Why You Should Be Doing More Moderate Intensity Workouts

It feels good to push the body to the point of exhaustion. Leaving the gym or a fitness class soaked with sweat is a deeply satisfying manifestation of the endorphins humming around in your brain.

There’s no doubt that an all-out effort is good for your health. But if you’re spending all your time giving 110% to your workouts, you’re missing out on the benefits a more moderate intensity workout could give you.

What’s Considered “Moderate Intensity”?

Elizabeth Bailey, an exercise science professor at Elon University, says that in general, moderate intensity exercise is defined as an exercise intensity of between 64 and 76 percent of your heart rate maximum.

“Using perceived exertion on a scale from zero to 10, with zero being no effort and 10 being the hardest physical activity you’ve ever done, moderate intensity exercise is about a five or a six. You should be able to still hold a conversation while doing it,” Bailey says.

“Intensity is really just defined by how hard your muscles need to work relative to their maximum capacity,” says Dominic Angelino, CPT, an exercise scientist and personal trainer at Trainer Academy. While different exercise zones are typically talked about in the context of cardio-based exercises, Angelino says they can be applied to weight lifting too. “Most weight training exercises can be performed at any intensity, with the difference being based on how much weight you’re using. If you’re using a weight that only allows you to complete five reps, it is a high intensity set because the weight you’re lifting is near your max capacity. If you do that same exact exercise with a weight that you can complete 12 reps with, it’s a moderate intensity set because your muscles aren’t working near their max capacity,” he explains.

Jason Boynton, PhD, an exercise scientist and cycling coach, says that most workouts are a mix of different intensity levels; it would be rare to stay in one “zone” throughout the entirety of your workout. “Exercise intensity is a flowing spectrum. It is a lot like temperature," he says. "Temperature is a continuum, but we understand there are regions on that continuum that are hot, temperate, and cold. Similarly, exercise intensity is categorized into domains: extreme, severe, heavy, and moderate.”

Dr. Boynton says that all levels of exercise intensity (including low-intensity or active recovery) are beneficial. But, he says, if you approach every workout with the mindset that you’re going to give an all-out effort the entire time, your performance and wellbeing are going to suffer: “Chronic exercise at high intensities increases your risk of maladaptation. For example, the more intense an exercise gets, the more you are engaging type II muscle fibers [fast twitch muscles, that contract quickly and produce a lot of force for a short period of time] which aren’t as good at recovery as type I muscle fibers [slow twitch muscles, which contract slowly and are used for endurance]. If you are continually engaging type II muscle fibers, you risk not being able to recover and falling into a deeper fatigue—especially if you are doing the same exercise every day, like running, cycling, or swimming.” This is why, he says, the ideal routine has a mix of workouts that focus on exercising in the various intensity domains, and that you take rest days.

5 Benefits of Moderate Intensity Workouts

There are five key ways your health will benefit if you exercise at a moderate intensity level.

“When it comes to heart health, both vigorous and moderate intensity exercise help,” Angelino says. Because of this, he—and the other exercise scientists—recommend integrating both intensity levels into your workout.

Bailey explains that maintaining a moderate intensity exercise level makes the heart stronger and also improves blood flow. High intensity exercise does this too, but the point is that your workout doesn’t have to reach that intensity level for your heart to benefit. Dr. Boynton and Bailey both point out that most people don’t meet the bare minimum of recommended physical activity. They say that knowing a workout doesn’t have to be super intense can be motivating to those who aren’t working out at all. “People have a hard time sticking with their fitness goals long-term. This is because many people have a tendency to go all out from day one. If you take a more measured approach, you’ll have an easier time sticking to your fitness plans year after year,” Angelino says.

If weight loss is one of your health goals, all three experts say that regular, moderate intensity exercise can help get you to where you want to be. “Moderate intensity exercise leads to burning fewer calories per minute than higher intensity exercise. However, you can do more overall moderate intensity exercise. This allows most people to burn a greater overall amount of calories with moderate intensity exercise than high intensity,” Angelino says.

If you want to lose weight, ideally your workout will include both high intensity and moderate intensity levels. Bailey points to an update from the American College of Sports Medicine on the role of exercise in obesity treatment that says exactly that. One study that compared 12 weeks of high-intensity interval training to moderate-intensity continuous training showed they had similar weight loss outcomes. With this in mind, all three experts say that what matters most is consistency—and that’s often easier to maintain with moderate intensity workouts.

Dr. Boynton and Bailey both say that the relationship between moderate intensity exercise and mental health is complicated (because it’s tricky to accurately measure mental health, for one), but the scientific research in this area, which is vast, suggests a connection. There are a few different reasons for this. One is because it supports overall brain health, which affects moods. Angelino explains that moderate intensity exercise results in better blood flow to the brain because the heart is pumping blood out faster than when the body is at rest. This supports everything the brain is involved in, including cognition, memory, and yes, mental health.

Angelino also points out that completing a workout leads to a sense of accomplishment, which can also make you feel good. A new study even showed that regular moderate intensity exercise can help reduce workplace burnout, partly for this reason.

While in graduate school, Angelino conducted research about the connection between moderate intensity exercise and chronic pain management. While he found that the outcome largely depends on the source of one’s chronic pain, he also discovered that for certain types of pain, it can be effective. “The two big advantages that moderate intensity exercise has over high intensity exercise when addressing pain is that moderate intensity exercise is less likely to make the pain worse, and you can perform moderate intensity exercise at a higher volume. Both are important because doing so much that you re-injure tissues in your body moves you in the opposite direction of where you want to be going,” he says.

Angelino explains that being able to exercise for a longer period of time allows for more blood to be delivered to the tissues in the body you’re targeting, which improves muscular endurance. “This is important for [managing] some of the most common sources of chronic pain,” he says. Scientific research backs this up, showing that moderate intensity exercise can help with managing chronic pain types including rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, low-back pain, and neck pain.

Regular, moderate intensity exercise changes the body at a cellular level, which increases lifespan. Bailey explains that when muscles extract oxygen during moderate intensity exercise, it increases the amount of mitochondria, which are responsible for producing cells’ energy. We naturally lose mitochondria as we age, so when more are formed during exercise, it slows the rate of cellular aging.

It bears repeating that high, moderate, and low intensity exercise are all important. So is complete rest and recovery. Working out doesn’t require an all-or-nothing mentality. In fact, that shouldn’t be how you approach it. If you’ve been skipping moderate intensity and going hard every single workout the entire time, consider this a sign to rethink your approach.