Doing a mix of exercise could be the key to longer life: active people who did the greatest variety of exercise were 19% less likely to die during that time than those who focused on one activity. That effect was greater than for individual sports like walking, tennis, rowing and jogging.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn0y9pqe2zro.amp
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Why **doing a mix of exercise could be the key to longer life**
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket when it comes to exercise – doing a variety of different physical activities every week is the key to boosting your health and living longer, a study suggests.
After tracking the weekly exercise habits of 110,000 men and women in the US for 30 years, researchers found **active people who did the greatest variety of exercise were 19% less likely to die during that time than those who focused on one activity**.
**That effect was greater than for individual sports like walking, tennis, rowing and jogging.**
The total amount of exercise you do is still key, experts say, but doing a range of activities you enjoy can bring lots of benefits.
“It’s important to keep a high level of total physical activity, and on top of that, diversifying the types of activities may be more beneficial,” said Dr Yang Hu, from Harvard School of Public Health, lead author of the study in the journal BMJ Medicine.
“Combining activities that have complementary health benefits [such as resistance training and aerobic exercise] can be very helpful,” he added.
For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:
https://bmjmedicine.bmj.com/content/5/1/e001513
“Despite efforts, such as applying lag analyses, the possibility of reverse causation cannot be eliminated. This limitation is particularly relevant for respiratory disease, which can have longstanding insidious symptoms that may appear long before diagnosis.”
So, they couldn’t establish a causal direction. Which means that it could also be that people reduce excersize variety because of a serious disease. Not so interesting.
Most sports prioritize certain physical traits to the detriment of others. Joggers will likely have good cardio but weak muscular development which can lead to injuries for example.
You should strive to have both a well developed musculature as well as cardiovascular health.
As much as anything else, it means (IME) that someone is much more likely to keep it up. People claiming in January that they will go to the gym 5 times a week are often doomed to failure.
It’s helpful that this doesn’t frame one exercise as “best,” but looks at patterns instead.
But it’s not about dying, it’s about living well to the end.