Women Matched Men’s Peak Exercise Benefit in Far Less Weekly Time

CATEGORY: WOMEN’S HEALTH

Extra minutes did not buy men what fewer minutes bought women. Men’s risk of death from any cause kept falling until about 300 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous activity, where it bottomed out at roughly 18% below inactive men. Women reached that same 18% at about 140 minutes a week. Across 412,413 U.S. adults, regular leisure-time activity was linked to a 24% lower risk of death from any cause in women and 15% in men, compared with doing none.¹

39,935 Deaths, Matched to a National Register

The data came from the National Health Interview Survey, a long-running U.S. government health survey, covering adults interviewed between 1997 and 2017. They were 55% women, average age about 44. Each reported how often, how long and how hard they exercised in their free time, and whether they did muscle-strengthening activity. Those answers were then linked to the National Death Index, the national register of deaths, through 2019. That is nearly five million person-years of follow-up. In that time 39,935 participants died. Cardiovascular causes, meaning heart disease and stroke, accounted for 11,670 of those deaths. The design is observational. It recorded what people said they did and what happened to them afterward. A link is what that supports, not proof that the exercise caused the difference.¹

Cardiovascular Death 36% Lower in Women, 14% in Men

Meeting the widely cited mark of 150 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous movement, such as brisk walking, went with a 24% lower risk of death from any cause in women and 15% in men, compared with no leisure-time activity. The gap was wider for cardiovascular death: 36% lower in women against 14% lower in men.¹ About a third of women met that mark, 32.5%, compared with 43% of men. The study was designed to test whether exercise benefits differ by sex, and the difference between women and men was statistically significant.¹

Running and Strength Work Followed the Same Shape

Past 140 minutes, women’s risk kept edging down, to a maximum of about 24% lower at 300 minutes. Vigorous activity such as running produced a similar picture. Women matched men’s peak benefit at about 57 minutes a week, against 110 minutes for men. Muscle-strengthening work behaved the same way. Regular participation was linked to 19% lower mortality in women and 11% in men, with women at their peak around one session a week and men at about three.¹

Bigger Bodies, Smaller Relative Challenge

The authors point to known physiological differences. Men on average start with more muscle mass, larger hearts and lungs, and greater aerobic capacity, so a given workout is a smaller relative challenge for a man’s body. Bodies adapt in proportion to the challenge, much as the person who finds a flight of stairs hard work gets the bigger training effect from climbing it. Two caveats travel with the result. Activity was self-reported rather than measured with a device, and people who exercise may differ in other ways the researchers could not fully account for.¹

Two other studies sketch the same asymmetry. In UK Biobank, where activity was measured with wrist monitors rather than self-reports, about 250 minutes a week of moderate-to-vigorous activity was linked to 30% lower risk of coronary heart disease in women, a reduction men reached only near 530 minutes. Coronary heart disease means narrowed arteries feeding the heart.² A separate U.S. cohort tied recommended activity levels to 52% lower cardiovascular death in women, with no clear reduction in men.³

Key Takeaways

• Regular leisure-time exercise was linked to a 24% lower risk of death in women and 15% in men, compared with inactivity; for cardiovascular death, 36% and 14%.
• Women reached the benefit men got from about 300 minutes a week at roughly 140 minutes a week, and about one weekly strength session in women matched about three in men. Activity here was self-reported and the design observational, which makes this a link and not a demonstrated cause.

References

1. Ji H, Gulati M, Huang TY, et al. Sex Differences in Association of Physical Activity With All-Cause and Cardiovascular Mortality. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2024;83(8):783–793. link
2. Chen J, Wang Y, Zhong Z, et al. Sex differences in the association of wearable accelerometer-derived physical activity with coronary heart disease incidence and mortality. Nature Cardiovascular Research. 2025;4(11):1539–1549. link.
3. He A, Wang Y, Du C, et al. Sex differences in the association of physical activity patterns with all-cause and cardiovascular mortality: a prospective cohort study from NHANES 2007–2018. Scientific Reports. 2025;15(1):22197. link.