Which is better for your body: spending your workout time on strength training and jogging, or doing a little less of those activities while adding yoga, fitness classes and karate?
A study published in BMJ Medicine suggests that exercise variety may be associated with a longer life.
More exercise isn’t necessarily better forever, though. Once people reach a certain activity level, the added benefit appears to flatten out.
That could mean there’s a useful middle ground: getting enough weekly activity without feeling like you need to exercise constantly.
Exercise Variety and Longevity
Researchers wanted to find out whether particular exercises offered the biggest advantages, or whether simply participating in different activities had benefits of its own.
They analyzed two major long-term studies: the Nurses’ Health Study, involving more than 121,000 women, and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, involving more than 51,000 men.
Participants were followed for more than three decades. Every two years, they provided information about exercise, lifestyle and medical history.
The activities included walking, running, jogging, cycling, swimming, rowing, calisthenics, tennis and squash.
Later questionnaires added weight training, yoga, stretching, gardening, mowing and demanding outdoor work.
Researchers also tracked stair climbing and estimated energy use with METs, or metabolic equivalents of task.
This system compares the energy required for different activities with the energy used while resting.
People who exercised more generally had healthier lifestyles. They smoked less, had lower rates of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and tended to have healthier body weights.
They also tended to eat better, drink less alcohol and participate in more social and physical activities.
Exercise and Death Risk
During the follow-up period, nearly 39,000 participants died from causes including cardiovascular disease, cancer and respiratory illness.
Most physical activities were associated with a lower risk of death from any cause. Swimming was the exception in this particular analysis.
The benefit also wasn’t unlimited. Once activity surpassed 20 MET-hours per week, the reduction in death risk began to level off.
Which Exercises Performed Best?
Walking produced one of the strongest associations. People who walked the most had a 17% lower risk of death than those who walked the least.
Stair climbing was associated with a 10% lower risk.
Racket sports were linked with a 15% lower risk, while rowing and calisthenics were around 14%.
Weight training and running each showed about a 13% lower risk. Jogging was associated with an 11% reduction, while cycling produced a smaller 4% reduction.
The most interesting result involved variety itself.
After researchers accounted for total exercise time, people who participated in a broader range of activities had a 19% lower risk of death from all causes.
They also had lower risks of dying from cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory illness and other causes, with reductions ranging from 13% to 41%.
But this doesn’t prove that variety in and of itself extends life.
This was an observational study, meaning researchers found associations rather than demonstrating cause and effect.
Exercise was also self-reported, so participants may not have remembered their activity perfectly.
The researchers estimated MET values using assumed effort levels, which may not have matched how hard every participant actually exercised.
Still, there’s a reasonable argument for mixing up your workouts.
Different activities challenge different muscles, movement patterns and physical abilities. Yoga can work on flexibility, weights build strength, and sports add movement and coordination.
Variety can also make workouts less repetitive, which may make it easier to stay active consistently over the years and avoid boredom.
So you may not need to exercise more. Adding different types of movement to the time you’re already willing to spend exercising could be a practical way to make your routine more varied while potentially supporting long-term health.
