So another bit that not only further demonstrates not only how a little accomplishes a lot, but that very much more than a little may be counterproductive.
Just correlations but if causation then that should give those who strength train lots real pause. Going more than an hour a week becomes counterproductive and those who do more than 140 minutes per week are no better off on these measures than those who do not strength train at all, maybe even worse off.
Data not in evidence but I wonder if HIIT (and/or the intense workouts labeled as HIIT to market them, sprint intervals, anaerobic threshold training, or the Tabata inspired workouts) impact more like additional strength training (due to the stress they incur) or more like moderate intensity continuous training (MICT, the standard steady state more comfortable session), where the dose to potentially no further gain or even harm is much higher.
I suspect that enough recovery time from strength training sessions or otherwise “hard” days is not only important to maximize performance gains (which it seems to be) but to maximize health benefits as well.
These results are interesting but not new. The analysis suggests a little training (30-60min/wk) beneficial with some added benefit up to 140min/wk. Ar some point it becomes deleterious. The study confirms a mixture of weight training and endurance type work best. Other studies suggest flexibility, balance and different lengths of endurance work best if all. But much depends on one’s goals.
Having a very big body is an additional cardiac stress. Doing a lot of weight training but no conditioning is hard on the body. Some professional powerlifters used to be both strong and fat, and could lift a lot but be barely able to climb a flight of stairs. Using steroids cause unwelcome cardiac changes and may be present in a percentage of people who do a lot of weight training, especially with little cardio. Certain heavy lifts cause a lot of neural fatigue and cortisol effects and require ample rest and recovery time. Recovery takes longer as one ages and older lifters may be more sensitive to stressors including those imposed by lifting.
Nothing new. My take:
Lifting twice a week is ideal for most people.
Two times a week of cardio, one short and intense, one longer and relaxed is good. Mixing it with something social even better.
Balance and flexibility work also help. These need not take much time or be much more difficult than occasionally standing on one’s leg or touching toes.
Not quite. The maximal benefit is seen at 30 to 60 min/week. It then decreases and by 140 min/week there is no benefit seen for those outcomes. See figure 2.
But your bottom line seems reasonable. Adding more to the “longer and relaxed cardio” may be of additional benefit but caution is raised about adding more to strength training or “short and intense” cardio. It may be that for both a modest amount is great but more not. And agree with balance anyway but easy to do that as part of strength training.
My quibble though is that mortality rate/lifespan is not really what many of us are aiming for; longer period of quality of life, health span, is. It remains possible that the dose response curve for that looks different.
I would never attach much weight to a single meta-analysis of such complex topics.
Strength training and cardio are very broad terms and encompass lots of very different things. Most people would like to live in a healthy state for a long time, be somewhat strong, have lots of energy, be fit and independent, and be relatively free of chronic diseases or difficulties with mobility. Some may desire to be a healthier weight.
It is very clear strength and other training helps reduce the risk of mobility, chronic diseases like diabetes, mood, weight and longevity by significant amounts. However, there are some negative correlations with size and longevity, and optimal times may differ. Most of the “longevity systems” are in the same direction as exercise, but not quite all of them (some studies on mTOR, for example). Having a big body is only healthy if developed in a natural and gradual way such that your cardiovascular and other systems also improve and are up to the additional strain. This requires both cardio and strength training, and some strong gym attendees despise the former.
There is a point at which one exercises too much, which impacts recovery. The increase in cortisol can reduce benefit and the body sees the exercise as too stressful instead of a mild stress leading to growth and replenishment. But it is not a simple number-of-minutes thing and depends hugely on choice of exercises, goals, recovery strategies, perceived exertion, other stressors and supports, sleep and diet and other things.
Walking a dog every day, with a couple days strength training and a social team sport once a week is a combination likely to improve your mood and health and add quality health span to your years.
Even the most dedicated weightlifter needs ample rest and, if lifting with intensity, is best doing this every other day or less. I know very competitive weightlifters who just lift every five or six days since they need that much rest and recovery. The recovery part is as important as the exercise part and this study kind of suggests that.
