The Secret Power of Your… Minimum.

Good morning, Sensemakers!

We all have great intentions for our day. And then real life happens.

That’s OK, if you have a plan.

I am someone who does push-ups every day.

To call myself that, I have to do push-ups every single day.

Notice that I did not attach a number to that description. The important part is every single day.

Most days I do 30. That is my optimum.

Around my birthday, I do one push-up for every year of my age. This game gets harder as I approach 60. When I fail, I will find another way to keep it interesting and challenging.

So yes, my optimum is 30 push-ups a day.

But can you guess my minimum?

Yes, that is right. One is almost nothing, and I cannot recall ever stopping there. But on the worst days, when life gets in the way, I can still get down on the floor and defend that part of me:

The Doych who does push-ups every single day.

What is your minimum?

We love optimums.

The perfect number of steps. The perfect strength program. Zone 2. VO2 max. The perfect weekly split.

And there is nothing wrong with pursuing better.

But an optimal program that disappears completely when life gets difficult has a weakness we rarely measure.

It is fragile.

So perhaps we need two exercise prescriptions, not one.

Three things worth understanding

1. Why does this matter? Zero and a little are surprisingly far apart.

For substantial health benefits, the World Health Organization recommends adults accumulate 150 to 300 minutes of moderate aerobic activity per week, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening activity on two or more days.

Those are useful targets.

But there is another part of the WHO guidance that deserves just as much attention:

☂︎ Read the WHO guidelines

And the research helps explain why.

A large 2023 meta-analysis examined 196 articles covering more than 30 million participants and outcomes including cardiovascular disease, cancer and premature death.

The relationship was not a simple straight line.

The largest relative differences in risk appeared near the lower end of the activity curve. Even levels below the recommended target were associated with meaningful benefits compared with inactivity.

☂︎ Read the study

This does not mean ten minutes is just as good as a complete exercise program.

It means something much more useful:

The choice is not always optimum or failure.

There is valuable territory in between.

2. Where am I? Show me your worst week.

If I asked, “How much do you exercise?” you might describe your normal routine.

Three strength sessions. Two runs. Tennis on Saturday.

Instead, open your calendar and look at the last four weeks.

Find the worst one.

The week with the flight, deadline, sick child, terrible sleep or endless meetings.

Now ask:

Not what you intended to do.

Not what your program said.

What did you actually do?

If the answer is nothing, that is useful information.

You may have an optimum exercise program.

But you don’t yet have a minimum.

3. How can I improve? Build the floor.

Researchers have asked a question similar to ours:

When time for exercise becomes limited, how little training can someone do and still maintain physical performance?

A 2021 review found that endurance performance could sometimes be maintained for up to 15 weeks with two sessions per week, or substantially less training volume, provided intensity was maintained.

Younger populations could sometimes maintain strength and muscle size for months with one strength session per week and one set per exercise, again while maintaining intensity.

Older adults may require more to preserve muscle size. These findings are not a universal minimum exercise prescription.

☂︎ Read the review

And there is an important distinction here:

Your minimum is not your weekly aspiration. It is what remains when your normal plan becomes temporarily impossible.

So I don’t want to give you the minimum exercise program.

I want you to create your minimum.

Write down two versions of your exercise week:

Maybe your minimum is one short strength session.

Maybe it is two brisk 15-minute walks and a few sets of basic strength exercises.

Maybe it is putting on your shoes and walking around the block.

The exact number matters less than the principle:

Make it small enough to survive your bad weeks.

Then, when life gives you more:

Making sense of it

There is a danger in talking about minimums.

They can easily become excuses.

“Doych said one workout is enough.”

No.

That is not what the science says or what I am suggesting.

Your minimum is not your new target.

Your optimum remains the direction. The minimum exists for weeks when the optimum becomes impossible.

Think of it as a floor beneath your exercise habit.

Most of the time, you should be well above it.

But when life gets messy, the floor is there.

Because the exercise program that matters most may not be the impressive one you can follow for six perfect weeks.

It may be the small one you can still follow six years from now.

Don’t start with your optimum. Find your minimum.

Making Sense provides general educational information and is not a substitute for individualized medical advice.