Have you been doing just enough strength training? New research says maybe

The challenge

Most of us assume that when it comes to strength training, more must be better - that if 60 minutes a week is good, 3 hours must be great. A study just published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine suggests that's not quite right and the actual answer is more useful (and more achievable) than most people think.

The science

Researchers followed more than 147,000 people for up to 30 years across three major long-running studies, tracking how much strength training and aerobic exercise they did every two years. Here's what stood out:

People doing 90 to 119 minutes of strength training a week had a 13% lower risk of death from any cause, a 19% lower risk of death from cardiovascular disease and a 27% lower risk of death from neurological disease, with no further benefit found above 120 minutes a week.

The cancer-related benefit showed up at much lower doses. Even 1 to 29 minutes a week was linked to a meaningfully lower risk of cancer death.

And the real standout - people who combined a high volume of aerobic exercise with 60 to 119 minutes of strength training a week had a 45% lower risk of death overall.

How we apply this at Hypha

This lines up with how we already program. 120 minutes of strength work a week is roughly three of our classes, not a specialist bodybuilding split, not daily maxing out. It's proof that consistent, moderate strength training, done alongside the conditioning we already build into every session, is enough to move the needle on how long and how well, you live.

Take home actions

1. Aim for roughly 90-120 minutes of strength work a week - three solid sessions covers it

2. Keep your aerobic work going alongside it; the two together outperform either alone

3. More isn't the goal past that point - consistency is

4. If you're only fitting in a little strength work right now, know that even a small amount is doing real work for you

A physio perspective

What I like about this research is that it gives people permission to stop overtraining out of guilt. Three sessions a week, done consistently, is not a compromise, it's the dose the data actually supports.

That's the whole idea behind how we program at Hypha - build a routine you can sustain for decades, not one you'll burn out within a few months.

John Jenkins is a Physiotherapist and co-founder of Hypha CrossFit Wellington, where he heads programming and leads our coaches as a CrossFit Level 3 coach. He brings his clinical background to how the gym trains its members, with a particular focus on movement quality, injury prevention and building fitness that lasts a lifetime.

Reference: Zhang Y, Lee DH, Rezende LFM, Ma Y, Giovannucci E. Long-term resistance training with all-cause and cause-specific mortality: assessing dose-response and joint associations with aerobic physical activity. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2026.