Aerobic activity or “cardio” gets you breathing harder and your heart beating faster. From pushing a lawn mower, to taking a dance class, to walking or biking to the store – these types of activities and more count. As long as you’re doing aerobic physical activities at a moderate- or vigorous-intensity, they count toward meeting the aerobic guideline.

Intensity is how hard your body is working during a physical activity.

Moderate-intensity aerobic physical activity means you’re working hard enough to raise your heart rate and break a sweat. One way to tell if it’s a moderate-intensity aerobic activity is that you’ll be able to talk, but not sing the words to your favorite song. Here are some examples of activities that require moderate effort:

• Walking fast
• Doing water aerobics
• Riding a bike on level ground or with few hills
• Playing doubles tennis
• Pushing a lawn mower

Vigorous-intensity aerobic activity means you’re breathing hard and fast, and your heart rate has gone up quite a bit. You may use the Talk Test to gauge the intensity of your aerobic physical activity. If you’re being active at a vigorous level, you won’t be able to say more than a few words without pausing for a breath. Here are some examples of activities that require vigorous effort:

• Jogging or running
• Swimming laps
• Riding a bike fast or on hills
• Playing singles tennis
• Playing basketball

If you are doing moderate-intensity physical activity, such as walking or hiking, you can talk, but not sing during the activity.

Build Up Over Time
If you want to do more vigorous-level activities, slowly replace those that take moderate effort like brisk walking with more vigorous activities like jogging. 

You can do moderate- or vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or a mix of the two, each week. A rule of thumb is that 1 minute of vigorous-intensity activity is about the same as 2 minutes of moderate-intensity activity.

Some people like to do vigorous activity because it gives them about the same health benefits in half the time. If you haven’t been very active lately, however, increase your physical activity level slowly. If you have a history of a chronic disease, consider telling your doctor you are planning to increase your physical activity, including moving to more vigorous activity. You need to feel comfortable doing moderate-intensity activities before you move on to more vigorous ones. 

Physical activities to strengthen your muscles are recommended at least 2 days a week. Activities should work all the major muscle groups of your body—legs, hips, back, chest, abdomen, shoulders, and arms. Muscle-strengthening activities should be done in addition to your aerobic activity.

To gain health benefits, you need to do muscle-strengthening activities to the point where it’s hard for you to do another repetition without help. A repetition is one complete movement of an activity, like lifting a weight or doing a sit-up. Try to do 8-12 repetitions per activity, which counts as 1 set. Try to do at least 1 set of muscle-strengthening activities. To gain even more benefits, do 2 or 3 sets.

You can do activities that strengthen your muscles on the same or different days that you do aerobic activity—whatever works best for you.
There are many ways you can strengthen your muscles, whether it’s at home or the gym. You may want to try the following:

• Lifting weights
• Working with resistance bands
• Doing exercises that use your body weight for resistance (e.g., push-ups, sit-ups)
• Heavy gardening (e.g., digging, shoveling)
• Some forms of yoga