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New research on strength training frequency and mortality offers the clearest dose-response picture yet. A 30-year prospective study following 147,374 participants found that 90–120 minutes of resistance training per week is the optimal weekly volume for reducing all-cause, cardiovascular, and neurological mortality risk with no additional benefit observed above that threshold.
Published this week in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, a prospective cohort study by Zhang et al. (2026) followed 147,374 participants across three major longitudinal cohorts for up to three decades. The question: what’s the actual dose-response relationship between resistance training and mortality?
Here’s what the data showed.
How Strength Training Frequency Affects Mortality Risk
Compared to no resistance training, participants hitting that weekly volume saw:
- 13% lower all-cause mortality risk
- 19% lower cardiovascular mortality risk
- 27% lower neurological disease mortality risk
That’s not a marginal signal. That’s a meaningful, clinically relevant reduction, especially the neurological finding, which is often underappreciated in resistance training conversations.
Above 120 minutes? The benefit plateaus.
This is one of the study’s most practically useful findings. More isn’t necessarily better. The curve flattens. For clinicians counseling patients and for coaches programming training blocks, this gives a concrete, defensible target.
Cancer mortality follows a different pattern.
Risk reduction for cancer was only observed at lower volumes, 1 to 59 minutes per week, with no significant benefit at higher doses. This diverges from the cardiovascular and neurological findings and likely reflects different underlying biological mechanisms. It’s a reminder that “resistance training reduces mortality” is not a single uniform effect across all causes of death.
Aerobic exercise amplifies the benefit up to a point
The joint analysis showed that combining resistance training with aerobic activity reduced mortality risk further across all aerobic activity levels up to 45 MET-hours per week. Beyond that threshold, very high aerobic volumes appeared to produce similarly low mortality risk regardless of resistance training participation.
The clinical takeaway: aerobic and resistance training are complementary, not interchangeable. Both matter. But at very high aerobic volumes, the incremental benefit of adding resistance training diminishes.
What this means in practice
For clinicians: 90–120 minutes per week of resistance training is a defensible, evidence-based target to integrate into lifestyle counseling and care planning. It’s two to three sessions. It’s achievable. And the mortality data behind it is now backed by 30 years of repeated-measures follow-up, not a single baseline snapshot.
For fitness professionals: the plateau above 120 minutes reframes how we think about volume. Programming more isn’t always serving the client. The goal is hitting the window, not exceeding it.
The combination of both is where the compounding effect lives.
The relationship between strength training frequency and mortality is now backed by some of the strongest longitudinal evidence in exercise science and the practical target it points to is well within reach for most patients and clients.
Read the full study here.
Sources: Zhang Y, Lee DH, Rezende LFM, et al. Long-term resistance training with all-cause and cause-specific mortality: assessing dose-response and joint associations with aerobic physical activity. Br J Sports Med. Published online June 2, 2026. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2025-110503