I previously skimmed the article quickly. Spending slightly more time on it, it is obviously a pretty rough measure for the reasons they say. The benefit of longer exercise I mentioned was with respect to diabetes and not other factors they considered, although less exercise (60 mins/wk) provided most of that benefit. They state maximal benefit at 82 mins/wk. The use of only a few studies, high variance and variable intensity of strength work limits its generalizability.
But it is an interesting article, does break some new ground, and I thank @DSeid for posting it. My above post summarizes my personal opinion.
Yeah, my bad. I wasn’t responding to Spice on any protein claims, just a general lament that a lot of gym bros and fitness influencers (you know, protein salesmen) overstate the need for protein. But there are some great science based sources and more cerebral meatheads out there. Thanks for sharing the research.
I’m not disagreeing with you. I’ve certainly recomped, even in my 40s. Last year a co-worker remarked that I was bigger but also thinner (a guy I’ve worked with 5 years but he transferred a couple years back so we only see each other in passing here and there), and asked how I did it. I didn’t say it was impossible, but it is more difficult to get strength gains in a deficit. I also believe that I am an outlier, since I’ve seen improvements in myself with marginally “better” behaviors than most of my peers who maintain or worse. Also note, my statement was about strength and calorie deficit, and your response was based on gains and reduced belly fat. I have lost belly fat eating 4000 calories but I don’t think I was really in a deficit. I never said anything bad in general about bodybuilders, but if your “expertise” results in advising me to eat 400 gs of protein and minimal fiber, I will disagree.
Just an update and trying to work some stuff out mentally, so I figured I’d share.
I’m trying to troubleshoot this enormous pain in the ass issue where I keep getting sick. I get maybe a day or two of exercise and then I get sick again. It’s been like this for months. I’ve had three colds, three flus (all with asthma), a nine day bout with norovirus and that’s just what I can remember. And I’m physically just falling apart as a result. As far as the tendinitis in my elbow, it’s been almost six weeks off the arm, no lifting weights, and it’s mostly better? But maybe I can start very, very light, or with bodyweight.
I’m not the sort of person who can have a problem without trying to troubleshoot it. I’m probably going to be sick for a while while my son brings all the new stuff home with him. So I have to figure out a way to still take care of myself in spite of it all.
I can see key areas where I make it worse. I tend to slide into “comfort food” mode when I’m sick so I’m getting probably the worst nutrition possible. That’s something I can fix that’s not dependent on how sick I am. I really want to cut down on my refined sugar intake. So to begin with, I can prep some freezer meals specifically to be eaten when I’m too sick to make dinner. They have to be delicious, though, or I won’t eat them.
As far as strength training goes I need to be doing something. Even if it’s just bicycle crunches for God’s sake.
I need to hydrate consistently no matter my health, and I need to find a way to bounce back faster so I have more fitness days. Because I’ve been so tired it’s often several days after I start feeling better before I start exercising again.
I feel like I have to start over, over and over.
For those who aren’t aware of it, there’s a podcast I enjoy called Stronger by Science. Perfect for data nerds. I’m data nerd adjacent, which is to say I’m not really capable of analyzing research myself in any real depth, but I’m an enthusiastic supporter of those who do. And they have a great sense of humor in addition to a scientifically rigorous approach to fitness.
If getting frequent viruses and feeling fatigued, it would be worth getting a panel of bloodwork including hematocrit (to rule out anemia), glucose (diabetes), electrolytes, urinalysis and creatinine (if often thirsty) and possibly thyroid and pregnancy (depending on age). If asthmatic, control is good if you generally sleep through the night and use rescue inhalers infrequently. Asthma should be tested in more detail if this is not the case. Consider if smoking (by anyone in the house), other things (wood heat, environmental irritants), caffeine, alcohol use, etc. affect you.
With any long break the secret is reducing to at least half of previous efforts and gradually increasing. Starting with bodyweight is always a good idea. Muscle memory is a thing and with time you will mostly be back to previous efforts.
The worst nutrition may be lots of fructose, which makes up half of table sugar and 55% of corn syrup. Fats (except for trans fats) and fast food are not always terrible if you avoid the sweet stuff and keep portions reasonable. Don’t drink many calories. Diet drinks are fine.
