What’s in style? The question doesn’t just relate to fashion. Indeed, even exercise styles go in and out of vogue, echoing trends fueled by social media and other cultural drivers.

Case in point: high-intensity bursts of exercise have grabbed headlines over the past couple of years, with scientists generating an array of studies examining the health benefits of short spurts of movement lasting from one to three minutes. That might consist of jumping jacks, lunges, running in place, jumping rope, air boxing, running up stairs, or any other high-intensity activity.

Meanwhile, plenty of research continues to focus on the health advantages of moderate-intensity, continuous movement. Mainstay choices for these sessions include brisk walking, cycling, jogging, and elliptical and treadmill use.

Given the swings in popularity between the differently paced alternatives, perhaps the most pressing question is which one is better for us. It might seem certain exercise patterns might prove superior to others, but we should resist the temptation to believe that, says Dr. Meagan Wasfy, a sports cardiologist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital.

“There are always trends, and each one claims to be the latest and best way to move your body,” Dr. Wasfy says.

Breaking down the data

What health benefits does each approach offer? A sampling of recent studies and official health guidance weighs in.

Evidence supporting exercise bursts includes the following:

• A 2022 analysis of data collected on more than 25,200 people who didn’t otherwise exercise (average age 62, 56% women) published in Nature Medicine found that those who routinely did brief bursts of vigorous activity — defined as three bouts, each lasting a minute or two — had significantly lower odds of dying or developing cardiovascular disease over the following seven years than participants who didn’t.
• A 2023 analysis in JAMA Oncology of more than 22,000 people who didn’t exercise (average age 62, 55% women) suggested that even short, intermittent periods of intense movement — a minute at a time, three or four times a day — was linked with 18% lower cancer risk over the following 6.7 years, especially for cancers of the breast, uterus, or colon.

Evidence supporting longer, moderate-intensity exercise includes the following:

• Adults who do any amount of moderate-to-vigorous exercise derive health benefits, including reducing their risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some forms of cancer, according to the CDC.
• A 2022 analysis in JAMA Internal Medicine involving 78,000 people (average age 61, 55% women) found their risk of heart disease, cancer, and premature death dropped by 10% over the following seven years for every 2,000 steps they logged each day, with the benefit peaking at 10,000 steps.

Sense a theme from the findings? Regardless of intensity, it’s apparent that any movement is good for your health.

“No one comes out ahead with regards to the long-term outcomes,” Dr. Wasfy says. “What matters most is moving your body and doing more of it. The sum of movement, over the course of a year or decades of your life, is what matters.”

Exercise caveats

One clear advantage to exercise bursts — or its cousin, high-intensity interval training (HIIT) — is that any high-intensity activity enables you to fulfill recommended exercise guidelines in less time. Health organizations advise adults to get at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise (or some equivalent combination of the two) per week. For an HIIT workout, you alternate vigorous, short sprints with brief periods of rest or lower-intensity movement.

“It’s a time-efficient way to get your recommended exercise dose in less time,” Dr. Wasfy says.

High-intensity exercise does pose a few drawbacks, however. These include a greater risk of injuries and inflammation to joints and muscles. Additionally, for people with heart disease or its risk factors, sudden bursts of exercise could be more likely to bring on new cardiac symptoms.

“If you’re writing an exercise prescription not knowing anything about someone’s health history, you’d write it for moderate-intensity, continuous exercise,” Dr. Wasfy says.

If you’d like to increase your exercise intensity but have existing heart disease — or symptoms such as chest pain with vigorous movement — talk to your doctor in advance. Older adults who’ve noticed their ability to exercise has declined should also speak up.

Ultimately, Dr. Wasfy says, you should choose a style of exercise you really like — and will do consistently — and disregard fitness trends. “If you’re healthy,” she says, “it’s really your choice.”

Image: © Luis Alvarez/Getty Images

The study confirmed again that moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for at least 150 minutes per week does improve your health, particularly your heart health. But the study also was able to show that, among those people who got the recommended amount of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity, those who were the most sedentary the rest of the time had a greater risk of developing heart failure and dying from heart disease, when compared to those who were less sedentary.

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New diet drugs are making it easier to lose weight. So does that mean we can stop exercising? Health experts say no. There is a long list of upsides to going for a walk or hitting the gym, and weight loss isn’t necessarily at the top.

