How to Build a Balanced Workout Routine That Fits Your Life

Building a balanced workout routine is primarily about what works for YOU! Like most healthy habits, if it’s convenient and valued by you, it’s more likely to happen.

The question most of us have about physical activity is no longer about whether exercise is good for us – we know it is. What’s harder to figure out is how we can exercise to gain the most benefit and when we’ll fit that into already busy schedules.

Adding Value

Knowing what the current research says about gaining the most benefit from exercise can add value (or the why) to your choice to prioritize physical activity. Here are some highlights that may help:

Study 1: Step count and walking pace

Researchers followed 64,743 middle-aged and older adults in the UK over time to examine how daily step counts and walking pace were associated with the risk of death from any cause (all-cause mortality, or ACM) and from cardiovascular disease (CVD). Participants wore wrist-worn activity monitors to track their movement and steps.

The results suggest that there may be more than one way to incorporate health-supporting walking into your day.

• For adults who were sedentary or taking fewer than 5,000 steps: Walking at a faster pace, measured in the study by cadence (steps per minute), was associated with substantially lower risk of death from any cause (ACM) and from CVD.
• Across all step-count groups: A faster walking pace was associated with lower risk of death from any cause (ACM), suggesting that the relationship between stepping pace and mortality wasn’t limited to people with lower step counts.
• For adults taking 5,000–7,500 steps: Accumulating more steps was associated with substantially lower risk of death from any cause (ACM) and from CVD, even at lower cadences.
• For people who were taking 7,500–10,000 steps: This level of daily activity was associated with the lowest risk of death from any cause (ACM) across the step-count groups.
• The bigger picture: The study suggests that both how many steps we take and how quickly we take them may matter.¹

Study 2: Resistance training and time spent training

Researchers analyzed data from 147,374 adults in three large, long-term U.S. health studies. Participants were followed for up to 30 years, with repeated reports of resistance training and aerobic activity. Researchers examined how the amount of resistance training was associated with the risk of death from any cause, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurological diseases.

While aerobic activity is well established as an important part of a healthy lifestyle, less is known about how much resistance training may be beneficial and whether it adds benefits beyond aerobic activity.

The results suggest that the amount of resistance training may matter, and that resistance training may provide additional benefits when combined with aerobic activity.

• For adults doing 90–119 minutes of resistance training per week: Compared with no resistance training, this amount was associated with:
  • 13% lower risk of death from any cause
  • 19% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease
  • 27% lower risk of death from neurological diseases

These associations remained after accounting for aerobic activity.

• For adults doing more than 120 minutes per week: Doing more resistance training was not associated with additional reductions in the risk of death from any cause, cardiovascular disease, or neurological diseases.
• For cancer mortality: The pattern was different; 1–59 minutes of resistance training per week was associated with a lower risk of death from cancer. Higher amounts were not associated with additional reductions in cancer mortality.
• The bigger picture: The study suggests that resistance training may add to the benefits associated with aerobic activity, and that the amount of resistance training associated with lower mortality may vary depending on the health outcome. Aerobic activity remains an important part of an overall active lifestyle.²

Creating Convenience

Knowing what can add value is important, but a balanced routine also has to fit into your life. Creating convenience can make it easier to get the benefits of physical activity when time is limited.

The good news is that some workout approaches are designed to make physical activity more time-efficient without requiring a longer workout. Research can help us understand which approaches may provide the most benefit.

Study 3: Exercise type and time efficiency

Researchers analyzed 4,331 adults with overweight or obesity from 81 randomized controlled trials. They compared five types of exercise:

1. Continuous endurance training: Steady-intensity aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, cycling, swimming, or using an elliptical machine.
2. Resistance training: Exercises that challenge muscles against resistance, such as free weights, weight machines, resistance bands, or your own bodyweight.
3. Combined training: Aerobic and resistance exercises performed consecutively during the same workout. For example, you might use an elliptical machine for the aerobic portion of a workout and then perform resistance exercises with weights or bands.
4. Hybrid-type training: A workout that combines aerobic and muscle-strengthening exercises within the same session, with the two types of exercise integrated throughout the workout, rather than performed separately.
5. Interval training: Alternating periods of higher- and lower-intensity aerobic exercise. For example, a workout might alternate faster-paced walking with easier-paced walking, or harder effort on an elliptical machine with easier recovery periods.³

Researchers examined how these approaches affected several measures of cardiometabolic health, including body composition, blood pressure, blood glucose and lipids, cardiorespiratory fitness, and muscular strength.

The results suggest that how exercise is structured may affect both the types of health benefits and the amount of time needed to achieve them.

• For overall cardiometabolic health: Combined training ranked highest overall. Hybrid-type training ranked second.
• For time efficiency: Hybrid-type training provided somewhat similar overall cardiometabolic benefits to combined training while requiring less exercise time.
• Across the measures studied: Interval training was also associated with benefits in several areas of cardiometabolic health, including body composition, glucose and lipid metabolism, blood pressure, and cardiorespiratory fitness, with relatively little exercise time.
• The bigger picture: The study suggests that combining different types of exercise within a workout or routine may provide broad health benefits while making efficient use of limited exercise time.³

Your Approach

The research highlighted in this article offers useful information about how different approaches to exercise may support health; but there’s no single routine that works for everyone. The most useful approach is one that fits your schedule, preferences, abilities, and the things you want to be able to do throughout your life.

Increasingly, the conversation around physical activity is expanding beyond simply adding years to life to also considering healthspan, or the years we can live with strength, independence, energy, and the ability to do the things that matter to us.⁴

That perspective can help put exercise into context. Exercise doesn’t have to be extreme to be meaningful.⁴ A brisk walk, a few resistance-training sessions each week, or a workout that combines different types of exercise can all have a place in a balanced routine.

As you think about your own approach, consider what you value, what fits realistically into your life, and how you can make physical activity something you can continue over time. The goal isn’t to find the perfect workout. It’s to find an approach that provides meaningful benefits and works for you.