Should you start lifting weights?

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Barbells; chalk; the clang of iron plates. Strength training is having a moment.

Planet Fitness, one of America’s biggest gym chains, is cutting back on treadmills in favour of power cages and trap bars. Even Peloton, a purveyor of expensive exercise bikes to the aspirational classes, is picking up the dumbbells—it now has an app targeted at strength training, rather than the cardio workouts on which it built its brand. Gym fads come and go.

But the rise of pumping iron will be welcomed by doctors and public-health types, who have for many years been trying to persuade the public that while it is good to be fit, it is even better to be fit and strong. In 2010 the World Health Organisation added a recommendation of two sessions of muscle-strengthening exercise a week to its exercise guidelines; many governments have followed suit (Japan, for example, updated its advice in 2024). Few people have heeded the advice, however.

A study published in 2020 estimated that although around half of Western adults reported meeting the weekly guidelines for cardiovascular exercise such as jogging or cycling, only between 10% and 30%, depending on the country, claimed to meet the minimum for strength work. There’s no doubt cardio is good for you—it lowers blood pressure, cuts the risk of heart disease, strokes and some kinds of cancer, and may even help treat depression. Fit people live up to seven years longer than couch potatoes.

Being strong offers many of the same benefits. In the same way that bones are more than just scaffolding for the body (they also produce blood cells, for instance), muscle does more than merely move limbs. It also helps regulate metabolism, insulin sensitivity and