- Aim for 250 minutes weekly: about 150 minutes moderate cardio and 100 minutes resistance training as a minimum to improve health.
- Strength training 90 to 120 minutes weekly lowers mortality and disease risk; women often gain equal or greater benefit, so lift regularly.
- Practical plan: about 35 minutes daily split into 20 minutes cardio and 15 minutes strength; consistency beats perfection, start where you are.
When a patient asks me what they should actually be doing to improve and maintain physical health, I don’t hand them a vague “exercise more.” I give them a number: 250 minutes a week. That works out to roughly 35 minutes a day. It’s specific on purpose, because a target you can picture is a target you can hit.
I want to be clear about what these numbers are. They’re minimum recommendations, not a ceiling. If you already have a training plan you love and it asks more of you, keep doing it. But if you don’t have a regular routine in place, this is a very reasonable place to start, and it’s enough to move the outcomes that matter.
Here is how that number breaks down, and just as important, where the science is settled and where I’m making a clinical judgment call.
The cardio half: about 150 minutes a week
Of those 250 minutes, roughly 150 go to moderate cardiovascular activity. This is the most established number in the whole prescription. It is the threshold built into both the U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines and the World Health Organization’s guidance, and it tracks with consistent reductions in cardiovascular disease risk.
I want to be honest about what that number is and isn’t: 150 minutes is a pragmatic public-health target, not a biological cliff. The dose-response curve is curvilinear, which means the biggest gains come early, when someone goes from doing essentially nothing to doing something. Some researchers have argued that meaningful benefit shows up well below 150 minutes and that the round number was chosen partly for consistency and messaging. So if 150 feels out of reach, start lower. The worst dose is zero.
The strength half: about 100 minutes a week
The other piece is resistance training, and this is where I think the average prescription undersells what matters. Strength work is what packs the punch for lowering all-cause mortality and blood pressure.
The newest and largest evidence points right at this dose. A 30-year analysis of nearly 147,000 people, published in June 2026 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that 90 to 119 minutes a week of strength training was the sweet spot for survival: 13 percent lower risk of death from any cause, 19 percent lower from cardiovascular disease, and 27 percent lower from neurological disease, with no additional benefit above 120 minutes a week. An earlier, smaller meta-analysis had put the peak closer to 60 minutes per week, so as the data have grown, the optimal dose has drifted upward into exactly the range I prescribe.
That study matters for one more reason: most of the people in it were women. More than 115,000 of the participants came from the Nurses’ Health Study cohorts, and they entered at an average age of 54, right in the thick of the menopausal transition. This is evidence drawn largely from the population I’m writing for.
So 100 minutes isn’t a number I rounded up to. It sits in the middle of the best-supported range, and it also covers the goals mortality data alone doesn’t capture: strength, physical function, and blood pressure, which is what the healthy-aging consensus is built around.
Two honest caveats: The 2026 study is observational and based on self-reported activity, with no data on how hard people trained, so it shows association, not proof. And the benefit isn’t identical across every outcome: cancer mortality in that analysis was lowest at very low volumes, one to 59 minutes a week, not at the 90-to-120 range. More strength training is not automatically better for everything.
If you’re a woman, lift
This is the part I most want women to hear. Across multiple large cohorts, women tend to get equal or greater benefit from physical activity at the same dose as men, and sometimes at a lower dose. In a major analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, women reached similar survival benefits at about half the weekly volume of moderate-to-vigorous activity and kept gaining at higher volumes. An NHANES analysis found the same pattern: women achieved significant risk reductions at lower activity levels than men. For weight training specifically, the mortality benefit in older adults appears larger in women than in men.
There’s also a blood-pressure signal that seems to favor women. In a large Korean cohort, resistance training was linked to lower hypertension risk in women but not in men, with three to four sessions a week giving roughly a 14 percent risk reduction.
A fair caveat: The strongest sex-difference evidence is about total physical activity and mortality, not resistance training in isolation. The resistance-specific findings are real but rest on fewer studies. So the defensible claim is that women get equal or greater benefit at a given dose, not that lifting is uniquely a women’s intervention. Both sexes benefit substantially. Strength adaptations themselves are broadly similar between men and women, with women often showing greater relative gains while men gain more in absolute terms.
How to actually split your 35 minutes
Here’s the part patients remember. If you can give me about 35 minutes a day, divide it like this: roughly 20 minutes of moderate cardio and roughly 15 minutes of strength. Over a week, that’s about 150 minutes of cardio and 100 minutes of resistance training, which is the whole prescription.
Notice that the prescription deliberately includes both. This isn’t hedging. The combination genuinely outperforms either type alone. A network meta-analysis of 81 randomized controlled trials in adults with overweight or obesity found that combined aerobic and resistance training was the single most effective approach for improving cardiometabolic health, ahead of endurance, interval, or resistance training on their own. The mortality data points the same way: in the 2026 cohort study, the lowest risk of death belonged to the people doing both at high levels, not those who picked one. Cardio and strength are not competing options. They cover different ground, and you want both.
You don’t need a gym membership or a perfect program. Time-efficient training works: two to four sessions a week, a handful of compound movements, and sets in the eight to 12-rep range are enough to drive real strength and function gains for most adults. Consistency beats optimization.
That’s the prescription. 250 minutes, split between cardio and strength, anchored to a daily habit you can actually keep. Remember, this is a floor and not a finish line. If you’re already doing more, wonderful. If you’re starting from nothing, this is a very reasonable place to begin. Most of the benefit isn’t in the fine print — it’s in showing up.
Remember, these recommendations aren't about chasing perfection. They're about investing in your future health, one workout at a time. If you'd like help getting started, our free 28-day Pause Strong Challenge is designed specifically for women in midlife who want to build strength, improve metabolic health, and create habits that last. We'd love to help you take that next step.
This is educational content, not individual medical advice. Talk to your own clinician before starting a new exercise program, especially if you have existing cardiovascular conditions.
This was originally published on Dr. Mary Claire Haver's Substack. Read the original post here and subscribe to her newsletter.
