A 30-Year Study Reveals the Exact Amount of Weekly Exercise You Need to Drastically Lower Your Risk of Death
As if you needed another reason to start strength training (or stick to your long engrained habit), a new long-term study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggests that strength training for about 90 to 120 minutes per week is linked to a lower risk of death from all causes, especially when paired with aerobic exercise.
The long-term study followed more than 147,000 adults for up to 30 years and found that people who consistently engaged in relatively moderate resistance training had significantly lower risks of all-cause, cardiovascular, and neurological disease mortality compared to those who did no strength training at all. Researchers analyzed data from three major long-running studies, and participants reported their exercise habits every two years, including both resistance training and aerobic activity. Aerobic activities included brisk walking, running, swimming, cycling, tennis, squash, strenuous outdoor work, and stair climbing. Strength training included exercises with weights or body weight.
Participants who performed 90 to 120 minutes of resistance training per week had a 19 percent lower risk of cardiovascular death and a 27 percent lower risk of death from neurological diseases. At lower doses, resistance training was still linked to certain benefits. For instance, even 30 to 59 minutes per week was associated with a reduced risk of all-cause mortality, while modest training volumes were linked to lower cancer-related mortality.
"Strength training is the closest thing we have to a prescription against aging, and it works whether you start at 25 or 65," says Cory Calendine, MD, of Bone and Joint Institute of Tennessee, who was not involved in the study. "It isn't a vanity project, it's longevity medicine. Low muscle strength predicts mortality better than blood pressure."
Of course, getting your cardio in is important, no matter how much the gym rats joke about skipping it all together. However, the study found that the combination of aerobic activity and resistance training together produced the lowest overall risk of death. Participants doing substantial aerobic exercise with 60 to 120 minutes per week of resistance training had roughly a 45 percent lower risk of death compared to people who did little aerobic exercise and no strength training.
All this to say, strength training and aerobic exercise work best when paired together. But if you've been ignoring the gym (or the pair of dumbbells collecting dust in your house), it's time to hit the weights. Beyond building muscle, strength training could help extend both lifespan and healthspan, reducing your risk of major chronic disease while allowing you to live a life free of restrictions well into your later years.
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This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Jun 4, 2026, where it first appeared in the Health & Fitness section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
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This story was originally published June 4, 2026 at 4:21 PM.