New research indicates that a moderate amount of weekly strength training may be associated with the greatest longevity benefits, especially when paired with regular aerobic exercise.
For years, exercise advice has focused heavily on getting enough cardio. But a major new study suggests that what you do with your muscles may be just as important as what you do with your heart.
After tracking more than 147,000 adults for up to three decades, researchers found that a relatively modest amount of strength training, about 90 to 120 minutes per week, was associated with the lowest risk of death. The benefits were even greater when resistance training was paired with regular aerobic exercise.
The findings, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, add to growing evidence that maintaining muscle strength as we age may play a key role in long-term health and survival.
Why Muscle Matters for Healthy Aging
Aerobic activities such as walking, running, and cycling have long been associated with lower risks of heart disease, cancer, and premature death. Strength training, however, has received less attention despite its well-known benefits for preserving muscle mass, maintaining mobility, improving balance, and supporting metabolic health.
Adults naturally lose muscle mass and strength over time, a process known as sarcopenia. Loss of muscle has been linked to frailty, falls, disability, and a higher risk of chronic disease. Researchers wanted to better understand whether resistance training could also influence the risk of dying from major illnesses.
To find out, they analyzed data from three large long-running health studies: the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1992–2022), the Nurses’ Health Study (2002–2021), and the Nurses’ Health Study II (2003–2021). Together, the studies included 147,374 participants, including 31,540 men and 115,834 women.
Participants reported their exercise habits every two years. Aerobic activities included brisk walking, running, swimming, cycling, tennis, squash, strenuous outdoor work, and stair climbing. Strength training included exercises using weights or body weight, such as pushups, squats, and lunges.
A Clear Benefit, But Not an Endless One
During the study period, 35,798 participants died.
When researchers accounted for factors such as age, lifestyle, and health status, they found that people who performed 90 to 119 minutes of strength training per week had a 13% lower risk of death from any cause compared with those who did none.
Interestingly, the benefits appeared to level off beyond that range. More strength training did not translate into progressively lower mortality risk.
The same weekly amount was also associated with a 19% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 27% lower risk of death from neurological diseases.
An Unexpected Pattern for Cancer Risk
The relationship between strength training and cancer mortality was less straightforward.
Researchers found the strongest associations at lower levels of resistance training. Participants who performed just 1 to 29 minutes per week had a 21% lower risk of death from cancer, while those doing 30 to 59 minutes per week had an 18% lower risk.
The study was not designed to determine why this pattern emerged, and the authors caution against interpreting it as evidence that less exercise is better.
The Biggest Gains Came From Combining Exercise Types
While strength training alone was associated with benefits, the strongest results came from combining it with aerobic activity.
Participants who performed less than 7.5 MET-hours of aerobic exercise per week and no strength training served as the comparison group. Relative to them, people who performed strength training alone for 1 to 119 minutes per week had a 7% to 11% lower risk of death.
Aerobic exercise by itself produced larger reductions, lowering mortality risk by 26% to 43% at levels above 7.5 MET-hours per week.
The greatest benefit was seen among people who regularly did both.
Those who accumulated 30 to 44 MET-hours of aerobic activity per week and 60 to 119 minutes of strength training had a 45% lower risk of death. Among participants performing at least 45 MET-hours of aerobic activity weekly, mortality risk was 53% to 58% lower regardless of how much strength training they did.
The results suggest that aerobic exercise and resistance training may provide complementary benefits rather than competing ones.
What the Study Cannot Prove
The research was observational, meaning it can identify associations but cannot prove that strength training directly caused the reductions in mortality risk.
The study also relied on self-reported exercise data, which can introduce inaccuracies. In addition, some forms of resistance exercise, including calisthenics and Pilates, were not included in the analysis. Researchers also lacked information about workout intensity and the duration of individual exercise sessions.
Even so, the unusually long follow-up period and large number of participants make the findings among the strongest evidence to date linking long-term strength training habits with lower mortality risk.
The researchers conclude: “Our findings on different dose-response relationships between long-term resistance training with all-cause and cause-specific mortality suggest that different amounts of resistance training may be needed to optimize benefits across outcomes.
“The observed pattern that adding resistance training further reduced mortality risk across all levels of aerobic activity up to 45 MET hours/week supports current recommendations encouraging both types of activity to maximize mortality benefits.”
Reference: “Long-term resistance training with all-cause and cause-specific mortality: assessing dose-response and joint associations with aerobic physical activity” by Yiwen Zhang, Dong Hoon Lee, Leandro F M Rezende, Yuan Ma and Edward Giovannucci, 2 June 2026, British Journal of Sports Medicine.
DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2025-110503
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