The Longevity Exercise 95% of Healthy Adults Were Missing
A new 30-year study found the lowest mortality in people doing roughly 60–120 minutes of strength exercise a week - but only 5% of healthy adults reached that range.
A couple of months ago, we looked at strength exercises from the angle most of us already recognise: muscle, function and independence.
That matters. The ability to get out of a chair, carry shopping, climb stairs, lift a suitcase, garden without feeling wrecked, and stay steady on your feet is one of the foundations of an independent later life.
But this week, I want to look at strength exercise from a different angle.
Not: will it help you keep your muscles?
But: is it linked to living longer?
Walking is fresh air, thinking time, birdsong and nature. It’s easy to enjoy, easy to justify, and I never have to talk myself into it.
Strength exercise, for me, is more of a chore. I’ll do it, but it often requires a podcast, a nudge, and the promise of a walk afterwards, like giving a spaniel a biscuit for getting into the car.
So when one of the main items on the BBC news last week was a just-published study showing that regular strength exercise was linked to a markedly lower risk of dying prematurely, it had my attention. Not because I needed more evidence that exercise is good for us. But because this was specifically about the type of exercise most of us avoid.
If your reaction is, “Really? Another thing?”, I’m with you. Many health-conscious people already walk, garden, cycle, play golf, hit their step count, or do enough general exercise to feel reasonably virtuous. Surely that covers exercise?
Not quite.
Aerobic exercise remains enormously important. But strength exercise, also known as resistance exercise, seems to bring something extra. And the apparent longevity sweet spot isn’t heroic: roughly one to two hours a week, with no clear added benefit beyond about 2 hours.
This isn’t an article about becoming a gym person. It’s about whether the exercise many of us skip deserves a place beside the movement we already do.
The new 30-year cohort: strength exercise is linked with lower mortality
The newest reason to pay attention is a large US cohort study published this month. Researchers followed more than 147,000 adults from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study for up to 30 years.
Compared with people who did no strength exercises, those doing 90–120 minutes a week had a 13% lower risk of death from any cause, a 19% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, and a 27% lower risk of dying from neurological disease (think Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s).
The same study found a 9–20% lower risk of dying from cancer among people doing strength exercise for up to one hour a week, although the cancer results didn’t reach statistical significance, so we should be careful about over-interpreting this.
The neurological result is intriguing, but requires caution. Conditions like Alzheimer’s disease develop slowly over many years, and activity levels often drop long before a diagnosis is made. We can’t rule out that the association runs partly in the wrong direction: less active because of early disease, rather than less disease because of activity.
There’s also an important caveat: these were nurses and health professionals, not a perfectly representative slice of the population. But that makes one part of the study even more striking.
The opportunity gap: most people do no strength exercise at all
Even in this health-professional population, 60% of participants reported doing no resistance exercise. A further 24% did less than 30 minutes a week.
In fact, only about 5% reached the range linked with the strongest health outcomes.
That’s a huge opportunity gap.
If you’re currently doing little or no strength exercise, you’re in the overwhelming majority. And that means there’s a large, untapped health lever sitting right in front of you.
The sweet spot: some is much better than none, but more is not automatically better
In the new study, the lowest risk of dying from any cause was seen around 90–120 minutes a week. Beyond 2 hours a week, there was no clear additional benefit.
That pattern fits earlier evidence.
A 2022 meta-analysis of 10 studies found that doing any resistance exercise was associated with a 15% lower risk of death from any cause, a 19% lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, and a 14% lower risk of dying from cancer. The greatest reduction in all-cause mortality, 27%, was seen at around 1 hour of resistance exercise per week.
Another 2022 meta-analysis, this time of 16 studies, found that resistance exercise was associated with a 15% lower risk of all-cause mortality (peaking at 17% around 40 minutes a week), a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease (peaking at 60 minutes a week), a 12% lower rate of cancer diagnosis (around 30 minutes a week), and a 17% lower risk of diabetes.
The exact minute count varies across studies, as you’d expect when the evidence comes from self-reported exercise and observational studies. But the practical pattern is consistent: some is much better than none, and the useful dose is measured in minutes per week, not hours per day.
