What Is the Difference Between Physical Activity and Exercise?

Physical activity is any type of movement that requires us to contract our muscles. This includes our daily activities, such as gardening, walking, going up and down stairs, housework and everything else we do throughout the day. Exercise, while physical activity, is a specific form of it. It is a purposeful and planned form and we perform it with the intention of acquiring health benefits and increasing our fitness level. Exercise includes activities such as swimming, running, cycling and sports.

Basics of the Difference

Most of the physical activities we perform throughout the day are relatively light to moderate. While some of these activities can provide some health benefits if they are strenuous enough, most are not done at the intensity required to provide the benefits that exercise can provide. For example, while walking is a great way to stay healthy, running provides greater cardiovascular benefits. Another primary difference lies in the vigor and amount of time we perform the activity. We need to reach a certain intensity to achieve optimal health benefits and this is done by reaching our target heart rate through exercise.

What is Intensity?

When is it considered vigorous? If you cannot say a few words without needing to stop to catch a breath, you are working at a vigorous pace. For most people, an example of vigorous activity would be a singles game of tennis. It requires an incredible amount of exertion.

Physical Fitness Fundamentals

A solid exercise program should contain four primary fundamentals to improve four main areas of physical fitness. First is cardio-respiratory endurance. This is how well you are able to perform aerobic exercise, such as brisk walking, running, swimming, rowing, jogging, cycling or jumping rope. Once you meet an intensity goal, set a new one and work toward it. Keep challenging yourself by trying new activities.

Muscular endurance is the endurance of your muscles and this differs from strength. This is improved through calisthenics, such as swimming, running and weight training.

Muscular strength is how strong your muscles are. You can increase your strength by properly lifting weights. You can choose to use weight machines or free weights.

Flexibility of the fourth area of physical fitness. This is how flexible you are and you can increase your flexibility by performing regular stretching exercises. Pilates and yoga are often effective in increasing flexibility as well.

Resources

American Academy of Family Physicians: The Exercise Habit