This one change to your exercise routine could add years to your life

Switching up your workouts—not just doing more—could be the secret to a longer life.

· ScienceDaily
Source:BMJ Group
Summary:Mixing up your workouts might be the real secret to a longer life. Long-term research tracking over 100,000 people for more than three decades suggests that doing a variety of physical activities—rather than just more of the same—can significantly lower the risk of death. Interestingly, the benefits don’t keep rising endlessly; they seem to level off after a certain point, hinting at a “sweet spot” of activity.
Variety in physical activity—not just volume—may be crucial for living longer. Credit: Shutterstock

Regularly engaging in a variety of physical activities could be one of the most effective ways to extend lifespan, according to research published in the open access journal BMJ Medicine. The findings suggest the relationship is not simply about doing more exercise. Instead, benefits appear to level off after a certain point, indicating there may be an optimal amount of activity.

The results also show that variety itself matters. People who participate in different types of physical activity tend to have a lower risk of death regardless of how much total exercise they do. Still, the researchers emphasize that staying active overall remains important.

Why Exercise Variety Matters

Physical activity has long been linked to better physical and mental health, along with a reduced risk of death. However, it has been less clear whether certain types of exercise offer unique advantages, or whether mixing activities provides additional benefits beyond total volume.

To investigate this, researchers analyzed data from two major long-term studies: the Nurses' Health Study (121,700 female participants) and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (51,529 male participants). These studies tracked participants for more than 30 years, with regular updates on lifestyle, health history, and exercise habits collected every 2 years through questionnaires.

Decades of Data on Movement and Lifestyle

Participants reported a wide range of physical activities over time. Since 1986, this included walking, jogging, running, cycling (including stationary machines), lap swimming, rowing or callisthenics, tennis and squash or racquetball.

Later surveys added more detail, covering weight training or resistance exercise; lower intensity exercise, such as yoga, stretching, and toning; vigorous tasks like lawn mowing; moderate outdoor work such as maintenance and gardening; and heavy outdoor work like digging and chopping.

Participants also reported how many flights of stairs they climbed daily, based on the estimate that each flight takes 8 seconds to ascend.

The analysis included 111,467 participants for total physical activity and 111,373 participants for activity variety. To measure activity levels, researchers used MET scores, calculated by multiplying the average time spent on each activity (in hours/week) by its MET value. METs indicate how much more energy an activity uses compared to resting.

Activity Levels, Habits, and Health Profiles

Across both groups, individuals could report up to 11 or 13 different activities depending on the study. Walking was the most common form of leisure exercise, while men were more likely than women to jog or run.

People who reported higher overall activity levels were generally healthier. They were less likely to smoke or have high blood pressure or high cholesterol. They also tended to have a lower body weight (lower BMI), eat healthier diets, drink alcohol, maintain stronger social connections, and take part in a wider range of activities.

Exercise and Risk of Death Over 30 Years

During more than three decades of follow-up, 38,847 participants died, including 9901 from cardiovascular disease, 10,719 from cancer, and 3,159 from respiratory disease.

Higher levels of physical activity, along with most individual types of exercise except swimming, were linked to a lower risk of death from any cause. However, the relationship was not linear. The benefits of total activity appeared to level off after about 20 weekly MET hours, suggesting there may be a point beyond which additional activity provides less added benefit.

Which Activities Were Linked to Lower Risk

Walking showed one of the strongest associations, with those who walked the most having a 17% lower risk of death compared with those who walked the least. Climbing stairs was linked to a 10% lower risk.

Other activities were also associated with reduced risk when comparing the least active to the most active participants. Tennis, squash, or racquetball were linked to a 15% lower risk. Rowing or callisthenics showed a 14% reduction. Weight training or resistance exercises and running were each linked to a 13% lower risk. Jogging was associated with an 11% reduction, while cycling showed a smaller 4% decrease.

The Added Benefit of Exercise Variety

Engaging in a wider range of activities was linked to even greater benefits. After accounting for total exercise levels, participants who performed the most diverse set of activities had a 19% lower risk of death from all causes.

They also showed a 13-41% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease, cancer, respiratory disease, and other causes compared with those who engaged in fewer types of activity.

Study Limitations and What It Means

This research is observational, which means it cannot prove cause and effect. The researchers also point out several limitations. Physical activity was self-reported rather than directly measured, which may affect accuracy.

In addition, MET scores were calculated under the assumption that participants were fully engaged in each activity, and the lack of detailed information on intensity could have led to some misclassification of energy use. The study population was also mostly White, which may limit how widely the findings apply.

Even so, the researchers conclude: "Overall, these data support the notion that long term engagement in multiple types of physical activity may help extend the lifespan."

Related Terms

FearFear is an unpleasant feeling of perceived risk or danger, whether it be real or imagined. Fear also can be described as a feeling of extreme dislike towards certain conditions, objects or situations such as: fear of darkness, fear of ghosts, etc. Fear may underlie some phenomena of behavior modification, although these phenomena can be explained without adducing fear as a factor in them. Furthermore, application of aversive stimuli is also often ineffective in producing change in the behaviour intended to be changed. Fearing objects or contexts can be learned; in animals this is being studied as fear conditioning, which depends on the emotional circuitry of the brain. It is one of the basic emotions and is linked heavily to the amygdala neurons.GeneA gene is a locatable region of genomic sequence, corresponding to a unit of inheritance, which is associated with regulatory regions, transcribed regions and/or other functional sequence regions. The physical development and phenotype of organisms can be thought of as a product of genes interacting with each other and with the environment, and genes can be considered as units of inheritance. A concise definition of gene taking into account complex patterns of regulation and transcription, genic conservation and non-coding RNA genes, has been proposed by Gerstein et al. "A gene is a union of genomic sequences encoding a coherent set of potentially overlapping functional products."Personalized medicineCurrently, much of medical practice is based on "standards of care" that are determined by averaging responses across large cohorts. The theory has been that everyone should get the same care based on clinical trials.AlleleAn allele is a viable DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) coding that occupies a given locus (position) on a chromosome. Usually alleles are sequences that code for a gene, but sometimes the term is used to refer to a non-gene sequence. An individual's genotype for that gene is the set of alleles it happens to possess. In a diploid organism, one that has two copies of each chromosome, two alleles make up the individual's genotype.