--- title: Why Your Workout Plan Should Include Strength Training description: Women who did any amount of strength training had a 30% lower risk of type-2 diabetes and a 17% lower risk of cardiovascular disease canonical: https://time.com/4618826/strength-training-fitness-workout/ author: Mandy Oaklander article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-12-28T16:41:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T02:29:09.845Z article:section: Health og:title: This Is the Best Workout for Women og:description: It's linked to lower risks of serious diseases og:url: https://time.com/4618826/strength-training-fitness-workout/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfd000c933213ff61/6987789c524fc00bbcdebc37/health-weight-exercise-3.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: TIME.com stock photos Weight Loss Health Exercise Weights og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Is the Best Workout for Women twitter:description: It's linked to lower risks of serious diseases twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfd000c933213ff61/6987789c524fc00bbcdebc37/health-weight-exercise-3.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is the Best Workout for Women > Sponsored content. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement.  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 28, 2016 4:41 PM UTC  Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME  by [Mandy Oaklander](https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/)  ## Mandy Oaklander Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME. Dec 28, 2016 4:41 PM UTC When it comes to [exercise](http://time.com/4474874/exercise-fitness-workouts/?iid=sr-link1), the aerobic kind steals all the glory. All of the fun ways to sweat can help you get the government-recommended 150 minutes of aerobic activity each week, like swimming, volleyball, brisk walking—anything that speeds up your blood flow and breath. Less appealing is the other, more neglected kind: strength-training. While about half of Americans meet the goals for aerobic exercise, only 20% do the recommended muscle-strengthening activities that work major muscle groups. Women, especially, tend to shy away from it. But they neglect it at their own peril. Strength-training significantly lowers the risk for type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease, finds a new [study](http://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/Fulltext/2017/01000/Strength%5FTraining%5Fand%5Fthe%5FRisk%5Fof%5FType%5F2%5FDiabetes.5.aspx) published in the journal _Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise_. Scientists (and anyone else who’s ever pumped some iron) have long known that strength training makes muscles bigger. It also [protects bones by increasing their density](http://time.com/4475628/the-new-science-of-exercise/?iid=sr-link2), an important perk for aging women. But more recent evidence shows that it also reduces BMI, which improves how the body uses insulin. A bigger muscle also means that glucose can get around the body better. The researchers wanted to see if the lesser-known benefits of strength training, like these, actually influence a person’s risk of type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Using data from the Women’s Health Study, they followed nearly 36,000 older women who ranged in age from 47-98\. The women filled out questionnaires yearly from 2000-2014 about their health and exercise levels, and one question asked women to estimate how much weight lifting/strength training they’d done per week in the past year. The researchers tracked which of the women got cardiovascular disease—including events like heart attack and stroke—and type-2 diabetes. Whether a woman did these muscle-strengthening exercises or not predicted much about her health. “Women who reported participating in any amount of strength training were more likely to have a lower BMI, more likely to engage in healthy dietary patterns, and less likely to be a current smoker,” compared with women who avoided it, the authors write. Strength training was also linked to a woman’s risk for the two conditions. Those who said they did any amount of strength training had a type-2 diabetes risk 30% lower and a cardiovascular disease risk 17% lower than those who did none, even after the researchers controlled for other variables like age, vegetable and fruit intake and physical activity. Not surprisingly, adding in aerobic exercise helped drive both risks down even more. Those who did at least 120 minutes a week of aerobic exercise and some strength training had a type-2 diabetes risk 65% lower than women who didn’t do either. More research is needed to determine the optimum amount of strength training for women and men to reduce their risks. But the study suggests that both kinds of exercise impart unique benefits—and that strength training has some serious scientific weight to it. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4618826/strength-training-fitness-workout/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4618826/strength-training-fitness-workout/"},"headline":"This Is the Best Workout for Women","datePublished":"2016-12-28T16:41:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T02:29:09.845Z","description":"Most women neglect strength training, but those who do it have lower risks of serious diseases","url":"https://time.com/4618826/strength-training-fitness-workout/","keywords":["Exercise & Fitness","fitness","Workout","Evergreen"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfd000c933213ff61/6987789c524fc00bbcdebc37/health-weight-exercise-3.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Mandy Oaklander","jobTitle":"Oaklander is a senior editor at TIME.","url":"https://time.com/author/mandy-oaklander/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfd000c933213ff61/6987789c524fc00bbcdebc37/health-weight-exercise-3.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"TIME.com stock photos Weight Loss Health Exercise Weights","caption":"TIME.com stock photos Weight Loss Health Exercise Weights","creditText":"Elizabeth Renstrom for TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/exercisefitness/","name":"Exercise & Fitness"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4618826/strength-training-fitness-workout/","name":"This Is the Best Workout for Women"}}]}] ```