July 1, 2026
Sports medicine doctors increasingly recommend strength training as part of a regular exercise routine. Also known as resistance or weight training, strength training includes any type of exercise where your muscles contract against an external resistance and may incorporate free weights, weight machines, elastic bands or simply your own body weight. But how much time should we spend lifting weights to help live a longer and healthier life, and ideally one free of Alzheimer’s disease?
A new long-term study provides clues. It found that people who included strength exercises in addition to aerobic activities like walking or cycling tended to live longer than their peers who did not engage in strength training. Strength training helped lower the risk of dying prematurely from any cause. And it appeared to be especially effective in lowering the risk of dying from Alzheimer’s disease or other neurologic illnesses.
For the study, researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health looked at 147,374 men and women who were part of three long-running health studies: the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study; the Nurses’ Health Study; and the Nurses’ Health Study II. Participants, most of whom were middle-aged at the start of the study, filled out detailed questionnaires about their exercise habits every two years, including how much time they spent per week doing strength training using free weights or weight machines.
Participants were followed for up to 30 years. During that time, 35,798 of them had died.
Analysis revealed that doing any amount of strength training, even a few minutes a week, was associated with a lower risk of premature death than never lifting weights at all. The benefits of strength training were additive to any benefits from doing aerobic activities like walking, running or swimming.
People who combined aerobic exercise with strength training generally had the lowest mortality risk, the authors found. But strength training on its own appeared to provide unique longevity benefits. The greatest benefits were seen in those who completed 90 to 119 minutes a week of resistance training. They had a 13 percent lower risk of dying prematurely from any cause, a 19 percent lower risk of dying from heart disease, and a 27 percent lower risk of dying from Alzheimer’s disease or other neurologic illnesses. Doing strength training activities for more than 120 minutes a week did not provide any added benefits.
The findings, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, showed only an association between strength training and a lower risk of premature death and cannot prove cause and effect. They are consistent, however, with a growing body of evidence showing that all types of exercise are essential for healthy aging, including the health of the brain.
It is still unknown which types of strength training are best. This study looked primarily at time spent lifting weights or using weight machines, but doing pushups, planks and other exercises that work against body weight may be equally effective. It’s also unknown whether using light weights is as effective as using heavier weights, or whether doing six 15-minute workouts is as effective as doing one long, 90-minute session.
In the meantime, aim to incorporate strength training into your weekly workouts. When it comes to the long-term health of body and brain, any weight training is better than none at all.
By ALZinfo.org, The Alzheimer’s Information Site. Reviewed by Eric Schmidt, PhD, of The Fisher Center lab at The Rockefeller University.
Source: Yiwen Zhang, Dong Hoon Lee, Leandro F. M. Rezende; et al: “Long-term resistance training with all-cause and cause-specific mortality: assessing dose-response and joint associations with aerobic physical activity.” British Journal of Sports Medicine, June 2026
