Discover the secret the rest of the world knows
It’s the world’s most popular sport—and a great way to lower your blood pressure. A study published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise found that playing soccer 2 days a week had a bigger effect on blood pressure than moderate daily exercise.
Researchers recruited 33 men between the ages of 33 and 54 with high blood pressure and randomly divided them into two groups—one that played soccer twice a week for one hour, and one that was told to exercise daily for 30 to 45 minutes at a moderate pace. After six months, the soccer players saw their blood pressure drop twice as much as the non-players. (Maybe that's one of the reasons Why Soccer Players Are Smarter You.)
“Higher-intensity exercise does have a whole different impact on the body’s physiology,” says cardiologist Eric Topol, M.D., director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute and a Men’s Health expert advisor. Your heart rate is higher and your blood vessels are more dilated than with moderate exercise. This high level of stress—which moderate exercise can’t provide—forces your body into overtime to adapt. That might be why soccer lowers your blood pressure better than moderate exercise, says Dr. Topol.
“Soccer is a terrific sport in terms of overall conditioning,” says Todd Durkin, C.S.C.S., founder of Fitness Quest 10 and author of The Impact Body Plan. It combines lots of different running speeds with intense spurts of acceleration—a hard combo to beat because your body never gets the chance to fully recover before going again. That level of intensity keeps your body stressed to the point where it’s forced to adapt, says David Maron, M.D., a cardiologist at Vanderbilt University’s medical center. Your body reacts by building more blood vessels that lower your blood pressure and make your entire cardiovascular system more efficient.
But you don't need to get on the field to reap the benefits—simply focus on intensity instead. A 2012 study by Danish researchers showed that intense exercise can halve your risk of developing risk factors like high blood pressure that lead to stroke. After gathering the baselines fitness habits of 10,000 people—including workout length and intensity—researchers found that those who reported jogging or brisk walking 2 to 4 hours a week cut their risk of developing high blood pressure and other cardiovascular warning signs by between 40 to 50 percent whereas people who exercised moderately saw no benefits.
For fat-incinerating, performance-boosting plans that are way more fun than 20 minutes on a treadmill, try one of these 3 New Cardio Workouts.
Additional reporting by Cassie Shortsleeve.
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