A new study tracking more than 111,000 adults across three decades suggests that the variety of exercise you do matters as much as the total amount.

Exercise Variety May Matter More Than You Think

Researchers at Harvard’s TH Chan School of Public Health analyzed data from the Nurses’ Health Study and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study, following participants from 1986 through 2020.

Over nearly 2.5 million person-years, 38,847 deaths were recorded. Published in BMJ Medicine, the analysis examined nine common activities—walking, jogging, running, bicycling, swimming, racquet sports, stair climbing, rowing or calisthenics, and weight training.

Most activities were linked to lower mortality, with benefits typically plateauing at modest levels. Walking, tennis, and stair climbing each cut all-cause mortality risk by 10 to 17 percent.

Weight training and rowing showed similar benefits.

Swimming was the lone exception, showing no clear mortality reduction at higher levels, though the authors note self-reported swimming intensity is hard to measure accurately.

How Exercise Variety Supports a Longer Life

The more striking finding was variety.

Participants who consistently engaged in the widest range of activities had a 19 percent lower risk of death from any cause compared to those with the least variety, and that benefit held even after accounting for total exercise volume.

Mortality from respiratory disease dropped by 41 percent in the highest-variety group.

The authors conclude that “longterm engagement in multiple types of physical activity may help extend the lifespan.”

A walk plus weights plus weekend tennis may add up to more than the sum of its parts.

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Adapted from: Han H, Hu J, Lee DH, et al. “Physical activity types, variety, and mortality: results from two prospective cohort studies.” BMJ Med. 2026;5:e001513. doi:10.1136/ bmjmed-2025-001513