The study is well-powered and ran for a long time. I agree with the implication a mixture of aerobic activities and strength training is best. It studies people aged 40 to 75, and concludes, for them, some weight training is good and lots is eventually counterproductive.
Meeting the recommended aerobic physical activity guideline (≥150 min/week) and performing any weight training were associated with 20–34% lower mortality.
But there is such variation in how people self-report. Supposing I deadlift. Some days I deadlift heavy, and might lift different big weights ten times. This might involve twenty seconds of actual heavy lifting. It could easily take twenty or thirty minutes of time in a gym, between resting, finding and loading weights, pauses between sets and reps, etc. and it’s not the same as pulling a cable on a machine, and it is unclear how one should describe it in terms of time. So how can I apply the results of this study to me? If you have done CrossFit, it absolutely combines strength and aerobic training in ways hard to quantify, and the study does not posit an upper limit on aerobic stuff.
People who do a lot of strength training can gain significant size. This by itself can put addition stress on the cardiovascular system. I have heard smarter meatheads argue the body is “not going to allow itself to grow bigger than what it can support”. Though this argument favours natural lifting, it is still probably wrong. Lots of people have bodies bigger than what is ideal from a physiology perspective.
So the lesson I take is that there is a point which is too much. Your body knows what that is, although you do not, and so you would do well to rest sufficiently between strength workouts and include plenty of cardio and probably some flexibility, balance and endurance stuff. I could not get the whole original article, and don’t want to pay forty bucks.
(Aside: I’m a fan of Lustig’s work and highly recommend the Taubes book. He writes well; it is a fascinating and important topic with an interesting history. No definitive answers are known to some very relevant nutrition questions. Taubes wrote for Discover and Scientific American; I am keen to read his previous efforts.)
(Although I think The Case Against Sugar is well-written, I am not a fan of ketogenic diets and have not read his other works. So will tone down my praise.)
Of course there is variation. And with thousands there is some average interpretation of the question that likely is fairly similar to the average person wanting to apply the study’s findings.
I’d WAG few interpret the question when surveyed as literally how much time one spends actually performing the lifts. Most are likely reporting the time they spent at the gym including time between sets. And yes that means a variety of intensity levels in the same crude category but mostly with some time between sets. I seriously doubt any significant number of individuals would answer the survey by counting thirty minutes spent at the gym getting in multiple sets of heavy lift sets of just a few reps as only adding up the actual time doing the lifts.
And of course these large survey approaches to dose response leave much as open questions: is the key factor really length per week, or how that translates to number of sessions per week, and therefore adequacy of recovery? It does not address concurrent approaches such as cross fit.
I agree some things average out (if they are distributed normally or nearly so, not every data set is) and most would consider time spent in the weight room. How useful this measure really is is a reflection of one’s ability to control for things like intensity, perceived effort and lots of other stuff - if someone spends most of their time texting on their phone at the gym, the amount of effort may not be reflected in the total time. Studies that have people self-report stuff like diet or weight often suggest people aren’t very good at doing that. I have not read the original study but take its conclusions in a broad sense. Do you have a link to the full study?
I do not for the Health Professionals follow up one.
Indeed it may count the time spent by the person mostly socializing the same as someone who is lifting to failure and doing supersets with little rest as the same if they report the same time.
And lastly the numbers in the largest time groups are often small. These are not RCTs. The strength of the interpretation comes from the mere fact that the similar J-shaped curve on weight training seems to be seen in so many of these sorts of studies.
In fairness, it is a better study than most regarding strength training. Typically, because of funding and logistics, these studies recruit ten to twenty college students for a short period of time, sometimes athletes and sometimes novices. Even when done well, it is not always easy to apply the results to older people with different experiences, and study results sometimes can be contradictory
I think it reasonable to suggest almost everyone should be moving more often. Doing some regular cardio and adding one or two strength training sessions per week seems prudent. At some point there are diminishing returns to training, and just doing strength training means benefits are being left on the table.
And the shape of the curve is unsurprising. I personally doubt it drops to zero at the stated time, but this depends on details unlikely to be expressed soon in any similarly powered study, and an RCT would be extremely expensive. But if it gets more people moving, then the study is helpful. As I said, I agree with its abstract conclusions.
If you decide to, maybe this book (I have it … somewhere?) is a place to start! Seriously, a bit heavy on the reassuring the fragile male ego, but free the stuff that I suspect you gag on as crap as I do.
FWIW I will, regularly, do a closed eyes tree pose with slow controlled breathing in the middle of stressful days. Nurses no longer even give me funny looks by now! I never did a class so I presume my forms are pretty “off”, and I only ever did a handful, but the book gives some good how tos, demonstrated by some athletes who I am confident can lift heavier than any of us! (If not lift us and toss us around …)
(Aside related story, one of my sons’ had a good friend who both played football and performed ballet. Occasionally he’d have some idiot try to tease him about his ballet. His stock answer always shut them right up: “How many times have you sprained your ankle? Me? Never.” And he was right. Ballet trained his propioceptive awareness in ways that football does not.)
I love yoga, but I find it incredibly difficult. It’s hard to feel relaxed when your muscles are trembling from exertion. I’m going to start working it in anyway, because the feeling afterwards is beyond compare.
I did a little yoga when in university. Naturally inflexible, I improved to the point I could do the “most basic” form of each pose, rather than the “modifications for the disabled” variation. (Kidding. Sorta.)
I am no yogi but my impression of yoga is that only some of the poses require lots of flexibility. The few I ever tried were more static holds and balance building, using core and many of the small and/or long narrow muscles. Try crow, warrior 2 and/or 3, or chair … or even Haka and Dolphin … and holding them. Yes you will feel a stretch, a bit, but maybe also know the tremble that @Spice_Weasel is talking about, and some DOMS the next day. Yeah now I’m going to have to start trying them again!
I’ve practiced yoga for many years. A session of yoga can range from “sit comforatbly on a mat and flex your wrists while taking deep breaths” to “balance on your forearms with your feet over your head” so it’s hard to generalize. But I will anyway. Yoga is no miracle cure, but it helped me with lower back pain and is a good compliment to lifting weight and cardio.
Oh yeah. Took my son for his three year check up today, and there was this big notice posted on the wall that basically amounted to, “Please be patient, we’re overwhelmed, y’all.”
