Doing 90 minutes to two hours of weight training per week can slash the risk of an early death, experts say.
People who undertake resistance training regularly and keep it up for the long term lower the chance of early death from any cause by 13% - and by 19% when it comes to conditions such as heart disease and stroke, according to a study.
Those who lift weights or use things like resistance bands or bodyweight exercises also have a 27% lower risk of dying from neurological disease, even when other activity such as aerobic exercise is taken into account.
Researchers said their findings support the need for people to do both aerobic exercise such as cycling, jogging and swimming, and weight-based training.
However, they said that doing more than two hours of strength training per week will not lead to extra benefits.
Overall, the study found the lowest risks of dying early were seen when people did a decent amount of aerobic exercise and strength training, or when aerobic activity was very high.
Examples of moderate activity include very brisk walking (6km/h or faster), cycling at 16km/h-19km/h or badminton.
Vigorous activity includes hiking, jogging at 6mph or faster, fast cycling, basketball or tennis.
The new study, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, included 147,374 people (31,540 men and 115,834 women) followed for up to 30 years.
People were quizzed every two years on the amount of time they spent on strength training and aerobic exercise.
Aerobic exercise in the study included brisk walking, running, jogging, swimming, cycling, tennis and squash, while strength training included exercises using weights or body weight, such as dumbbell work, squats and lunges.
The lowest risks were observed among those people with both high aerobic activity and strength training levels, with risks dropping by up to 58% among the most active.
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Professor of Clinical Exercise Physiology at DCU Niall Moyna said that while the results of the survey were good, more people in Ireland needed to be aware of the importance of muscle mass.
"Our current guidelines in Ireland, people think about, let's get my steps in. That's good for cardiovascular health," he said.
"But people then tend to forget about the importance of muscle mass.
"Probably after the age of 30, we start to lose muscle. But between the ages of, say, 40 and 70, if you don't try to maintain it, you will lose around 10% per decade. That's a quarter of your muscle mass.
"Activities that we take for granted when we were younger, they become more difficult and we become more sedentary. And because we become more sedentary, we're less active, and then we start getting these chronic conditions.
"I'm not a bit surprised to see that it reduced all-cause mortality," he added.
Prof Moyna said that the scale of the benefits highlighted by the study was the biggest takeaway for him.
"If you combine both of them, you got your 20 to 30 minutes of walking a day, you did your resistance training twice a week, you've got a reduction in all cause mortality over roughly 60%, which is huge," he said.
"Getting that into your daily routine, maybe three days a week going for your walk or just 10 minutes of cycling three days a week, plus around 30 minutes of resistance training three days a week, you get a 60% reduction.
"It's phenomenal," he added.
