People are at the lowest risk of premature death from all causes if they do muscle-strengthening exercises at least twice a week in addition to regular aerobic exercise, according to a new study.
Cardiovascular exercise alone is not enough if your main goal is to live longer. According to a new study, to achieve this goal you need to do at least two muscle strengthening sessions per week, along with a combination of moderate and high intensity aerobic exercises.
Doing moderate physical activity every week will significantly reduce your risk of early mortality. However, if you add weekly vigorous physical activity and muscle-strengthening physical activity to your usual moderate physical activity routine, you will further reduce your risk of mortality premature,” says the study's lead author, Rubén López-Bueno, PhD, of the University of Zaragoza, Spain.
What’s the Best Kind of Exercise for Longevity?
For the study, researchers analyzed data from more than half a million adults who reported how many minutes per week they did three types of physical activity:
Moderate-intensity exercise like brisk walking || Vigorous-intensity exercise like jogging or running || Muscle-strengthening activity like lifting weights.
During a follow-up period of about a decade, approximately 56,000 people died, including more than 17,000 deaths from cardiovascular disease and nearly 13,000 deaths from cancer.
People who exercised that much had half the risk of dying for all causes. study. compared to participants who did not do moderate or vigorous aerobic activity and did not do more than one muscle-strengthening workout.
The benefit was similar: lower risk of 47% develop a premature pregnancy. death, when people did the same amount of moderate exercise and muscle strengthening, but did 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous exercise.
A Balanced Fitness Regimen May Yield the Best Longevity Results
This suggests that current exercise guidelines, which recommend that people perform muscle-strengthening exercises twice a week and choose between 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise or 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise, could need to be modified to emphasize everyone's needs. three types of exercises, explains Dr. López-Bueno.
For example, instead of choosing between moderate exercise and vigorous aerobic exercise. According to López-Bueno, people try to complete 75 minutes each, plus two strength training sessions per week. However, more research is needed to determine which types of muscle stimulation exercises are best or how long people should do these exercises questions this study was not designed to answer, López-Bueno adds.
The vast majority of study participants did not perform the minimum amount of exercise recommended in current guidelines. Only 6.6% of study participants completed at least two muscle-strengthening workouts per week, and they also completed at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise or at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.
In fact, 72% of participants completed less than 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise, less than 75 minutes of vigorous aerobic exercise, and less than two sessions of muscle-strengthening exercises per week.
Any Physical Activity Is Better Than None
Even for anyone who doesn't get the minimum recommended amount of exercise weekly, you can still benefit from as much physical activity as possible, says activity researcher Jessica Gorzelitz, PhD. physicist in the Department of Health and Human Physiology at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who was not involved in the new study.
That's what's important : Consider your starting point as a baseline for determining where to set your goals,” says Dr. Gorzelitz. “For example, if a person says they don't do any recreational activity [not moderate, vigorous, or vigorous activity ], it will actually benefit from any additional activity. So it's okay to start small and work your way up until you meet the guidelines.
The study results also suggest that, beyond a certain point, the benefits The additional cost of aerobic exercise is minimal, says Keith Diaz, PhD, an exercise physiologist and associate professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York, who was not involved in the study.
The best exercise is to practice your whole life and can do, says Dr. Diaz. "When you have little time, "intense exercise is more effective," adds Díaz . "Ten minutes of intensive training is equivalent to 20 minutes of moderate training.
How to Tell if You’re Exercising Effectively
To get the most out of it, choose an exercise you enjoy and put in as much effort as possible, says Adam Skolnick, MD, associate professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine in New York, NEW YORK, who was not involved in the new study.
If you find that you can sing a song while exercising, you probably need to increase the intensity," says Dr. Skolnick . "On the other hand, if you can't talk during the exercise, it may be too intense.