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Strength training can add quite a few years to your life, as evidenced by a large-scale study from Australia. Even if you don’t visit a gym and only do bodyweight exercises.
Push up, sit up, pull up for your life
It is the largest study of its kind. Researchers from the University of Sydney led a study that used data from the Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey, combined with the NHS Central Mortality Register. This allowed the researchers to look for correlations between different types of activity and the risk of death. Their research shows that strength training reduces the risk of premature death by 23 percent. Specifically, the risk of premature death from cancer was found to be reduced by 31 percent. The researchers corrected for other known factors such as age, gender, lifestyle, health, and education level as much as possible.
Bodyweight exercises yielded the same results as strength training in a gym with weights and machines.
Strength training was found to have no effect on the risk of premature death from cardiovascular disease. For this, you will still need cardio.
“Not enough attention to strength training”
According to the researchers, policymakers do not take enough account of the value of strength training. The emphasis would mainly be on functionality as we age, as in the research I wrote about yesterday. Too little attention would be given to the link between strength training and the risk of death.
The study shows exercise that promotes muscular strength may be just as important for health as aerobic activities like jogging or cycling.
Emmanuel Stamatakis, School of Public Health/Charles Perkins Centre
The World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes of cardio per week (anything that raises the heart rate) and two days of strength training. According to the researchers, many governments and institutions only look at the amount of cardiovascular activity and not whether people also follow the strength training guideline. They refer to the Australian National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey as an example. According to that survey, which only looks at cardiovascular activity, 53 percent of Australians have insufficient exercise. However, if you also consider the recommendations for strength training, it turns out that a whopping 85 percent of Australians are not exercising enough. Less than 19 percent of Australians meet the guideline for the required amount of strength training.
Gym vs. bodyweight exercises
Because the researchers also had insight into the type of strength training, they could look at any differences in the impact of different types of strength training on the risk of death. It turned out that training at home with body weight as resistance was just as effective as exercising in a gym.
The researchers emphasize this because many people automatically think of training with weights in a gym when they hear ‘strength training’, something that many people do not find appealing.
Of course, you can also do bodyweight exercises in the gym and train with weights at home. Depending on the exercise, bodyweight exercises can also be heavier than training with weights or machines. But, the point here is the perception for people with little experience and/or affinity for strength training. Bodyweight exercises may seem more accessible, rightly or wrongly. Pushups, situps, tricep dips, and lunges are given as examples.
Just like yesterday’s article, this research shows the importance of strength training. Not just to become muscular, not just to be able to keep moving at an old age, but also to reach that old age.
References
- Emmanuel Stamatakis, I-Min Lee, Jason Bennie, Jonathan Freeston, Mark Hamer, Gary O’Donovan, Ding Ding, Adrian Bauman, Yorgi Mavros. Does strength promoting exercise confer unique health benefits? A pooled analysis of eleven population cohorts with all-cause, cancer, and cardiovascular mortality endpoints. American Journal of Epidemiology, 2017; DOI: 10.1093/aje/kwx345
