Anaerobic training’s returns increase ridiculously with days/week until about 3 and it’s large diminishing returns after that.
Just saying, once you’re willing to lift weights once a week with all the upfront cost (gym membership, leaving your comfort zone, learning the ropes, etc) it’s a really good bang for your buck adding one or two more.
For sure. My friend's program is longevity-focused, not strength focused.
I usually do 2/week strength training + 1/week bouldering, but have dropped to 1/week strength training + 1/week bouldering while I worked to incorporate the 12k steps into my routine. I'm also currently doing a cut so am less motivated to lift. After I hit 10% body fat I plan to start bulking and go back to 2/week + bouldering or maybe even 3/week + bouldering.
Regarding diminishing returns, at least for longevity,
> Training once or twice a week for less than an hour can reduce the chance of death from any cause by 35%. But, if the time is increased to over an hour in a week or more than three sessions, then the longevity benefit disappears to zero compared with people who never put their hands on a weight.
What is missing in all this is testosterone levels, especially diminishing as you age.
I have lifted weights for 35 years now and just reached the point that I can not lift, recover and cut calories. I can only recover from a very light full body once a week workout. Otherwise, I need a caloric surplus so I can't cut weight.
To me, it is why there is so much bad information in this space because training is so highly variable based on genetics, hormone levels and age. When I was 20, I had no problem recovering from lifting 6 days a week, running 30 minutes a day and cutting.
Now I can barely lift and more than 30 minutes a day of walking is not so easy to recover from.
I would suspect this is the state that not taking testosterone becomes increasingly unhealthy.
So I have basically quit lifting, cutting to 10% bodyfat and then will rebuild with lifting once on testosterone. I have never read a single reference though that lifting can be bad from the recovery demands if trying to cut at some level of hormones.
We are basically in the dark ages with all this stuff so you have to figure it out for yourself.
Mind that the result in the paper seems to only have number for CVD, not general mortality, and most importantly, tests subjects are middle aged men with checks 5 and 10 years later.
It’s perhaps good to see if there’s a lower chance of an early stroke/heart attack, but they don’t get in the range where the loss of muscle function and bone density can truly affect you, which is where anaerobic training shines (the usual “grandma broke her hip and never recovered”).
> My friend's program is longevity-focused, not strength focused.
I'd say long lifespan without long healthspan is not very useful, so I'd prioritize strength in common movement patterns over just extending temporal existence as much as possible. So longevity shouldn't be treated as separate from either cardiovascular or muscoskeletal fitness.
Just saying, once you’re willing to lift weights once a week with all the upfront cost (gym membership, leaving your comfort zone, learning the ropes, etc) it’s a really good bang for your buck adding one or two more.