When it comes to keeping our hearts healthy, activities that get us huffing and puffing are usually the first to spring to mind.
But new research suggests strength training could be just as important, with women who regularly did resistance exercise found to have a substantially lower risk of heart attack.
In the study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, researchers analysed data from more than 117,000 US women taking part in the long-running Nurses’ Health Study and Nurses’ Health Study II.
Participants reported their exercise and movement habits every four years, while researchers tracked major cardiovascular events over almost 15 years, including heart attack, stroke and procedures to treat coronary artery disease.
Compared with women who did no resistance training, those who did at least two hours a week had a 20 per cent lower risk of major cardiovascular disease and a 44 per cent lower risk of heart attack.
Each additional hour of resistance training a week was associated with a five per cent lower risk of major cardiovascular disease and a 14 per cent lower risk of heart attack.
The link remained even after researchers took factors such as body weight, diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol into account, although these factors appeared to explain some of the benefit.
“The combined effect on lowering heart attack risk was larger than I would have expected from aerobic exercise alone, suggesting that strength training may be more important for women’s heart health than we previously thought,” says lead study author Dr Tianyue Zhang, a scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
A powerful combination
“The main takeaway is that women may get the best heart protection when they combine different types of movement, rather than focusing on just one,” Dr Zhang explains.
Women who completed at least two hours of resistance training and 150 minutes of aerobic activity each week had a 45 per cent lower risk of heart attack than those who were inactive.
Spending less time sitting mattered, too. Those who met the recommendations for resistance training and aerobic activity, while also limiting sedentary time, had the lowest overall cardiovascular risk.
“Excessive sedentary behaviour can increase cardiovascular risk even in people who exercise, because long periods of sitting slow down blood flow, reduce muscle activity and can worsen blood sugar, blood pressure and blood fat levels,” says study author Professor Edward Giovannucci.
“In other words, a daily workout does not fully offset the harm of sitting for many hours, so both regular exercise and breaking up sitting time are important for heart health.”
What counts as strength training?
You don’t need to lift heavy barbells or join a gym to get started.
“In real life, resistance training means any activity where your muscles work against a load,” Professor Giovannucci explains. “It definitely does not have to be in a gym or with heavy weights. The key idea is that the activity makes your muscles work harder than usual and, over time, helps build or maintain strength.”
That could include using dumbbells, resistance bands or weight machines, as well as bodyweight exercises such as squats, lunges, wall push-ups and glute bridges.
Australian movement guidelines recommend muscle-strengthening activities on at least two days each week, along with at least 30 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity on most days. They also recommend breaking up prolonged periods of sitting as often as possible.
