If you’re tired of spending an hour or more in the gym, or feeling like you’re slowly dying if you don’t get that 30-minute run in each day, have a seat on your comfy couch and read on:
Findings compiled from 194 different exercise studies involving 30 million people reveal that if you get your heart rate up for only 11 minutes a day, you pick up some major health benefits, including a significant reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death.
That’s right. Eleven minutes on the bike, treadmill, doing push-ups, etc., and you’re good to go.
This is especially good news for golfers, if you look back at a study done in the early 2000s (Broman). If you walk during your rounds of golf, the high-intensity threshold for exercise is reached 30 percent of the time in golfers 50 and older and 70 percent in golfers 75 and older. For you younger players (under 30), you only reach that threshold for 6 percent of the round. But do the math. If the average round takes four hours, that means you hit the mark for 14 minutes! You’re done.
Obviously, no one is saying you shouldn’t exercise more. The World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes of vigorous activity a week. But if you get those 11 minutes in, you reduce your chance of premature death by 25 percent and heart disease by 17 percent. Not bad.
