burpees

20-minute AMRAP, twice a week

How to do them:

Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
Crouch down and place your hands on the floor (count 1)
Jump your feet back into a high plank (count 2)
Lower into the bottom of a push-up (count 3)
Push back up to plank (count 4)
Jump your feet forward to your hands (count 5)
Stand up straight (count 6)

20-minute AMRAP, twice a week

How to do them:

Start standing, feet shoulder-width apart
Crouch down and place your hands on the floor
Jump your feet back into a high plank
Perform a push-up (chest to floor)
At the top, bring your right knee to your right elbow, then return
Perform another push-up
Bring your left knee to your left elbow, then return
Perform a third push-up
Jump your feet forward
Stand or jump to finish

Kate is a fitness writer for Men’s Health UK where she contributes regular workouts, training tips and nutrition guides. She has a post graduate diploma in Sports Performance Nutrition and before joining Men’s Health she was a nutritionist, fitness writer and personal trainer with over 5k hours coaching on the gym floor. Kate has a keen interest in volunteering for animal shelters and when she isn’t lifting weights in her garden, she can be found walking her rescue dog.

Fitness

Six ways your smartwatch is lying to you, according to science

Published

1 day ago

April 20, 2026

Press Room

Six ways your smartwatch is lying to you, according to science

You check your smartwatch after a run. Your fitness score has dropped. You’ve burnt hardly any calories. Your recovery score is really low. It’s telling you to take the next 72 hours off exercise.

The worst bit? The whole run felt amazing.

So why is your watch telling you the opposite?

Ultimately, it’s because smartwatches and other fitness trackers aren’t always accurate.

Smartwatches can shape how you exercise

Using wearable fitness technology, such as smartwatches, has been one of the top fitness trends for close to a decade. Millions of people around the world use them daily.

These devices shape how people think about health and exercise. For example, they provide data about how many calories you’ve burnt, how fit you are, how recovered you are after exercise, and whether you’re ready to exercise again.

But your smartwatch doesn’t measure most of these metrics directly. Instead, many common metrics are estimates. In other words, they’re not as accurate as you might think.

1. Calories burned

Calorie tracking is one of the most popular features on smartwatches. However, the accuracy leaves a lot to be desired.

Wearable devices can under- or overestimate energy expenditure (often expressed as calories burned) by more than 20 per cent. These errors also vary between activities. For example, strength training, cycling and high-intensity interval training can lead to even larger errors.

This matters because people often use these numbers to guide how much they eat.

For example, if your watch overestimates calories burned, you might think you need to eat more food than you really need, which could result in weight gain. Conversely, if your watch underestimates calories burned, it could lead you to under-eat, negatively impacting your exercise performance.

2. Step counts

Step counts are a great way to measure general physical activity, but wearables don’t capture them perfectly.

Smartwatches can under-count steps by about 10 per cent under normal exercise conditions. Activities such as pushing a pram, carrying weights, or walking with limited arm swing likely make step counts less accurate, as smartwatches rely on arm movement to register steps.

For most people, this isn’t a major problem, and step counts are still useful for tracking general activity levels. But view them as a guide, rather than a precise measure.

3. Heart rate

Smartwatches estimate your heart rate using sensors that measure changes in blood flow through the veins in your wrist.

This method is accurate at rest or low intensities, but gets less accurate as you increase exercise intensity.

Arm movement, sweat, skin tone and how tightly you wear the watch can also impact the heart rate measure it spits out. This means the accuracy can vary between people.

This can be problematic for people who use heart rate zones to guide their training, as small errors can lead to training at the wrong intensity.

4. Sleep tracking

Almost every smartwatch on the market gives you a “sleep score” and breaks your night into stages of light, deep and REM sleep.

The gold standard for measuring sleep is polysomnography. This is a lab-based test that records brain activity. But smartwatches estimate sleep using movement and heart rate.

This means they can detect when you’re asleep or awake reasonably well. But they are much less accurate at identifying sleep stages.

So even if your watch says you had “poor deep sleep”, this may not be the case.

5. Recovery scores

Most smartwatches track heart rate variability and use this, with your sleep score, to create a “readiness” or “recovery” score.

Heart rate variability reflects how your body responds to stress. In the lab it is measured using an electrocardiogram. But smartwatches estimate it using wrist-based sensors, which are much more prone to measurement errors.

This means most recovery metrics are based on two inaccurate measures (heart rate variability and sleep quality). This results in a metric that may not meaningfully reflect your recovery.

As a result, if your watch says you’re not recovered, you might skip training — even if you feel good (and are actually good to go).

6. VO₂max

Most devices estimate your VO₂max — which indicates your maximal fitness. It’s the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise.

The best way to measure VO₂max involves wearing a mask to analyse the amount of oxygen you breathe in and out, to determine how much oxygen you’re using to create energy.

But your watch cannot measure oxygen use. It estimates it based on your heart rate and movement.

But smartwatches tend to overestimate VO₂max in less active people and underestimate VO₂max in fitter ones.

This means the number on your watch may not reflect your true fitness.

What should you do?

While the data from your smartwatch is prone to errors, that doesn’t mean it is completely worthless.

These devices still offer a way to help you track general trends over time, but you should not pay attention to daily fluctuations or specific numbers.

It’s also important you pay attention to how you feel, how you perform and how you recover. This is likely to give you even more insight than what your smartwatch says.

Hunter Bennett is a lecturer in exercise science at Adelaide University. This piece first appeared on The Conversation.