The secret to fitness is consistency. Doing a little is better than doing nothing. If you eat badly or miss a bunch of sessions, be easy on yourself but also start doing better. If exercise is fatiguing, maybe break it up into shorter segments throughout the day, do lower impact stuff like walking, or try classes which some find more motivating. Motivation matters, mood is linked to diet and enough exercise, also social stuff.
Train around injury, not through it. Start the elbows gradually.
It’s not a bad idea. I had a blood workup last year because of constant fatigue with exercise. They didn’t really find anything, but told me to dial back the intensity, and I did, and it seemed to help. I have not had blood glucose tested in a while though.
I think the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. I have a small child in daycare who is constantly bringing illness home with him. I understand this to be typical for parents of small children, and we happen to be having a virulent season for child illness across the board. There was a big RSV outbreak (we all got that) influenza and norovirus. My kid barely seems affected by these ailments - fortunately for him he appears to have his father’s immune system. Me, on the other hand…
I was going to recommend brewing some good chicken broth and freezing it in individual portions so you can treat yourself to a cup of warm broth as “comfort food” when you are sick. But i wanted to check with @Dr_Paprika regarding drinking calories.
Fwiw, the only sugar in my homemade broth comes from the onion and carrot scraps. I’m pretty sure it’s a small amount. (Two chicken carcasses, one onion, whatever carrot scraps and celery scraps i have around, a handful of parsley if i have it, some salt, and water to fill a large instant pot. Makes a nice thick broth that gels in the fridge.)
There is no major problem eating small amounts of sugar, nor moderate amounts from time to time. You do not likely have to worry at all about sugar in fruit and vegetables that you eat. If you drink a lot of soda than diet brands are much better. Juices should be enjoyed in moderation. Eating sugars just before exercise is better, and glucose is likely better than table sugar. If you enjoy sweet tea or coffee consider replacing some or all of the sugar with artificial sweeteners. If much interested in this topic, Gary Taubes has a very good book describing its complex history.
Doing something, not enough to stress your system too hard while sick, and working around your tendonitis, is, if nothing else, psychologically important. But enough rest to fully recover has to be prioritized even above that. There is temptation to try to find a short cut around recovery and shortcuts usually end up taking longer.
Do not besmirch bodyweight exercises as lesser. Part of my current mix is trying to work through some body weight progressions and they can be hard. Try working through these squat progressions for example. No need to hold a weight if your elbow can’t take it. I suspect my ambition to get to full pistol squat will end the same way my ambition to do a true muscle up did - unsuccessfully - but it is still fun, and challenging all of strength, flexibility, and balance-wise, to try. Pretty sure you can get to side step (slow negative down) and Bulgarian Split.
Yes.
Many parents are asking me about getting immune work up for their little ones! A new fever every week or so! Something must be wrong! And of course the whole house gets the current it. We’ve had three years of very few of these usually mundane germs and specific antibody levels to them dropped for all. RSV was critical enough that it made the news cycle a little bit, but the same numbers hold true for the ones that do not commonly cause hospitalizations.
I suspect more casual exercisers overtrain than is generally appreciated. The cause of overtraining though is not alway the intensity per se, but the frequency of intensity, or more clearly the lack of adequate recovery, of easy days. Intensity is wonderful! Every other day. But giving the day of low intensity or even off in between is very important. Most of us casual exercisers want to go “race pace” or similarly hard translated to the exercise form every session. We short change recovery and therefore we never can actually achieve true intense days. Instead we are drained all the time and make few gains than if we actually exercised a bit … less.
And since this thread is bumped. Just read another newer study documenting how some weight training is great, huge, AND how surprisingly little becomes too much, that adding more aerobic conditioning is better than adding more weight training.
This one just men but similar results have been found in women. This is not getting huge level that becomes unhelpful. Long term best mortality impact seems to be just 30 to 60 minutes of weight training per week (and I am willing to extrapolate to other strength training) and the benefit drops after that, to none once just 150 min/wk or more.
Best group on mortality combines that some but limited weight training with 150 minutes/week or more of aerobic. For the latter my suspicion is that the minutes matter less than achieving cardiorespiratory fitness. More time lower intensity (dog walks, hikes, etc.), shorter time but harder (intervals, HIITs, sprints, tempo runs, whatever), mixing it up as long as you don’t cheat on recovery, whatever is more satisfying for the individual.