There’s a second part of the pattern, too.
More is not automatically better.
In the new study, the benefit appeared to plateau after about 2 hours a week. At very high levels, the all-cause mortality curve swung upwards, suggesting that too much strength exercise could increase risk.
Momma and colleagues found a similar cautionary shape: the risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease increased above baseline after roughly 130–140 minutes per week.
Taken together, the practical message is consistent: aim for 60 to 90 minutes a week as a realistic first target, build towards 90 to 120 minutes if sustainable, and treat roughly two hours a week as a sensible ceiling. There’s no clear longevity reason to push beyond that.
Aerobic exercise still matters enormously, but the combination looks strongest
None of this downgrades walking, cycling, swimming, jogging, gardening, housework, golf, or other forms of aerobic activity.
In the new study, aerobic exercise alone was associated with a 26–43% lower risk of death from any cause, provided weekly energy expenditure exceeded 7.5 MET-hours.
MET-hours are one of those units that make perfect sense to exercise scientists and almost nobody else. Think of them a bit like miles per hour, except you accumulate energy expenditure rather than distance.
In everyday terms, 7.5 MET-hours a week is roughly 3 hours of light housework, 2 hours of walking the dog, leisurely cycling, or golf, or about 1 hour of digging or jogging.
So if you walk daily, you may already be comfortably above that aerobic threshold.
The point is not to swap walking for weights. It’s to notice that the best signal appears to come from doing both.
In the new study, people who combined resistance exercise with more than 7.5 MET-hours a week of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise had a 45% lower risk of dying from any cause than those doing neither. That’s a larger reduction than either type of exercise alone.
Again, this is observational. People who do both forms of exercise may also differ in diet, baseline health, income, education, smoking, sleep, and other behaviours researchers can adjust for but never perfectly erase.
Still, the combination signal is not a one-off. A 2020 meta-analysis of 11 studies, including more than 370,000 participants with an average follow-up of nearly 9 years, found that resistance exercise was associated with a 21% lower risk of all-cause mortality. When resistance and aerobic exercise were combined, the risk was 40% lower.
The take-home: aerobic exercise remains the foundation, but adding resistance exercise seems to provide a meaningful additional benefit.
If someone comes to mind as you’re reading this, please forward it to them. These tweaks may be small, but practised consistently they can genuinely change long-term health. A useful nudge at the right moment can make all the difference.
Why strength exercise might matter beyond stronger muscles
The outcome data is the main story here, and the mechanisms are secondary. But they’re at least plausible. Resistance exercise supports muscle mass, glucose metabolism, and insulin sensitivity, which may partly explain its association with lower diabetes risk. Long-term regular strength training may also reduce arterial stiffness in older adults, though this relationship is less straightforward in younger people, and aerobic exercise afterwards may help mitigate any concerns.
Some studies suggest resistance training could promote brain changes relevant to cognitive ageing, but given the reverse-causality issues with neurological disease, this remains uncertain.
One speculative note: if the possible increase in cancer mortality at high resistance volumes is real, it could involve insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which at elevated levels has been linked with increased risks of colorectal, prostate, and breast cancers. This is a hypothesis, not an established pathway.
What this means for your health
If you already walk, cycle, swim, garden, jog, golf, or otherwise move your body regularly, this is not a reason to downgrade that habit.
Aerobic activity remains one of the most powerful foundations for long-term health. In the new study, it was associated with a larger reduction in all-cause mortality than resistance exercise alone.
But if you’re not doing any resistance exercise, you’re probably leaving a significant health benefit on the table.
Your muscles, joints, balance, grip, legs, back, and everyday lifting capacity need a different kind of signal. Resistance exercise gives them that signal, and the evidence suggests that signal may be linked not only with staying stronger, but with living longer.
The practical target is to start with 60–90 minutes a week, build towards 90–120 minutes if it becomes sustainable, and don’t treat more than 2 hours a week as a longevity upgrade.
Two or three short sessions at home, done consistently, may be enough to move you out of the “none at all” group and into the range where the benefits look convincing.
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HEALTH TWEAK OF THE WEEK
This week’s tweak is simple: keep your aerobic base, but add 60–90 minutes of resistance exercise each week, building towards 90–120 minutes if it feels sustainable.
