Lifting weights a couple of times a week may do more for your long-term survival than most people realize, and a sweeping new study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine finally puts numbers to exactly how much is enough.

The Study at a Glance

Researchers at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health tracked 147,374 adults across three large prospective cohorts, the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, the Nurses’ Health Study, and the Nurses’ Health Study II, for up to 30 years. Over that period, 35,798 deaths occurred, giving the team unusually robust data to work with. Every two years, participants reported how much time they spent on resistance training and aerobic exercise, allowing the study to capture real, evolving habits rather than a single baseline snapshot.

The Sweet Spot: Around 90–120 Minutes Per Week

Here is where the findings get precise. Compared to people who did no resistance training at all, those who lifted weights for 90 to 119 minutes per week showed:

  • 13% lower risk of death from any cause
  • 19% lower risk of cardiovascular mortality
  • 27% lower risk of death from neurological diseases

Critically, these associations held even after accounting for aerobic activity, meaning the benefit from resistance training appears to be independent of whether participants also jogged, cycled, or swam.

Beyond 120 minutes per week, however, the data showed no additional survival benefit. More is not more, at least not when it comes to longevity.

Cancer Is a Different Story

The relationship between resistance training and cancer mortality followed a distinct pattern. Reduced cancer-related death risk appeared only at lower durations, between 1 and 59 minutes per week, with hazard ratios of 0.91 and 0.88 respectively. At higher weekly volumes, the association with cancer mortality faded. Researchers suggest this may reflect different biological mechanisms at play for cancer versus cardiovascular or neurological disease, though the observational design of the study cannot establish direct causation.

When You Combine Both Types of Exercise

The most striking numbers emerge from the joint analysis. Participants who combined substantial aerobic activity (30 to less than 45 MET-hours per week) with moderate resistance training (60–119 min/week) had a mortality hazard ratio of just 0.55, in other words, roughly 45% lower mortality risk compared to sedentary individuals with no resistance training. For context, 30–45 MET-hours per week of aerobic activity corresponds to something like 5–7 hours of brisk walking or 3–4 hours of jogging weekly.

Interestingly, participants who reached very high aerobic activity levels (≥45 MET-hours/week) showed similarly low mortality risk regardless of how much resistance training they added on top, suggesting that at a certain aerobic threshold, the marginal benefit of lifting begins to plateau.

Why This Matters, and What It Can’t Tell Us

This is among the longest and largest studies to specifically examine resistance training and mortality with repeated exposure measurements, a major methodological strength over studies that assess exercise habits only once. Most previous research in this space focused primarily on aerobic activity, leaving weight training as something of an afterthought in public health guidelines.

That said, limitations apply. The cohorts were composed largely of healthcare professionals, a relatively educated, health-conscious population, which may limit generalizability. Self-reported exercise data always carries some measurement error. And as with all observational studies, residual confounding cannot be ruled out: people who lift weights regularly may differ from those who don’t in ways the researchers could not fully account for.

The Takeaway

If you are looking for a practical threshold, the data point toward about two hours of resistance training per week as a meaningful longevity target — one that pairs particularly well with regular aerobic exercise. You do not need to be spending your evenings at the gym. What the evidence suggests is consistent, moderate effort over time — decade after decade.

As with most things in exercise science, the best routine is probably the one you will actually stick to.

Original paper: Zhang Y, Lee DH, Rezende LFM, Ma Y, Giovannucci E. 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. 2026;60(12):874–883. DOI: 10.1136/bjsports-2025-110503