What Is the 60% Fatigue Pacing Method?
The 60% Fatigue Pacing Method is a daily exercise system for people living with or beyond cancer.
On any given day, you work to around 60% of what you think you could manage at your current best. Not your best before diagnosis. Not your best last year. Your best right now, today.
That deliberate margin, the 40% you hold back, prevents the boom-and-bust cycle. The good-day push that leaves you wiped out for the next three days. The crash that feels like failure, but is actually just physics.
The method pairs that principle with a simple daily traffic light check-in: green, amber or red. Each morning, you check in honestly with your body, assign yourself a colour, and let the colour guide how much you do.
That is the whole system. Simple to understand. Worth trying for a week before you form an opinion.
Why fatigue pacing matters
Fatigue is the most common barrier to exercise after cancer. Not time. Not motivation. Fatigue.
More than 60% of the 2,000+ people who have taken the Nowercise CanMove Check name it as their main obstacle to moving. And the difficulty is almost never lack of willingness. It is not knowing what to do with a bad day.
On a good day, the temptation is to push. To make up for lost time. To prove something.
On a bad day, everything stops.
Then the good day costs three days to recover from. And the bad day confirms the fear that maybe exercise really is impossible right now. The cycle repeats.
The 60% Fatigue Pacing Method was built to break it.
How the 60% rule works
Work to 60% of your genuine best right now.
Not 80%. Not 100%. Sixty.
That margin is not timidity. It is the strategy. When you stay within your capacity, you recover well overnight. You feel capable of moving again the next day. Genuine consistency starts to build. That consistency, across weeks and months, produces results that no single hard session ever could.
Most people misjudge 60% at first. On a good day it feels like not enough. That feeling is the boom-bust cycle asking for permission. The method says no.
Stop before you are tired. Not when you are tired. Before.
For most people, this goes against every instinct. We are conditioned to push through, to finish what we started, to feel like we earned it. During cancer treatment, finishing a session feeling like you have something left in the tank is exactly the goal. It means you have not overdone it. It means tomorrow is still possible.
The daily traffic light check-in
Each day, before you move, ask yourself two questions.
How did yesterday’s effort land? How is my energy today?
Then give yourself a colour.
Green day. You are feeling relatively well. Your body has recovered from previous effort. Work to 60% of your current best. This is your movement day.
Amber day. Something is off. More fatigued than usual, a little under the weather, or yesterday is still showing up. Reduce activity by about half. Shorter, gentler, slower. Still moving, just much less.
Red day. Your body is asking you clearly not to push. Fatigue is high, or you are unwell, or a medical event has occurred. Rest. That is all.
A red day is not a failure. A red day is the system working.
Green days build. Red days protect. Both matter equally.
The challenge with the traffic light system is not understanding the colours. It is trusting them, especially when your head is telling you to push and your body is quietly asking you not to. Those are the moments when the method is doing exactly what it is designed to do.
The three phases of the method
The 60% Fatigue Pacing Method is not a permanent ceiling. It evolves as you do.
Phase 1: During active treatment
The 60% rule matters most here. Your body is under significant physiological stress. The priority is consistency, recovery and not crashing.
Work to 60% of your current capacity on green days. Pull back further on amber and red. Do not push beyond 60% even when you feel good, because treatment can create a false ceiling. You may feel better than you actually are on any given day. The next day is not worth finding out the hard way.
The goal during this phase is simple: keep moving. That is all. Even a little, even gently.
Phase 2: Early recovery
Treatment has finished, or is winding down. Your baseline is rising, often faster than you realise. What felt like 60% effort three months ago now feels like 40%. Your green days are greener. Your red days are less frequent.
This phase is about protecting against a very common mistake: the post-treatment surge. Many people feel a wave of energy and motivation when treatment ends and try to make up for lost time all at once. The method keeps that impulse from becoming a setback. Gradual and consistent will always outperform fast and unsustainable.
Phase 3: Building beyond
Energy is more reliable. Capacity is rising. You are capable of working harder, and sometimes that is exactly the right call.
The traffic light check-in still matters. The self-awareness still matters. But the destination has shifted from simply keeping moving to genuinely building fitness. On a genuine green day, 70% or 75% might be entirely appropriate. You use the method to calibrate yourself now, not to limit yourself.
The goal of the method
This is perhaps the most important thing: the 60% Fatigue Pacing Method exists to get you to a place where you no longer need it.
When someone has come through treatment, rebuilt their fitness and returned to active ordinary life, they may find they simply do not need to pace this way any more. They exercise because they enjoy it. They push when they feel like pushing and rest when they feel like resting. Their body and their judgement are back in alignment.
That is not the method failing. That is the method succeeding.
For some people, particularly those managing ongoing or long-term conditions, the pacing principles will remain useful indefinitely. For others, the day will come when they put the method down and simply live their life. Both outcomes are the right outcome.
The 60% Fatigue Pacing Method is a tool for a season. Use it for as long as it serves you. And when you no longer need it, that is worth celebrating more than almost anything else.
What makes it different from standard exercise advice
Standard exercise advice assumes a consistent baseline. It sets a programme for the week and expects you to follow it.
Cancer does not work like that. A good Tuesday does not guarantee a usable Wednesday. The 60% Fatigue Pacing Method accounts for that variability. The structure adapts to the person. There are no start-from-scratch moments, no guilt for a red day, just an honest check-in and the next right move.
The gap is not effort. It is a system built for the specific reality of cancer treatment.
Who the method is for
Anyone living with or beyond cancer. During treatment, recently finished, or years out and still managing fatigue.
It is particularly useful if you recognise any of these:
- You push on good days and pay for it for the next two or three
- You are never sure whether today is a move day or a rest day
- You have tried exercise programmes before and they had no plan for your bad days
- You want to move consistently but have no way of deciding how much
How to get started
The CanMove Check is the first step. It is a free screening tool that gives you a safe starting point for exercise wherever you are right now. More than 2,000 people have taken it.
The 60% Fatigue Pacing Method App tracks your daily traffic light check-ins and builds a record of your activity over time. Available at pacingapp.nowercise.co.uk.
Or, if you want someone alongside you, the Nowercise coaching programme is built entirely around the method. Personalised. Remote. Adapted each week to where you actually are.
Frequently asked questions
Is the 60% Fatigue Pacing Method safe during chemotherapy?
Yes. The ACSM-ACS guidelines support exercise during cancer treatment. The 60% rule and the traffic light check-in are designed specifically for days when the body is under treatment stress. The CanMove Check gives you a safe, individual starting point.
What does 60% feel like in practice?
Comfortable and controlled. You finish feeling like you could have done more. Not breathless. Not exhausted. If you are unsure, go easier. You can always build.
What do I do on a red day?
Rest, without guilt. The method expects red days. They are part of the system, not a failure of it. A red day means you listened to your body. That is the whole point.
How long do I need to use the method?
For as long as it serves you. Some people use it throughout treatment and well into recovery. Others graduate out of it as their energy stabilises. Both are the right answer.
Does the method cover more than exercise?
Exercise is the focus, but the method fits within the wider Nowercise approach, which also covers fatigue pacing, nutrition, sleep and stress management. All five affect how much energy you have available on any given day.
Why 60% specifically?
It is the margin that, for most people in cancer treatment, protects against the boom-bust cycle without making movement feel meaningless. When you are unsure how much is too much, sixty percent is a safe place to start.
Dave Poole is one of a very small number of ACSM-ACS Cancer Exercise Specialists in the UK. He founded Nowercise after losing both parents to cancer. More than 2,000 people have taken the CanMove Check, his free cancer-specific exercise screening tool.