There’s a reason we’re always touting the benefits of weightlifting here at MH. Not only does it make you feel good (thanks, endorphins) and look good (thanks, chest day), but it’s a sure-fire way to ironclad your cardiac health.

Less than an hour of resistance training a week could reduce your risk for a heart attack or stroke by almost 40 to 70 per cent, according to a new study from Iowa State University.

Researchers analysed data from around 13,000 adults, looking at the occurrence of ‘cardiovascular events’ – a medical term for the cause of any heart damage, like heart attack and stroke – that did not result in death, cardiovascular events that included death, and any cause of death.

The study, published in Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, concluded that weight training reduced the risk for all three across the board, even if you don’t do any other exercise. That’s right, shifting tin is enough to ironclad your heart.

Best of all, you don’t need to clock up hours upon hours for your ticker to reap the benefits. In fact, spending more than an hour in the weight room each week did not provide any additional advantages, the researchers found.

“People may think they need to spend a lot of time lifting weights, but just two sets of bench presses that take less than five minutes could be effective,” DC Lee, associate professor of kinesiology, told ScienceDaily.

Watch: How to master the bench press

That’s not all. Lee and his colleagues used the same data to analyse the relationship between weight-lifting and diabetes, as well as high cholesterol, again independently of other exercise.

The results? Less than one hour a week of resistance training was associated with a 29 per cent lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome, the cluster of conditions that pre-empt heart disease, stroke and diabetes, while risk of high cholesterol dropped by 32 per cent.

“Building muscle helps move your joints and bones, but also there are metabolic benefits,” Lee told ScienceDaily. “If you build muscle, even if you're not aerobically active, you burn more energy.”

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