Any exercise that gets the heart pumping can help to reduce the risk of developing the deadly heart complication, but evidence has found strong associations between certain forms of exercise and improved heart health.
One study, published in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, makes a convincing case for lifting weights to ward off the threat of having a heart attack.
The key findings, based on data from nearly 13,000 adults in the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, suggest that lifting weights for less than an hour a week may reduce your risk for a heart attack or stroke by 40 to 70 percent.
“People may think they need to spend a lot of time lifting weights, but just two sets of bench presses that take less than 5 minutes could be effective,” said DC (Duck-chul) Lee, associate professor of kinesiology.
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