Strength training eased depression across 33 clinical trials

Researchers at the University of Limerick pooled randomized trials that tested resistance exercise training against inactive control conditions in people with depressive symptoms, wanting to know whether lifting weights carried any real antidepressant effect of its own.

The meta-analysis combined 33 randomized clinical trials with 1,877 participants, split roughly evenly between resistance training and nonactive control groups. Resistance training produced a moderate, statistically significant reduction in depressive symptoms, and the benefit held regardless of how much stronger participants actually became.

The effect appeared in healthy adults and in people with diagnosed physical or mental illness, and did not depend on how much total exercise volume participants completed. Studies with blinded symptom assessment showed a smaller effect than those without, a sign that some of the result may reflect expectation rather than biology alone, so the authors called for more rigorously blinded trials.

Lifting weights lifted mood, trial after trial.