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⚙️ The 7 Fitness Gears

This article draws inspiration from How to Money’s “7 Money Gears” of personal finance. They are a fantastic resource, and this “gear” concept is something I realized could be applied to other facets of life as well!

The concept, just like on a bike, is to start at gear 1 and work your way up to gear 7. And occasionally, you will downshift to lower gears, which is okay! You just generally want to cover your bases in this order and progress through as many gears as possible at any given point in time. 

Notice that the gears are verbs (e.g. save, pay off, fund, invest…). That’s the same for the seven fitness gears—they’re actions in numbers! You can fall back on the earlier gears and trust that you’re maintaining a solid foundation of fitness at any time. For example, if you’re traveling for a week and can’t keep up your regular routine, you can maintain great fitness just by sticking to the first couple gears.

Without any further ado, here they are:

1. 5,000–7,000 steps per day

2. 2 times per week strength training

3. 1 time per week intense cardio session

4. 10,000 steps per day

5. 150–300 minutes of moderate intensity cardio per week

6. 3–5 times per week strength training

7. Pursue your other fun fitness goals

Let’s dive into some details about each gear!

1. Take 5,000 to 7,000 steps per day

Movement is the foundation of physical fitness (please refer to the name of this newsletter). Living a sedentary life with minimal movement, on the other hand, is one of the worst things you can do for your health. If we were to partake in no intentional movement in a day, we could be taking a couple thousand or fewer steps per day. Five to seven thousand steps equals ~2.5–3.5 miles of daily movement. You can easily bump your activity up to this number with a 30-minute walk and some movement breaks.

Nowhere is there as much maximum impact for minimum effort than in simply increasing your daily movement and decreasing the time you spend sedentary. There’s virtually no aspect of health and fitness that won’t improve! 

2. Strength train 2 times per week

Beyond baseline activity, incorporating resistance training just a couple times per week can have a profound impact on your health. This is another “20% of the effort gets you 80% of the results” scenario!

If you’re less experienced or older, it could even take the form of yoga, pilates, or using resistance bands. For most of us, bodyweight exercises or using weights to train will be the best option. If you can hit every body part or major muscle group about twice per week, you’ll reap most of the incredible benefits! Your resistance training can be tailored to strength, hypertrophy, or power, depending on your needs and goals.

3. One intense cardio session per week

Things have gotta get tough at some point. Whether this comes in the form of HIIT or a more classic VO2max session (4–12 minute of all out effort, possibly repeated), it’s both important and incredibly beneficial to get our sweat on and really elevate your heart rate near max. Just doing this once per week can have profound effects on your VO2max, the primary marker of cardiovascular fitness and one of the greatest fitness correlates to longevity. Push it!

4. Take 10,000 steps per day

Notice that we’re back to daily movement! While you incur major benefits at 5k–7k steps per day, the benefits continue to accrue up to 10k steps and beyond. 

Take note that working toward gears 2 and 3 could contribute to the steps in this gear 4. If you can get around 10,000 steps every day, that means you’re putting in real intentional time and work to incorporate movement into your day.

5. Accumulate 150 to 300 minutes of moderate intensity cardiovascular activity per week

This is what the CDC and AHA recommend all adults get for their health. Thirty minutes five days a week, ~40 minutes four times a week, or 50 minutes three times a week will keep your heart in great health. Accumulating 300 minutes is recommended if you’re currently working toward a weight loss or endurance goal. 

• Note that there are different definitions for “moderate” intensity, but generally, exercising at 50-70% of your max heart rate would be considered moderate.

  • Most of us can reach this intensity just with a brisk walk!

• If your activity is “vigorous” (70%+ of max HR), you can cut the recommended exercise time in half: 75-150 minutes.

While these numbers sound intimidating, it doesn’t only have to come from one form of activity, such as jogging. This can come from brisk afternoon walks, playing with the kids, heavy gardening, a pickup basketball game, and other favorite everyday activities that get your heart rate up.

6. Resistance train 3–5 times per week

If you can lift weights more than just a couple times per week, you’ll be able to change up your body part split. Instead of doing a full body split twice a week but not having time to hit any body part with much volume, going at a frequency of three to five times per week allows you to give more time and volume to each muscle group. With this frequency, you can incorporate more exercise variety and volume to form a more well-rounded program that boosts your gains!

7. Pursue your other fun fitness goals!

Wow. If you’ve got gears 1–6 covered, you’re going to be in stellar shape! At this point (and honestly sooner, but this had to go somewhere), you should feel absolutely free to pursue any fun activity and fitness goals you have! 

But keep this in mind—perhaps pursuing the activities you love in gear 7 can help you check off the boxes of gears 1–6, too! Whether it’s evening pickleball, a long hike, a pickup game, dance lessons, or anything else, these activities can help you accumulate the minutes, intensities, and steps associated with earlier gears. 

Remember that the gears are intended to progress from one to the next. Theoretically, you shouldn’t be doing gear 6 if you’re not doing gear 1. That will ensure you check off the most important boxes and keep priorities in order.

• But these are not hard rules; it’s just some guide I made up!

• If it works better in your lifestyle to be at gears 1, 2, and 7 at any given time, more power to you. That’s certainly better than not doing what you enjoy.

A note: You may not see much mobility/flexibility in here and are wondering where it is. In my opinion, which is based on research and experience, I think mobility should be incorporated into most warm-ups and cool downs, and particularly through resistance training through a full range of motion. If you can do all that, your mobility will take care of itself. 

So there ya have it! The 7 Fitness Gears! 

How does that land with you? Sound reasonable or am I asking too much? What am I missing, or what did we focus too much on? I’d love to hear your feedback!

Personally, I’ve pretty much always got gears 1 and 2 covered. When I’m grooving in my routine, gears 3 and 4 are in place as well. It’s after that when things can get iffy. If I’m on top of my game, I’ll be working all the way through gear 7, but I do find that #5 tends to be an obstacle for me sometimes.

I hope you enjoy this perspective around fitness priorities, and I hope this mental framework is helpful when you’re feeling that “What should I even do? Where do I start?” kinda feeling. Now you’ve got some guidance as to what you can prioritize!

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Take stock of your current state. What gear are you at on the average day? Can you make sure Gear 1 and maybe Gear 2 are always covered?

Level 2: Work your way up the gears. What’s the highest gear you can sustain on an average week?

Level 3: Full throttle, baby. If you’re riding in gear 7, you’re cruising to incredible health! Enjoy it!

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

Interested in becoming a sponsor? Know someone else who might be? I’d love to get to know you and/or your business and see how we can partner together. Reply to this email!

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Snooze: Dr. Huberman has begun a 6-part podcast series on all things sleep. Boy, the first episode was full of so much good info. I learned a lot. Yes, it’s 3 hours, but yes, you can listen on 1.6x speed like I did, and it’s not so bad.

• Indulge: I finally got a Ninja Creami! I’m going to try some protein ice cream recipes inspired by Marcus Filly this week. Will report back!

Till next time. If you liked this newsletter and want a “7 Nutrition/Diet Gears” version, do let me know!

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).