Which benefits health more: variety of exercise or the same type of exercise but done for longer periods?
To put another way, which can benefit the body more…
Doing only strength training and jogging, or, doing fewer minutes per week of the strength training and jogging but mixed with yoga, fitness classes and tennis?
Research published in BMJ Medicine suggests that staying physically active in a variety of ways could be linked to a longer lifespan.
But it’s not just about doing more exercise — there may actually be a point where the benefits start to level off.
The study points out that once people reach a certain overall activity level, extra exercise doesn’t seem to add much more benefit.
That hints at a possible “sweet spot” for how much movement is actually needed for longevity.
Another prominent takeaway is that mixing up your workouts matters. You’ve perhaps already have heard about “mix up your workouts” to preserve adherence or “make them fun.”
This study shows that giving variety to your exercise regimen (without taking on more time) may add onto your lifespan.
What did the study look at?
What researchers have struggled with is figuring out whether specific types of exercise are better than others — or if variety itself is the real advantage.
Scientists looked at two huge long-running health studies: the Nurses’ Health Study (over 121,000 women) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (over 51,000 men).
Participants were tracked for more than 30 years, with regular updates every two years about their lifestyle, medical history and exercise habits.
Participants reported a wide range of activities over time. These included walking, running, jogging, cycling (including stationary bikes), swimming laps, rowing, calisthenics and sports like tennis and squash.
Later surveys expanded the list to include exercise like lifting weights, yoga, stretching, light toning movements, gardening, lawn mowing and heavier outdoor work like digging or chopping wood.
They also reported daily stair climbing, with researchers estimating energy use based on how long it takes to climb a flight of stairs.
Altogether, the analysis included over 111,000 people when looking at total exercise levels and similar numbers when examining variety.
The team measured activity using METs, a system that compares how much energy different activities use versus resting. MET stands for metabolic equivalent of task.
So, the METs for running up flights of stairs would be a much higher number than for jogging on a level road vs. sitting doing computer work.
Across both studies, people who exercised more tended to have healthier lifestyles overall.
They were less likely to smoke, had lower rates of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and generally had healthier body weight.
They also tended to eat better, drink less alcohol, stay more socially connected and participate in a wider mix of activities.
Walking was the most common form of exercise overall, while men were more likely than women to report running or jogging.
Exercise and Long-Term Health Outcomes
Over the 30+ year follow-up period, nearly 39,000 participants died.
These included deaths from cardiovascular disease, cancer and respiratory conditions.
Most types of physical activity were linked with a lower risk of death from any cause, with the exception of swimming in this dataset.
However, the benefit wasn’t endlessly increasing — when participants’ MET hours per week exceeded 20, exercise related improvement started to level off.
Which Activities Showed the Biggest Benefits
Walking stood out as especially beneficial. Those who walked the most had about a 17% lower risk of death compared to those who walked the least.
Climbing stairs was also linked to a 10% lower risk.
Other activities showed meaningful reductions as well.
- Racket sports were associated with about a 15% lower risk.
- Rowing and calisthenics came in around 14%.
- Weights and running each showed about a 13% lower risk.
- Jogging was linked to an 11% reduction, while cycling showed a smaller 4% decrease.
More Variety, Lower Risk
One of the most interesting findings was about variety itself.
Even after accounting for how much total exercise people did, those who engaged in a wider mix of activities had a 19% lower risk of earlier death from all causes.
They also had significantly lower risks — anywhere from 13% to 41% — for death related to cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory illness and other causes compared to those with less variety in their routines.
Cause and Effect
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Does a variety of physical activity lead to a longer life and lower risk of major disease?
Or — are fit people with sturdy bodies simply more likely to be drawn to a variety of workouts — but they live longer and healthier because they’re fit and vibrant to begin with?
How about this: Are people who are drawn to mixing up their physical activities more likely to have a healthier diet — a diet that extends life and reduces disease risk?
This was an observational study, so it can’t prove that exercise variety directly causes longer life.
The data also relied on self-reported activity, which can introduce errors in recall or reporting.
Another limitation of the study is that MET values were estimated based on assumed effort levels, which may not perfectly reflect how hard each person actually worked.
Nevertheless, from an intuitive and logical perspective, it makes sense that variety could directly extend life and/or reduce the risk for disease.
Exercise variety brings more ways to move the body, engages more muscles and can promote more flexibility and joint integrity.
