Strength Training, Cardio and Longevity: Why You Need Both

We talk a lot about strength at Poseidon Performance, and for good reason. Maintaining strength and muscle as we age is fundamental to remaining physically capable and independent.

But strength training isn’t the whole story.

A major study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2026 provides another compelling reason why we should be training for both strength and cardiovascular fitness if the goal is long-term health.

Researchers analysed data from 147,374 adults across three large, long-running studies. Participants were followed for up to 30 years, with their strength training and aerobic exercise habits recorded repeatedly throughout the study.

The results were striking.

Around Two Hours of Strength Training a Week

The researchers found that people performing approximately 90–119 minutes of strength training per week had a 13% lower risk of death from any cause compared with those doing no strength training.

The same amount of strength training was associated with a 19% lower risk of cardiovascular death and a 27% lower risk of neurological death.

Interestingly, the relationship wasn’t simply “more is better”.

In this study, the reduction in all-cause mortality appeared to plateau beyond approximately 120 minutes of strength training per week.

That doesn’t mean training for more than two hours is bad for you, nor does it mean there’s no reason to train more. Someone training for strength, muscle mass, athletic performance or simply because they enjoy it may have very good reasons to do considerably more.

It simply means that, in this particular study, additional strength-training time beyond that point wasn’t associated with a further reduction in mortality risk.

For the average person interested primarily in health and longevity, that’s encouraging.

You don’t need to live in the gym.

But Strength Training Alone Isn’t Enough

This is probably the most important part of the research.

When the researchers looked at strength training alongside aerobic exercise, the lowest mortality risk was found among people doing both.

Participants combining 60–119 minutes of weekly strength training with relatively high levels of aerobic activity had substantially lower mortality risk than people doing little aerobic exercise and no strength training.

One combination was associated with a 45% lower risk of all-cause mortality, while those undertaking the very highest levels of aerobic activity showed reductions of more than 50%.

That’s an important distinction.

Strength training provides adaptations that aerobic exercise cannot fully replace. Aerobic exercise provides adaptations that lifting weights cannot fully replace.

They overlap, but they aren’t interchangeable.

Strength and Cardiovascular Fitness Do Different Jobs

Strength training helps us maintain muscle mass, force production, bone loading and the physical capacity required for everyday life.

It helps us stand up from a chair, climb stairs, carry shopping, lift things from the floor and maintain the physical reserve needed to remain independent as we age.

Cardiovascular exercise develops another part of the system.

Walking quickly, running, cycling, rowing, swimming and other forms of sustained aerobic exercise challenge the heart, lungs and vascular system and improve our ability to deliver and utilise oxygen.

Being exceptionally strong doesn’t automatically mean you have good cardiovascular fitness.

And having excellent cardiovascular fitness doesn’t guarantee that you possess enough muscle and strength to maintain physical function later in life.

We need both.

You Don’t Have to Choose Between Weights and Cardio

Fitness has a strange tendency to divide itself into tribes.

Some people lift weights and avoid cardio because they’re worried it will interfere with their strength or muscle.

Others spend hours walking, running or cycling but never perform meaningful resistance training.

For health and longevity, neither extreme makes much sense.

The evidence increasingly points towards a much simpler approach: build strength and build cardiovascular fitness.

You don’t need to become a powerlifter.

You don’t need to become a marathon runner.

You need enough of both qualities to build a physically robust human being.

What Does That Look Like in Practice?

For many adults, two or three well-structured strength sessions each week can provide a substantial training stimulus without dominating their life.

Those sessions should train the major movement patterns and muscle groups rather than simply accumulating random exercises.

Squat. Hinge. Push. Pull. Carry.

Progressively challenge those movements over time and maintain the muscle and strength required for everyday life.

Alongside that, accumulate regular aerobic activity throughout the week.

That might involve brisk walking, cycling, rowing, swimming or running depending on the individual, their current capacity and what they actually enjoy doing.

Some of that cardiovascular work can be relatively easy. Some can be more demanding.

The important thing is that cardiovascular fitness is deliberately trained rather than assumed to be taken care of because you lift weights.

Longevity Isn’t One Physical Quality

This follows the same principle we discussed recently with grip strength.

Grip strength is useful, but we shouldn’t reduce longevity to how hard somebody can squeeze a dynamometer.

Likewise, we shouldn’t reduce healthy ageing to how much somebody can squat, how far they can run or how low their resting heart rate is.

Healthy ageing is multidimensional.

We want muscle mass.

We want strength.

We want cardiovascular fitness.

We want balance, coordination and power.

We want sufficient physical reserve that illness, injury or a period of inactivity doesn’t immediately remove our independence.

Most importantly, we want to maintain the capacity to continue doing the things that make life worth living.

Train for Capability, Not Just the Gym

The headline from this research isn’t that 90 minutes is magic, or that strength training somehow reduces everybody’s risk of death by exactly 13%.

This was an observational study. It demonstrates associations, not proof that a particular exercise dose directly causes a particular extension of lifespan.

But when nearly 150,000 people are followed over decades, the findings are worth paying attention to.

Strength training was associated with lower mortality.

Aerobic exercise was associated with lower mortality.

And people who consistently did both generally had the best outcomes.

That is a far more useful message than arguing about whether weights or cardio are superior.

Don’t choose between being strong and being fit.

Train both.

Because the objective isn’t simply to lift more weight or improve a number on a fitness test.

The objective is to build and maintain a body capable of carrying you through the rest of your life.

Reference: Zhang Y, et al. Long-term strength training and risk of all-cause and cause-specific mortality with and without aerobic physical activity. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2026.