These days, longevity is the name of the health game: how are you treating your body now so that it can treat you well as you get older? Part of maximizing a long, healthy life—and making sure you can adventure outdoors long into your later years—is exercise. And if you’re exercising to live longer, just about every kind of workout (and every intensity) can help. That’s not hyperbole. Here’s just a smattering of the gobs of science on moving your body and dialing back your death date:
- A study in the British Journal of Medicine found that “muscle strengthening” activities twice per week, performed for 30 total minutes per week, reduced all-cause mortality (science-speak for “early death”) by 10 to 17 percent.
- A 2020 study looking at information from 26,000 Americans found a correlation between walking, stretching, aerobics, stair climbing, weight lifting, and volleyball reduced the risk of death between 7 and 12 percent.
- When scientists followed almost half a million adults for 8 years, they found that just 13 minutes of daily exercise reduced people’s risk of death by 14 percent.
- Adults with higher levels of strength in a knee extension test had a 14 percent lower risk of death compared to weaker adults.
- A study looking at 23 years of data found that playing tennis regularly added almost 10 years to a person’s lifespan.
- And, of course, there are steps: walking 7,000 steps per day is associated with a 47 percent lower risk of all-cause mortality compared to taking just 2,000 steps per day.
The latest, greatest finding is that the biggest longevity lever you can pull in the gym is intensity, says Matt Laye, a physiologist and ultra running coach with Sharman Ultra Coaching.
“We have all these recommendations that are based on moderate to vigorous activity, and we typically think that one minute of vigorous activity is worth two minutes of moderate,” he says. But a new study, published in Nature Communications in October, says vigorous activity is even more valuable than that. “When it comes to mortality outcomes, one minute of vigorous [exercise] is worth four to nine minutes of moderate.”
Strength, overall movement, and high-intensity efforts—these are the ingredients for a long-life exercise stew, Laye says. If you’re looking for a manageable longevity workout plan to get all these in each week, he says, focus on three things.
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