Resistance exercise is linked with a lower risk of dying prematurely from any cause, and from cardiovascular, neurological, and some cancer-related conditions, with the clearest benefits at modest weekly doses. More is not automatically better: after roughly 2 hours a week, there’s no clear longevity reason to keep adding more.
Add 2 or 3 simple strength sessions each week
Put them on non-consecutive days so your muscles have time to recover. Start with 20 to 30 minutes per session. This doesn’t mean joining a gym, buying special kit, or learning a new dialect involving sets, reps, and people called ‘bro’. It means regularly giving your muscles a job that feels properly effortful for a short period of time.Use everyday movements before worrying about equipment
Choose 5 or 6 movements that train real-life strength:
Stand up from a chair repeatedly, ideally without using your hands.
Step up onto a stair or sturdy step, slowly and with control.
Push away from a wall or kitchen counter, like a gentle press-up.
Carry 2 reasonably heavy bags for a short distance.
Lift a bag, weight, or loaded rucksack from chair or table height.
Pull a resistance band towards your body, if you already have one.
For most of these, do 8 to 12 repetitions, pause briefly, then repeat 2 or 3 times before moving on. For carries, do 2 or 3 short carries. By the end of each set, you should feel you could probably do another 2 or 3 reps, but not loads more. That rule matters more than getting the routine perfect.
When it gets easy, make it a little harder.
Use a heavier bag. Move from wall press-ups to kitchen-counter press-ups. Sit on a slightly lower chair. Use a stronger resistance band. Add another round. Your muscles need a reason to adapt, but they don’t need punishment.
And if starting from scratch feels daunting, try a beginner routine on YouTube from Bob and Brad,
or Grow Young Fitness.
The aim isn’t to find the perfect programme. It’s to make the first few sessions feel concrete and doable.
In studies, adding strength exercises each week on top of aerobic exercise has been linked to 40-45% lower risks of dying prematurely. That feels like an outcome that’s worth a little extra effort.
🎧 Prefer to listen while doing a few chair stands?
🎙️ This week’s One Health Tweak a Week podcast is about why strength exercise is linked with living longer, why walking still matters enormously, and how a little resistance work may be enough to make a meaningful difference.
You’ll hear:
Why a new 30-year study linked 90–120 minutes of weekly strength exercise with lower risks of premature death
Why walking, cycling, gardening, and other aerobic activity remain powerful, but may not cover everything your body needs
Why the sweet spot seems modest: 2 or 3 short strength sessions a week, with no clear longevity reason to push beyond about 2 hours
👉 Good company for your next walk, commute, or while eyeing a shopping bag and wondering whether it might finally count as training equipment.
(Episodes are free for now. Paid subscribers support the deeper research - and unlock practical tools to help you improve your health without turning it into a second job.)
🧭 Before you go
💬 Are you already doing any deliberate strength exercise each week, or are you mostly relying on walking, gardening, cycling, or general busyness? I’d love to hear what feels realistic for you, and what usually gets in the way.
📤 Know someone who walks plenty, eats fairly well, and assumes that’s probably enough? Forward this to them. Aerobic exercise matters hugely, but strength work may be the missing piece many of us skip.
👥 Paid corner - Want help turning “I should probably do strength exercise” into something realistic you’ll actually do? Drop me a message in our private chat, and I’ll help you think through a simple weekly plan.
Until next Saturday - look after the version of you who’ll be living in this body 10 years from now.
– Ben
I’m 70, hike/walk but started cardio drumming a few years ago (2x week) and we do one song each day with weights. I finally signed up for a one hour strength training class a few months ago and can feel the benefit of weights and bands. I missed Memorial Day (closed) and this last Monday due to a very stressful (family illness) trip. Did I do any strengthening exercises, nope. It’s not my go to, but after starting the strength training class I really do feel the benefit. Good article, it pushes me to stick with it at home when I can’t go to class. Thanks!
I'm 80 and I do 3 strength/resistance session per week. Length 30 to 45 minutes each. A combination of machines and kettlebells. Also walk carrying dumbbells for 5 to 10 minutes