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By Melissa Fleur Afshar
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Just one simple exercise performed against a wall, once or twice a week, could help maintain lower blood pressure, according to new research that suggests cardiovascular benefits may not require frequent workouts, personal trainers or elaborate equipment.
In a study of 100 adults, researchers from England found that participants who performed wall squats once or twice weekly maintained significant reductions in systolic blood pressure over the short term. Those who continued exercising three times a week saw the largest improvements, while people who stopped exercising lost their earlier gains.
The findings, published in BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine, suggest that lower-frequency isometric exercise may offer a practical way to preserve some blood pressure benefits when regular workouts are difficult to maintain.
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"This study has shown that four weeks of isometric wall squat exercise lowers resting blood pressure in people with high-normal blood pressure, who arguably stand to gain the most from performing this type of exercise to help prevent them from developing stage 1 hypertension and its associated disease risk," the study's lead author, Jim Wiles, a professor at Canterbury Christ Church University, told Newsweek. "It also shows that after completing an initial four weeks of 4 x 2 minutes of wall squat three times weekly, it is then possible to reduce the training frequency to once a week for at least another four weeks before the reductions in resting blood pressure start to revert back to previous levels.
"This makes blood pressure management using this highly accessible form of exercise even more efficient for a significant majority who struggle to find the time and motivation to exercise."
How Wall Squats May Affect Blood Pressure
Isometric exercise involves contracting muscles while keeping the body in a fixed position. Wall squats, planks and handgrip exercises are common examples often seen in workout routines.
Previous research has found that isometric training can reduce blood pressure effectively, sometimes producing reductions comparable to or greater than those achieved with certain medications. However, researchers have been less certain about how frequently people need to exercise to maintain those improvements.
The new study involved 100 adults with an average age of 37.4. Participants had systolic blood pressure between 120 and 140 mmHg, ranging from normal to high-normal levels, and did not regularly take part in structured exercise.
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Systolic readings between 130 and 139 mmHg fall into the high-normal category under expert guidelines and warrant specific lifestyle recommendations from health professionals. None of the participants had been diagnosed with hypertension.
Volunteers were non-smokers, consumed no more than 14 units of alcohol per week and had no current or previous use of blood pressure medication. They were also required to be free from injuries and illnesses.
Participants were randomly divided into five groups. Four groups initially completed the same four-week home exercise program, while the fifth served as a control group to compare results against.
The exercise consisted of four wall-squat holds per session, separated by two minutes of seated recovery, performed three times a week.
Even One Weekly Session Had an Effect
After four weeks, all exercise groups had significant improvements compared with the control group, including reductions in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure, which measures average pressure throughout the cardiac cycle.
To spot for other patterns and associations, one group continued exercising three times weekly for the following four weeks, another trained twice weekly, another once weekly, and the fourth stopped completely.
At eight weeks, those exercising once or twice a week had maintained significant reductions in systolic blood pressure and mean arterial pressure compared with the control group, although neither schedule maintained a statistically significant improvement in diastolic blood pressure.
The biggest reduction was recorded among those exercising three times weekly. Their systolic blood pressure fell by an average of 13.73 mmHg from the start of the study, compared with reductions of 6.95 mmHg among those exercising twice weekly and 6.56 mmHg among those training once a week.
The three-times-weekly group also maintained improvements in total peripheral resistance, an indicator related to blood-vessel narrowing, and heart rate variability.
Researchers had measured blood pressure, heart rate and other cardiovascular measures at baseline, and after four and eight weeks. Participants who stopped exercising after four weeks lost their earlier blood pressure improvements, and by eight weeks, their readings were no longer statistically different from the control group.
"The group who had stopped doing the isometric exercises after the initial four-week period showed a reversal of their blood pressure to levels not significantly different from the control group," Wiles added.
In a joint statement, the study's authors had said: "The study demonstrates that while lower frequency isometric exercise training may be sufficient to maintain blood pressure reductions over the short term, higher frequencies are required to preserve these benefits and the associated vascular and cardiac autonomic adaptations."
The researchers cautioned that the maintenance period lasted only four weeks. Longer studies will be needed to establish whether less frequent isometric exercise can preserve the same benefits over months or years.
Reference
Swift, T. H., et al. (2026). Isometric exercise training and blood pressure control: exploring the dose-response to training frequency in a randomised controlled trial. BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine. 12:e003172. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjsem-2025-003172.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Marc Vargas and Paul Donnelley.
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