Is the answer for health always “more”?

The regular participation in physical activity through resistance and endurance type exercise is associated with improvements in multiple physiological systems and is associated with improvement in markers of health. There are well established fitness principles for increasing aerobic capacity, muscular strength, muscular size, endurance, etc. The effectiveness of exercise protocols is sometimes judged based on whether the protocols are capable of improving those aforementioned outcomes. What is less discussed is whether it is necessary to emphasize “improvement” when the goal is maximizing the health span. Objectives: To discuss whether there is a reason to progress beyond the minimum guidelines when the goal is health. Design and Methods: Narrative Review. Results: A review of recent papers on physical activity provide a compelling case for the importance of physical activity for reducing morbidity and premature mortality. It is clear that doing even a little bit of physical activity is likely to be beneficial for health. Some work has also found additional improvement beyond the minimum recommended guidelines. Conclusions: Meeting the guidelines for physical activity is associated with numerous beneficial health outcomes. The ultimate goal is for individuals to maintain sufficient amounts of physical activity across their entire life span. For some, pushing themselves in exercise could be the motivation they need to maintain an exercise protocol for decades. For others, always having to push the boundaries is a deterrent and the goal could be to focus on achieving participation in the behavior rather than a focus on some change in outcome (e.g. strength).