Cardiovascular disease claims the lives of nearly 20 million people worldwide every year. Exercise reduces the risk of cardiovascular disease, but experts aren’t sure which form of exercise is optimal for reducing that risk. A recent study found that aerobic exercise alone or combined with resistance exercise is more effective at reducing cardiovascular disease risk than resistance exercise alone.

The study involved 406 middle-aged adults with high blood pressure and either overweight or obesity. Participants engaged in one of three training regimens – resistance, aerobic, or combined resistance and aerobic – for one hour, three times weekly, for one year. A fourth group remained sedentary. Researchers scored the participants' cardiovascular disease risk based on measures of their systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, fasting glucose, and percent body fat before and after the interventions.

They found that participants who engaged in the aerobic or combined aerobic/resistance regimens showed improved cardiovascular disease risk scores at the one-year point. However, those who engaged in only resistance or were sedentary showed no improvements in their risk scores. When the researchers looked at individual risk factors, they found that all three exercising groups lost body fat, but their systolic blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, and fasting glucose did not decrease.

These findings suggest that aerobic exercise alone or combined aerobic plus resistance reduces the cardiovascular disease risk profile in people with overweight or obesity. Other evidence indicates that high-intensity interval training (HIIT)’s cardiovascular benefits rival or surpass those of traditional aerobic exercise. Learn more about the benefits of HIIT in this episode featuring Dr. Martin Gibala.