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Scientists Reveal the Best Workouts for Different Health Risks
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. The fitness world is full of debates over which workout delivers the biggest health benefits. Is it running? Weight training? HIIT? Yoga ? A new review suggests that for people with metabolic syndrome, that may be the wrong question.
Rather than identifying one form of exercise that consistently outperforms all others, researchers found that different workouts appear to influence different parts of the condition. The findings, published in the journal iScience, raise the possibility that exercise recommendations could eventually become more tailored, with specific activities chosen to address specific health concerns.
Metabolic syndrome affects people who have a combination of risk factors linked to poor metabolic health. These can include elevated blood pressure, high blood sugar, excess fat around the waist, high triglycerides and low levels of HDL cholesterol.
Having several of these conditions at the same time increases the likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes .
The challenge for doctors is that exercise has long been recognized as beneficial, but there is far less clarity on which forms of exercise are best suited to particular metabolic problems. Someone trying to lower blood pressure may not necessarily benefit most from the same workout as someone focused on reducing abdominal fat or improving cholesterol levels.
That question prompted researchers to examine the evidence from dozens of clinical trials involving adults with metabolic syndrome.
After reviewing thousands of published records, the team narrowed the evidence base to 53 randomized controlled trials involving 2,948 participants. The studies examined a broad range of exercise approaches, including aerobic exercise, resistance training, yoga, tai chi, qigong and different forms of high-intensity interval training.
The study found that no single type of exercise was the clear winner across all aspects of metabolic syndrome. Instead, different exercise styles appeared to have different strengths.
For measures linked to weight and metabolic control, a combination of aerobic exercise and resistance training stood out. According to the review, this approach produced the strongest results for reducing waist circumference and body mass index while also helping improve LDL cholesterol and blood sugar levels.
Elsewhere, exercises that combine movement with breath control and mental focus appeared to perform surprisingly well. Tai chi and qigong were associated with the greatest improvements in HDL cholesterol and systolic blood pressure, suggesting that lower-impact activities may still play an important role in metabolic health.
The picture became even more nuanced when researchers looked at high-intensity interval training.
Longer HIIT sessions appeared to be most effective at reducing body fat percentage. Shorter HIIT workouts, meanwhile, performed best for lowering triglycerides, total cholesterol and diastolic blood pressure.
Taken together, the findings suggest that metabolic syndrome may be better viewed as a collection of related health challenges rather than a single problem that can be addressed with a one-size-fits-all exercise plan.
The study comes amid growing concerns about the prevalence of metabolic syndrome worldwide.
The condition has become increasingly common over the past two decades, and as of 2023, an estimated 1.54 billion adults globally were living with metabolic syndrome.
The health consequences can be significant. Individuals with the condition face a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and premature death, while metabolic syndrome has also been linked to other health issues, including nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome and certain cancers.
Although medications can treat individual components of the syndrome, such as high blood pressure or elevated blood sugar, the researchers noted that they generally address specific symptoms rather than the broader collection of metabolic problems occurring together. Exercise and diet can influence several risk factors at the same time.
Still, the authors cautioned that the results should not be interpreted as the final word on the subject, noting that the overall evidence for most comparisons in the study was low or very low certainty.
According to the researchers, differences in study design, exercise programs and participant groups make it difficult to draw firm conclusions. They argue that future trials should compare exercise approaches more directly and under more standardized conditions.
Xinyu Shen et al, Comparative efficacy of various exercise therapies for metabolic syndrome a systematic review and network meta-analysis, iScience (2026). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2026.116801
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Kara Dolman and Emma Lee-Sang
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