What does “exercise once during a 24-hour period” mean?

Question

I am asking the following question from purely understanding English language perspective. In this post, it doesn't matter to me how the policy maker interprets it.

My health insurance provides reimbursement for gym membership, subject to at least 50 workout sessions in 6 months, which I guess is approximately 2 workout sessions per week in average.

Here is how a workout session is defined:

To qualify for one workout session, you must exercise once during a 24-hour period. There must be at least eight hours between workouts.

I am not sure whether my English is too bad to understand the quote or the quote was written in bad English.

• What does "exercise once during a 24-hour period" mean?

• Is "exercise once during a 24-hour period" contrary to "at least eight hours between workouts"?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It's a bit confusing, but what they mean:

1. You can only get credit for one session of exercise per day (although you can choose when the "day" begins and ends)
2. You need to have at least 8 hours between workouts.

It's not really contradictory, although it seems so at first.

For simplicity, let's say our 24-hour periods line up with the days of the week, and then let's say you want to get credit for exercising on Monday and Tuesday. If you exercise at, say, 9-10 PM on Monday, you must wait until after 6 AM on Tuesday before you can get credit again.

And if you did exercise at 9-10 PM on Monday, and then 6-7 AM on Tuesday, and then you exercised again at, say, 5-6 PM on Tuesday, you get credit for only two workouts, because although there were at least 8 hours between successive workouts, there's no way that the workouts could fall into more than two different 24-hour windows.

Answer 2

It's not your fault, the text is ambiguous and using vague terminology.

They have written these terms thinking that people generally workout the same time every day.

"24-hour period" probably means midnight to 11:59PM.

If you workout again the same day, and less than 8 hours pass, you do not get reimbursed.

To qualify for one workout session, you must exercise once during a 24-hour period

This sentence is probably here to say that to get the gym membership benefit, you have to actually exercise. You cannot take the benefit if you do not exercise.

Answer 3

What is important for you to consider is that you must exercise at least 50 times in a 6 month period (minimum requirement). How do you achieve this?

Your insurance company has put a maximum number of times you can exercise so you don't game the system. That maximum is

once every 8 hours

which limits you to 2 workouts within a 24 hour period (assuming a workout is about an hour)

The condition of

you must exercise once during a 24-hour period

really has no meaning, since you will always be working out within a 24 hour period, if they had said

you can not exercise more than once in a 24 hour period

the condition would make more sense.