Why Vigorous Exercise Matters More Than a Step Count
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In this clip from Dr. Rhonda Patrick's appearance on The School of Greatness, she argues that cardiorespiratory fitness tells more about training quality than a fixed step count. Walking remains useful, but a slow 10,000-step day may not create the aerobic stress needed to improve VO2 max. Short bouts of vigorous exercise provide a time-efficient way to add that missing intensity.
Dr. Patrick uses the Dallas Bed Rest study to show how quickly inactivity can reduce aerobic capacity. In the five men followed for four decades, the proportional decline in VO2 max after 40 years was comparable with the decline produced by three weeks of strict bed rest when they were young. The small historic sample makes the result vivid rather than universal, but it demonstrates how strongly the cardiovascular system responds to use and disuse. [1]
The practical goal is to combine ordinary movement with exercise that meaningfully raises heart rate. A brisk hill, stairs, intervals, cycling, or a compact bodyweight circuit can provide vigorous minutes without requiring hours of walking. Dr. Patrick presents this as a complement to daily steps and resistance training, with progressive intensity matched to current fitness and health.
This clip is excerpted, with permission, from Dr. Rhonda Patrick's appearance on The School of Greatness. Thank you to The School of Greatness for allowing us to share it.
- ^ McGavock, J. M.; Hastings, J. L.; Snell, P. G.; McGuire, D. K.; Pacini, E. L.; Levine, B. D., et al. (2009). A Forty-Year Follow-Up Of The Dallas Bed Rest And Training Study: The Effect Of Age On The Cardiovascular Response To Exercise In Men The Journals Of Gerontology: Series A 64A, 2.
Lewis Howes: Part of me was worried, like, if you're training too hard, does that make you die younger? You know, it's like if you've been training so hard since you're, like, whatever, 12 or 15, and you're going for 20 years for that elite level. But I guess you're really optimizing your body too for performance.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Your body is very adaptable. And so the thing is, I'm sure there's the outliers that that is true. But if you, again, look at studies that are published looking at generally, like, you know, average population of, like, there's a French Olympian athlete study, and then there's, like, the— there's another Olympian athlete study that looks at multiple different Olympic athletes from around the world.
And then just looking at some of the studies looking at people that have an elite level of cardiorespiratory fitness, right?
Lewis Howes: Yes.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: So that would be your ability to take in oxygen during maximal exercise as measured by VO2 max. There's studies showing that people that are in the elite level, so these are the elite athletes, like, they're in, like, the top 2.3%
Lewis Howes: Wow.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Of VO2 max have an 80% reduction in all-cause mortality compared to people at the low end, like the people with low VO2 max, 80%. And what's even more mind-blowing is that, first of all, the elite people, so people that are like, again, these are the athletes, if you compare them to people that are like me, like high, I have a high VO2 max for my age, I'm not elite.
Like, they still had a 20% lower all-cause mortality than— so it seems like there's no limit, right? You keep going up. But the people with the low VO2 max, those people had a mortality that was comparable or worse to people that were smokers, had hypertension, diabetes.
Lewis Howes: Come on.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I know. It's because being sedentary, like not being physically active, is a disease. It is a disease. I think it should be talked about as being a disease because it has the same mortality risk as people that are not— I mean, people that have diseases that we identify as disease, right? Like hypertension, diabetes.
Lewis Howes: Sure. What do you consider as sedentary? What is a sedentary lifestyle?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Good question. Typically, I mean, what I'm talking about is the context of studies.
And so typically what would be defined as a sedentary lifestyle is someone that has no leisure time physical activity, so they don't play tennis or pickleball or soccer or basketball or baseball or any type of leisure type of, you know, hockey, whatever, fill in the blank. Kickball, whatever it is.
Lewis Howes: Kickball, handball.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah. So, or, you know, they don't go to the gym, they don't run, so they don't identify themselves as taking time to engage in some type of physical exercise. They get up, they go take a shower, they walk into To get food, whatever. But they go to their school or they go to their office, but that's it. That's it. And that would be considered sedentary.
Lewis Howes: They're getting, like, maybe 1,000 steps a day, 2,000 steps a day maybe? What is that like? Yeah.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I mean, it depends on if, you know, maybe they are walking. If they walk their dog more, they're getting more steps, you know? I mean, I think that's better than nothing. It's not a brisk walk. It's not like a speed walk. But most of the time, people walking their dogs are not doing brisk walks.
Lewis Howes: Yeah, they're stopping, they're moving on.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yeah, yeah. So probably, I would say that—
Lewis Howes: I wonder if scientists actually ask them, do you walk your dog?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I don't know, that might be considered sedentary. I would call it sedentary, to be honest.
Lewis Howes: Right, because it's not a brisk— it's not an intense activity.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. And I do think that 10,000 steps should be replaced with, like, the 10 minutes of, like, vigorous exercise, like more— like a day. What do you need a day? 10 minutes of vigorous exercise.
That's what I think.
Lewis Howes: Not 10,000 steps.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No, not 10,000 steps.
Lewis Howes: Really?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes, because it comes down to, like, you can walk slow. Right? And it also takes— you know how long it takes?
Lewis Howes: It takes a long time.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It takes a long time. It takes, like, hours.
Lewis Howes: Yeah, like an hour and a half or something. Like, it's not, you know—
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: and I just told you that, you know, 10 bodyweight squats every 45 minutes for an 8-hour, you know, workweek is better at glucose regulation than a 30-minute walk.
Lewis Howes: Wow.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right? So I do think that the 10,000 steps a day should be replaced with 10 minutes of vigorous exercise. I personally feel that way. But, like, the sedentary aspect, you know, we're talking about being sedentary. There was a classic study that was— Dr. Ben Levine, he was on my podcast.
He's really the leader in how the heart adapts to stress, whether it's exercise or space or whatever. He's, like, a juggernaut in the exercise physiology world.
Lewis Howes: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: And his mentors had done a study when he was a young boy, when they took these, like, 10 guys and measured, you know, their cardiorespiratory fitness and a variety of cardiovascular endpoints. And then they put them under bed rest for 3 weeks. So you're talking about what's being sedentary. At the extreme level of being sedentary, we're talking these guys were in bed for 3 weeks using— they used a catheter to go to the bathroom.
Lewis Howes: No way.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Like, there— yeah, no, there was—
Lewis Howes: That would drive me nuts.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: No, it totally would. But these— there's 10 people, they're people that
Lewis Howes: They must have got paid a lot of money for that.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I don't know. That's— I don't know. I agree with you. 3 weeks. 3 weeks.
Lewis Howes: Couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Couldn't even get up to go to the bathroom. This is the extreme. They wanted to really understand what full sedentarism did.
Lewis Howes: What happened?
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Oh, so their cardiorespiratory fitness was just— it went— it was just shot to the ground. I mean, it was terrible after 3 weeks. But here's the real kicker. So Ben Levine was a young boy when this was done. This was done by his mentors, okay? You know, fast forward 30 years, okay? They found these same 10 guys. They found these same 10 guys, okay? Now, here's Ben. This is Ben being involved in this study. They get these same guys and they measure what 30 years— because they have all their data from before the bed rest, right?
They measure what 30 years of aging does on their cardiovascular system. And do you want to know what is insane? 30 years of aging was not worse than what 3 weeks of bed rest did.
Lewis Howes: Oh my gosh. That's crazy.
Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It was not worse than 3 weeks of bed rest in terms of their cardiorespiratory fitness, which I personally think is one of the best markers for longevity that we can measure.
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