Just What is Vigorous Exercise or Play?

Ever since a March study highlighted the importance of moderate-to-vigorous play in keeping children from becoming overweight or obese, several readers have wondered how to decide what exactly is moderate or vigorous exercise.

The simplest method, if you don’t have an actigraph or access to a physiology lab, is the talk test.

If you can easily sing while exercising, that’s a light level of activity.

If you’re lungs are working too hard to sing, but you can carry on a conversation while exercising, that’s a moderate level of activity.

And if you can’t say more than a few words at a time, that’s a vigorous level of activity.

Your body can sustain light to moderate activity for a long time. Vigorous activity is, by definition, something that you can practically do only in short spurts—perhaps 15 to 20 minutes—before you need to rest.

Vigorous activity helps keep your heart in shape, as well as keeping the weight off. As always, check with your doctor first before starting a new exercise routine if you have a serious cardiovascular or respiratory condition.

For folks who are into numbers, you can also measure your activity level with what’s called the Borg Relative Perceived Exertion (RPE) scale. (The older version goes from 6 to 20, while the more recent one is a simpler 0-to-10-point scale.)

"The good thing about the RPE scale is that it makes you listen to your body," says Miriam Nelson, director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition at Tufts University in Boston. Brisk walking, she notes, might be vigorous for one person while it takes a pretty fast run for another to become winded.

Don’t get discouraged if you can’t fit a lot of vigorous exercise into your life. You can still build up your stamina and maintain your figure with plenty of moderate activity. You may also suffer fewer injuries as a result.

Source: Measuring Physical Activity (CDC website), accessed on April 20, 2007

Update: See also these real-life examples of vigorous activity.