Of course @Dr_Paprika gives great advice on these subjects; this is one area though where I will quibble. Less bad maybe, but surprisingly diet may not be much better.
Personally, i avoid all the non-nutritive sweeteners. I read a study in the new England journal of medicine probably 40 years ago that found rats who drank saccharine-sweetened water gained more weight than those that drank sugar water, who gained less weight than those who drank water. (All the rats were given unlimited access to rat chow.) The rats who drank sugar water ate less rat chow, whereas the ones who drank saccharine water ate more rat chow. And it makes sense, intuitively. Your tongue tells your brain and pancreas “sugar incoming”, and when it doesn’t, there’s a reaction, and you feel hungry, and maybe your pancreas gets over-worked or confused. I dunno, I’m sure i put too much weight on that one article that i read when i was young.
But here’s a more recent article:
This article says that non-nutritive sweeteners can change the gut bacteria, in ways that correlate with glycemic response, and when those bacteria are transferred to previously-sterile mice, the mice develop the same glycemic response as the people the bacteria came from.
Anyway, i like to drink room-temperature water, so my beverage choices are easy. Unless i actively want something else (milk, cocoa, tea, coffee, juice, wine) i just drink water. I drink it with every meal, and often between meals. I gather lots of people don’t really like drinking water, though, so that’s harder.
The history of Harvard nutritionists regarding this issue is not great. The required expensive, long-term studies, amazingly, still have not been done to definitively settle the issue, and so if what you are doing makes sense to you, then good.
Sweeteners have been much researched and are unlikely to be harmful in doses most would consume, though eating less sweet stuff is likely be better. Harm reduction principles apply, however, for many reasons.
The needs of athletes may differ from non-athletes. The mortality data above is interesting but has a number of flaws, still, doing some exercise is highly beneficial for many, way better than none. The lower limit is good if you are doing less than that, but one minute of exercise a week is not going to make a world of difference and is a limitation of the study. I don’t personally believe that there is no mortality benefit to strength training for an hour every other day, but much depends on details, and most time spent in the gym is not actually spent actively lifting.
I would refer those interested to the book The Case Against Sugar, by Gary Taubes which argues these things better, gives the troubled history, discusses a lot about these issues I did not learn in medical school or university biochemistry courses, and much more fairly than a brief website or short study - but is also not definitive since the ideal long-term studies still have not been done given the length and high costs and other difficulties. The gut biome is very new in terms of research and it will be decades before we know enough about it. But this is not the topic of this thread.
Yes the needs, and well goals, of athletes are different than non-athletes, and depend on the sport - power, strength, endurance, mass … the outcome for those goals is not the mortality data.
For the sort of question being asked this data to me seems to be about as good as it realistically gets. Sure it would be nice to have more granular categories rather than having to assume that most who fall in the smaller category are doing one session a week and not just a minute or two. That J-shaped curve though is seen consistently, even if the exact number varies by study. Men middle aged and above as just linked, older women too … strong evidence of benefit of something like an hour a week of weight training but clearly the dose response curve flattening off and reversing such that somewhere north of two or two and a half hours of reported time spent weight training (not reported actual time lifting) there is no evidence of benefit at all. And by far the best mortality benefit to exceeding the 150 minutes of aerobic while also doing some modest amount of weight training.
A little weight training does lots of good and very modest amounts get you about as much mortality benefit as you will get from it. That’s a big point for those who don’t do any to comprehend. A little aerobic gives big benefits and the further increase of benefit with more flattens out … where it actually reverses is not as clear as with weight training.
That is just regarding mortality, not quality of life. I suspect a bit more strength and muscle mass in the bank may translate to more function longer, better quality of life. But rate of return on time invested falls off there too.
I enjoy strength training (not just lifting but a variety of other approaches too), and despite these studies will likely continue to exceed 60 minutes a week. But it’s enough for me to try to avoid exceeding that by very much, and to put a bit more into the aerobic side.
And of course the whole house gets the current it. We’ve had three years of very few of these usually mundane germs and specific antibody levels to them dropped for all. RSV was critical enough that it made the news cycle a little bit, but the same numbers hold true for the ones that do not commonly cause hospitalizations.