Quick question: how many different kinds of physical activity did you do last week—for at least 20 minutes each?
Not how many times, but how many kinds.
For most people, the honest answer is one. Maybe it’s walking. Or weight training. Or yoga. Or perhaps it’s the same class three times a week. Whatever it is, you’re already in a far better spot if you do it regularly compared with doing nothing.
But a large study published earlier this year suggests that a second activity may be worth more than extra time spent on the first.
The payoff starts at activity number two
Researchers at Harvard followed more than 111,000 adults for roughly 30 years, asking every couple of years how much weekly time they spent doing a variety of physical activities. People who consistently did three or four different activities had about a 19% lower risk of dying during the study than people who did about one. And that held even when they were compared with people doing similar total amounts of activity.
Two details make this more useful and less time-consuming than it sounds. First, the bar for an activity to “count” was low: at least 20 minutes a week, done consistently. Second, most of the difference showed up at the first step: going from roughly one activity toward two already came with about a 13% lower risk.
Now this was an observational study, so it shows an association rather than proving cause. But the researchers offered two reasonable explanations for why variety might matter.
When more of the same stops paying off
The first is that every activity’s benefit seems to level off. In the study, the lifespan benefit of walking, lifting, stair climbing, and racquet sports each flattened out at fairly modest weekly amounts. Past that point, more time spent doing the same thing added little—while the same amount of time doing something different starts back on the steep part of its benefits curve.
(To be clear, that leveling off is about lifespan, not performance. If you want a stronger deadlift, more deadlift practice still helps.)
The second is that different activities do different jobs. I’ve written before about how strength and cardio do more together than either does alone. This study points the same way at a finer level: walking, jogging, running, and biking each counted as a separate activity. So a second activity doesn’t have to cross the line between strength and cardio to count—it just has to challenge you differently than your usual one does.
None of this means you need a new workout every day. But a consistent week can look a lot more varied than you might expect. In fact, the people in the top group weren’t doing anything crazy—on average, they simply kept three or four activities going for decades.
Putting it into practice
If your weekly activity consists mostly of one thing: add a different activity for at least 20 minutes this week (and keep it going). If you lift, try walking, rucking, biking, yoga, or a sport. If you walk, run, or ride, add a strength session. And remember that the new activity doesn’t have to become your “main thing”—it simply needs to be different.
If you already do three or four (or more) things each week: invite a friend to join you for an activity that one (or neither) of you usually does. A hike, a bike ride, a round of pickleball. It’ll get them a second activity and both of you some extra company.