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The ACSM Recommendations for Aerobic Activities

May 18, 2011 | By Martin Zabell
The ACSM Recommendations for Aerobic Activities
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Aerobic activities are physical activities that continually supply sufficient or excess oxygen to your body. The key word is "continually." Running, bicycling and walking continually for more than a few minutes are examples of aerobic activities. Aerobic exercises improve your fitness more than anaerobic exercises such as baseball, bowling and golf that require you to move intermittently rather than continually, according to "Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease."

Significance

Improving your fitness increases the chances that you will live a long life and can also improve the quality of your life. You don't need to exercise hours per day to improve your fitness. In fact, walking 30 minutes a day reduces premature death "almost as much as running 30 to 40 miles per week," according to Ornish. Dividing adults into five fitness levels, Ornish concluded that the adults in the least fit group, which was also the most sedentary group, were more than twice as likely to die in the next eight years as adults who were the same age and were in the second least fit group.

Recommendations

The American College of Sports Medicine issued a position paper in 1998 that contained recommendations for three kinds of exercises -- aerobic, strength training and flexibility. The ACSM didn't recommend one specific activity over another, but it urges people to exercise aerobically 20 to 60 minutes per day a minimum of three to five days per week. Your daily aerobic exercise can be in a single session or in several sessions, according to the ACSM. Exercise expert Dr. Kenneth Cooper wrote that the best aerobic exercises for fitness are cross country skiing, jogging, outside bicycling, stationary bicycling, walking and swimming.

Intensity

Your aerobic activities need to be intense enough to improve your fitness. The ACSM recommends that your exercise heart rate be 55 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate. Your maximum heart rate is 220 heartbeats each minute minus your age, or 180 heartbeats per minute if you're 40 years old. You're exercising vigorously if your exercise heart rate is 70 to 90 percent of your maximum heart rate, or 126 to 162 heartbeats per minute if you're 40, the ACSM reports. You're exercising moderately if your exercise heart rate is 55 to 70 percent of your maximum heart rate, or 99 to 126 heartbeats per minute if you're 40.

Supplementary Activities

The ACSM recommends strength training and flexibility exercises to supplement your aerobic exercises and improve your performance while you're exercising aerobically. Strength-training exercises improve your speed. You lose more weight when your speed improves. The ACSM recommends strength-training exercises such as weightlifting, pushups and situps two or three days weekly. Each day's strength-training exercise session should include eight to 12 repetitions of at least 10 different exercises. Flexibility exercises stretch your muscles so you're less likely to get hurt while doing more strenuous exercises. The ACSM recommends stretching each muscle group four times for 10 to 30 seconds each at least twice a week.

References

Article reviewed by Contributing Writer Last updated on: May 18, 2011

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