90 to 120 Minutes of Strength Training a Week Could Be Your Longevity Sweet Spot

Thirty years of data, nearly 150,000 participants, and 35,798 deaths later, researchers think they may have found the weekly strength training target that matters most for longevity: somewhere between 90 and 120 minutes. That specific window, not the vague instruction to "lift weights regularly," is the central finding of a new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and the details are worth unpacking carefully.

Weekly resistance training linked to 13% lower all-cause mortality

The study found that 90 to 119 minutes of resistance training per week was associated with a 13% lower risk of all-cause mortality compared with doing little or none. The cardiovascular benefit was sharper: the same weekly dose was linked to a 19% lower risk of death from heart disease. Most strikingly, the association with neurological disease mortality, including conditions like Alzheimer's, reached 27% lower risk in that same 90 to 119 minute range.

Smaller amounts still showed signal. Participants doing just 1 to 29 minutes of strength training per week saw a 21% lower risk of cancer death, with the 30 to 59 minute group showing an 18% reduction. These numbers suggest even modest lifting carries some benefit, but the largest and most consistent gains across multiple causes of death clustered in that 90 to 120 minute zone.

Above 120 minutes per week, no additional mortality benefit appeared. The curve flattened. More was not more.

Combining aerobic and strength training cuts mortality risk nearly in half

Strength training did not exist in isolation in this analysis. The researchers also modeled what happened when participants combined resistance work with aerobic exercise, measured in MET hours (Metabolic Equivalent of Task hours, a standard way to quantify caloric intensity across different activities).

The joint effect was substantial. Participants who combined high aerobic activity, 30 to 44 MET hours per week, with 60 to 119 minutes of weekly strength training were associated with a 45% lower risk of death compared to the least active group. At the highest aerobic levels, above 45 MET hours per week, mortality risk dropped 53 to 58% regardless of how much strength training was added, suggesting aerobic activity has its own powerful ceiling effect.

For context, 74% of the study's participants already exceeded the recommended 150 minutes of moderate aerobic exercise per week. Nearly half, 46%, reported doing some form of strength training. The federal physical activity guidelines recommend muscle-strengthening work on two or more days per week, but they stop short of naming a specific minute target. This study offers a more concrete number.

How the researchers tracked 30 years of exercise habits in 147,374 people

The data came from three large prospective cohorts followed from 1992 to 2022: the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the Nurses' Health Study, and the Nurses' Health Study II. Together they contributed 147,374 participants, 31,540 men and 115,834 women, with an average starting age of 54.

Every two years, participants self-reported the time they spent on strength training activities, including free weights, machines, and bodyweight exercises like press-ups, squats, and lunges. Aerobic activity was tracked separately. Researchers then used Cox proportional hazard models to estimate how each exercise variable related to mortality outcomes over the follow-up period.

The scale and duration of this dataset are genuinely unusual. Prior resistance exercise meta-analyses have synthesized shorter studies to try to establish dose-response relationships, but 30 years of repeated self-report data from three overlapping professional cohorts allowed the team to capture long-term habit patterns rather than short-term interventions.

Caveats that matter before rearranging your training schedule

This is an observational study, so causation cannot be established. The researchers cannot rule out the possibility that healthier people are more inclined to do 90 minutes of weekly resistance work, rather than the exercise itself driving the lower mortality. Participants who strength trained tended to be younger, weigh less, have generally healthier lifestyles, and do more aerobic activity as well, which complicates any clean interpretation.

Self-reported exercise data introduces its own inaccuracies. People tend to overestimate how much they exercise, and the study could not account for session intensity or individual workout duration. Certain activities that build muscular strength, including Pilates and calisthenics-based programs, were not captured in the strength training variable.

The researchers themselves noted that different amounts of resistance training may be needed to optimize benefits across different outcomes, pointing to the finding that cancer risk reduction was actually stronger at lower doses while cardiovascular and neurological benefits peaked closer to 90 to 120 minutes.

What the 90-minute target means for exercise guidelines going forward

Current guidelines leave the weekly strength training dose deliberately vague, specifying frequency (two or more days) but not total time. As future physical activity guideline research continues to probe dose-response relationships for different populations and intensity levels, findings like this one will likely inform more specific recommendations.

For now, the practical signal from this 30-year dataset is reasonably clear: somewhere around 90 minutes of resistance work spread across the week, combined with regular aerobic exercise, is associated with meaningfully lower risk of dying from the diseases that kill most people. Getting there does not require a gym membership or a personal trainer; the study counted squats, lunges, and press-ups alongside barbells. The ceiling, at least for mortality benefit, appears to sit around two hours a week.

Evidence rating

EMERGING — 69/100

Caveats:

• Observational design: association cannot establish causation.
• Exercise data were self-reported biennially, introducing potential recall and social-desirability bias.
• Healthier baseline characteristics among high strength-trainers (younger, leaner, more aerobically active) may confound results despite statistical adjustment.
• Certain strength-training modalities (calisthenics, Pilates) were excluded, and session intensity was not captured.
• Funding not disclosed in available materials.

Large prospective pooled cohort (n=147,374; 30-year follow-up) using Cox proportional hazard models across three well-established cohort studies. Findings show association, not causation, and self-reported exercise measurement limits precision. The dose-response relationship has not yet been independently replicated in a separate prospective population.

References

1. Yiwen Zhang, Dong Hoon Lee, Leandro F M Rezende, Yuan Ma, Edward Giovannucci (2026). 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. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2025-110503
2. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition. health.gov. https://health.gov/our-work/nutrition-physical-activity/physical-activity-guidelines/current-guidelines
3. Johannes Burtscher, Barbara Strasser, Giuseppe D'Antona, Gregoire P. Millet, Martin Burtscher (2023). How much resistance exercise is beneficial for healthy aging and longevity?. Journal of Sport and Health Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jshs.2022.11.004
4. RECOMMENDATIONS – WHO Guidelines on Physical Activity and Sedentary Behaviour. NIH. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK566976/