The Conversational Pace
Build the fitness that best predicts how long you stay well.
Most people who do any cardio at all do it at one speed: hard enough to be unpleasant, not hard enough to be training. It is the worst of both and it is why so many people quit.
Cardiorespiratory fitness is one of the strongest predictors of long-term health that you can actually change, and most of the base is built at an easy pace rather than a punishing one. Easy work is what you can accumulate week after week without needing to recover from it, and volume at an easy pace is what raises the ceiling.
Find the pace you can talk at
You should be able to hold a full sentence without gasping. If you cannot, you are going too fast. Most people find this humiliatingly slow at first.
Thirty to forty-five minutes, twice a week
Walking uphill, easy cycling, easy jogging, rowing. The activity matters far less than the pace and the consistency.
Keep it boring on purpose
The temptation is to push because it feels too easy to be doing anything. Resist it. The point is work you can repeat, not work you have to recover from.
Add time before you add speed
Build to an hour at the easy pace before you think about going faster. Speed added to a thin base is where injuries come from.
Go deeper
What the paid version adds to this one.
How to find your own easy pace without buying a heart-rate monitor
How to combine this with lifting without one wrecking the other
When to add intensity, and the two formats worth using
A filmed twelve-week build from nothing to an hour