Just Two Hours a Week: How Strength Training Could Add Years to Your Life
Just Two Hours a Week: How Strength Training Could Add Years to Your Life For years, strength training has been seen mainly as a tool for building muscle and looking toned. But a large, long-term study is challenging that narrow view — suggesting that lifting weights or doing resistance exercises for just 90 to 120 minutes a week may help you live longer, protect your heart, and even lower your risk of dementia and other neurological conditions. A Study Spanning Three Decades The research drew on data from nearly 150,000 adults, the vast majority of them women, who were middle-aged or older when the study began. Participants were tracked for up to 30 years, giving researchers an unusually detailed picture of how exercise habits play out over a lifetime. By combining data from three major long-term studies, researchers were able to compare how often people did resistance training and aerobic exercise against their actual causes of death — including heart disease and neurological i...