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ATLANTA— Physical Activity Guidelines for older adults, emphasize getting at least two days of strength training and 2½ hours of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic physical activity each week. However, many people downplay muscle strengthening and rely on the benefits of aerobic exercise to get the heart pumping.
That would be a mistake, a new study found. Regardless of aerobic physical activity, adults older than 65 who did strength training two to six times a week lived longer than those who did less than two, according to study author Dr. Bryant Webber, an epidemiologist at the Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We found that each type of physical activity was independently associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality in older adults,” Webber said in an email.
“Those who adhered to the muscle-strengthening-only regimen (versus no regimen) had (a) a 10% lower risk of mortality, those who adhered to the aerobic-only regimen had a 24% lower risk of mortality, and those who met both guidelines had a 30% lower risk,” he said.
The results applied to all age groups, even the oldest, according to the published study Monday in JAMA Network Open Magazine.
People 85 and older who met the aerobic and muscle-strengthening guidelines had a 28% lower risk of dying from any cause than people 85 and older who didn’t meet either guideline, the study found.
“This finding suggests that aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity is valuable throughout life,” Webber said.
This finding suggests that aerobic and muscle-strengthening physical activity is valuable throughout life.
-Dr. Bryant Webber, CDC
The study looked at leisure and other physical activities gathered by National Health Interview Survey, an ongoing investigation into American health by the CDC. Information on strength training and aerobic activity by age group was then compared with deaths over an average of eight years.
The study controlled for demographics and marital status, body mass index, history of smoking or alcohol use, and the presence of asthma, cancer, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, hypertension, and stroke.
Looking only at data on strength training, the study found that adults who did two to three sessions or four to six sessions of muscle-strengthening exercise per week had a lower risk of death from any reason than adults who did they did strength training less than twice a week.
Doing more was not beneficial: The study found that between seven and 28 weekly strength-training sessions offered no additional protection.
You don’t have to go to a gym to strengthen your muscles, the CDC said. You can lift weights at home, work with resistance bands, use your body weight as resistance (for example, push-ups and sit-ups), and dig or shovel in the garden. Even “lifting canned goods could be considered a muscle-strengthening activity,” Webber said.
The goal is to work all the major muscle groups in the body: abdomen, arms, back, chest, hips, legs, and shoulders.
Looking only at data on aerobic exercise, the study found that doing 10 to 300 minutes per week was associated with a lower risk of death from any cause compared to doing less than 10 minutes per week.
Aerobic activity can include walking, biking, hiking, raking leaves, and pushing a lawnmower, and water exercises, to name a few.
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