“Exercise is good for everything from cognition and mental health benefits such as preventing neurocognitive disorders like Alzheimer’s disease to cardiovascular benefits like preventing mortality from cardiovascular disease, maintaining vascular function, and improving lung strength and lung function,” said Christina Dieli-Conwright, an associate professor in the Department of Nutrition at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

“Exercising regularly can even benefit the gastrointestinal system, like gut motility, digestion and the gut microbiome. … Depression, anxiety, sleep, fatigue, pain — I can’t think of a body system that is not benefited by exercise,” she added.

But, while exercise can help in losing weight, it isn’t a magic bullet, she said.

“Historically speaking, the thought behind exercise and weight loss is a little bit erroneous. Exercise alone does not typically put an individual into enough of a caloric deficit to cause weight loss,” she said.

Why? For starters consider that exercise, on average, can burn from 200 to 700 calories an hour, while consuming that many calories can be done in minutes.

And most of us appear to be poor at keeping track of what we’re taking in vs. what we’re burning.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 73 percent of Americans are overweight or obese. At the same time, almost half of all adults met activity guidelines for aerobic physical activity during the period of a year, and nearly a quarter met guidelines for both aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity.

7 to 15 Hours of exercise a week significantly lowers cancer risk, according to 2019 study

Medical experts say both exercise and maintaining a healthy weight are important components of promoting overall health and longevity.

“Because the effects of weight loss on diabetes control and risk of diabetes is stronger than for exercise, but for other things like heart disease and living longer — they look like they’re about equivalent,” said I-Min Lee, a professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Chan School and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.

In 2019, Lee helped author a study on physical activity and cancer risk that showed that seven to 15 hours of exercise a week can significantly lower one’s risk of seven types of cancer. That benefit decreases with an overweight BMI, but still shows an improved risk for six cancers: colon, breast, kidney, myeloma, liver, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

“Depression, anxiety, sleep, fatigue, pain — I can’t think of a body system that is not benefited by exercise.” Christina Dieli-Conwright, T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Lee advises those who are looking to begin an exercise regimen to start small.

“That way you get a little bit of benefit,” she said, “and it’s also very encouraging, because if it’s an amount that’s doable, and you succeed, it might make you want to do more.”

And doing more is good for everyone, she said. A good strategy, according to Lee, is to try to add 10 minutes to your routine — whatever it may be. If you walk for 20 minutes a day, go for 30 until you meet or exceed the recommended 150 minutes of weekly exercise.

Edward Phillips, an assistant professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at HMS, and founder and director of the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, agrees.

“If I ask someone how easily they think they could add a bottle of water in the morning or in the afternoon to combat dehydration, they’re going to say, ‘That’s not so hard.’ If they start doing that, and they also add in a five-minute walk after lunch, which is really healthy, and also easy to achieve, then when I check in with them three weeks later, they go, ‘I’m drinking more water. I feel better. And by the way, the five-minute walk turned into a 10-minute walk.’”

Phillips is also host of the WBUR podcast “Food, We Need to Talk,” covering health and fitness. He said when patients don’t see changes on the scale, they need tangible reasons to keep working out — and there are apparent reasons.

“People need a good story in order to make changes that would result in meaningful health changes,” he said. “Exercise allows you to be more functional. You can get out of a chair more easily. You can sit in the chair more easily. … Or when a friend says, ‘Let’s go downhill skiing this weekend,’ and you’re like, ‘I haven’t done that in years,’ you say. ‘I could try it, because I’ve been exercising.’”

Dieli-Conwright said it helps to do anything a couple of times a week that gets you out of breath.

“You’re going to get more bang for your buck if you do both aerobic and resistance exercise, though,” she said. “The reason is that aerobic exercise is going to tax the cardiorespiratory system more than resistance or weightlifting. That type of exercise is fantastic for muscle strength. But with both you are going to target glucose metabolism, which is going to be important for managing hyper- and hypoglycemia, diabetes management, things like that.”

She adds that it’s also important to interrupt sitting time or sedentary behaviors.

“Once an hour, get up for two to three minutes even, and just stand up and down and squat or take a two-minute little walk, and go up and down the stairs a couple of times. That can actually help to also manage glucose, which leads, again, back into diabetes risk,” she said.

But Dieli-Conwright emphasizes that creating an exercise habit is key.

“We all know that obesity is incredibly bad. It leads to so many different other co-morbid conditions, specifically heart disease and diabetes. However, there’s so much data that’s overlooked that supports the paradigm that I generally call, and others call, being fit and fat,” she said, essentially being overweight, yet metabolically healthy.