NEW YORK (CNN) – According to a new study released Tuesday, a history of consistently being active is strongly associated with a reduced risk of severe COVID-19.
The Kaiser Permanente study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, looked at nearly 50,000 adults with COVID-19. The study found that those who met the goal of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services physical activity guidelines – of at least 150 minutes per week of moderate to vigorous physical activity – significantly lowered the incidence of hospitalization, ICU admission, and death due to Covid19 disease.
The guidelines, which are the same as the World Health Organization guidelines used by many countries, are based on research to support the ability of physical activity to boost immune function, reduce systemic inflammation, improve lung and cardiovascular health and improve mental health.
With all the benefits of regular exercise, it is perhaps not surprising that physical activity that meets these guidelines would also reduce the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. Indeed, acute COVID disease is just one of many potential negative effects of sedentary behavior, a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, stroke and some cancers.
To date, the risk factors for severe COVID-19, as identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, include old age, being male, and having underlying comorbidities, such as diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.
Many of the listed risk factors are difficult – if not impossible – to reduce, so it’s understandable if you feel powerless over some of them. However, the results of this new study could arguably add inactivity to the top of that list. Since inactivity is a modifiable risk factor, you can probably control it! Read on to learn how.
To reach the training threshold of 150 minutes over the course of a week, you need to exercise a little less than 22 minutes daily. For someone who doesn’t exercise regularly, that might sound a bit overwhelming. But 22 minutes a day doesn’t have to mean signing up for a new gym membership or completely renewing your schedule.
With the right strategies, you can achieve your daily exercise goal with very little disruption to your lifestyle, which is important to maintain your new activity level.
Here are five practical, sustainable strategies to help you be active for 22 minutes a day.
Important Note: Before starting a new exercise program, consult your physician. If you experience pain, stop immediately.
Take regular walks
Because walking is so accessible, it is easy to estimate its benefits. However, the reality is that a brisk walk is one of the most underrated, health-promoting, fat-burning exercises available to mankind.
You probably already walk a little bit every day. Maybe you walk to your letterbox or from your car to your office. Would it be possible for you to take a five or ten minute walk around the neighborhood before receiving the mail or entering your office?
Do you have a dog that you walk every day? Can you add time to your daily dog walks?
If you are not already taking regular walks, is there an activity that you enjoy and would like to do more often that you could combine with your walk, such as talking on the phone with a friend or family member or listening to podcasts, audiobooks or music? Combining an activity that you enjoy with your walk will make it something you love to look forward to more often and make it easier to add walking to your daily schedule.
2. Practice short jumps of activity
The physical activity guidelines do not specify that you should exercise in large amounts of time every day. What’s important is that you hit the 150-minute goal every week. You can divide your activities into any time frame that is most manageable for your lifestyle.
For people with more sedentary careers, it may be easier to deal with shorter spurts of exercise. If you split 22 minutes into smaller blocks of time during the day, you’d be surprised how quickly that time flies.
What if you did six short four-minute spurts of exercise? After 24 minutes you have two minutes left. The same goes for eight bouts of just three minutes of exercise.
If this sounds good to you, read this article for specific ways to exercise for a few minutes every hour all day long.
3. Work smarter, no longer
When it comes to training, the standard belief is that we need at least an hour a day. A 2016 study, among others, led many people to believe that the ideal daily exercise goal was 60 to 75 minutes. More recent research, however, debunked those earlier studies and found that they were based on self-reported data that was flawed in that people incorrectly remembered their actual activity levels.
Exercising 22 minutes a day is more than enough to hit the 150-minute weekly threshold. An effective, heart-healthy way to get to those minutes is with a quick interval workout that consists of four rounds of five exercises that last one minute each. These can include body weight exercises such as push-ups, squats, lunges, hip bridges, and jumping jacks. Add a few minutes of heat up and cool down and you’ll easily hit your 22-minute mark.
Read more about interval training here.
Return to play
Did you play sports as a child? What were your favorite outdoor activities? By returning to the playful activities of your childhood, you can bring more exercise into your life in a fun and stimulating way.
If you played basketball in school, could you start again by participating in an adult league or by finding a group that regularly plays fetch games? Maybe you started martial arts as a kid but never made it to your black belt. What is stopping you now? Is there a recreational activity that you and your partner or a close friend could do together, such as tennis, golf, or cycling?
Or maybe you have children who play sports yourself. Could you practice with them? If they are smaller, playing games like tag or hopscotch will get your blood pumping as you spend quality time together. Read this for more ideas about exercising as a family.
5. Track your activity
Do you really know how much moderate to vigorous activity you are getting every day? Like the people in the studies I mentioned above who mis-remembered and underreported their exercise activity, you could ignore your own activity level.
There are numerous wearable technology options to track your activity. You may even be wearing one now. Whether you use technology or an old-fashioned pen and paper, when we monitor our activity, we not only keep a more accurate record, we also go the extra mile in personal accountability.
Responsibility helps us stay on track with fitness goals. A recent study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that people walk nearly an extra mile a day when using an activity tracker on their phone or watch. And the study participants who had fitness trackers that provided exercise prompts did even more.
No matter how you track your fitness – with wearable technology or simply by keeping a diary – recording your progress will help you stay on track.
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