Cardio plus resistance bands kept blood sugar lower all day, small trial finds

Cardio did one thing. Bands did another. Together, they did the most. Do resistance bands lower blood sugar in type 2 diabetes? In a small trial in Beijing, 23 older adults with the disease tried three workouts while wearing a blood sugar sensor [1].

Only the workout that mixed cardio with resistance bands kept blood sugar lower for the whole next day, compared with days without exercise. Cardio on its own gave the fastest drop right after the workout, but that did not last as long [1].

One plain caveat comes early. This was a small study, with one workout of each kind, so it says nothing yet about months of training [1].

The work was done by Bin Gai, Wenpeng Chen and Liling Qiu of the Capital University of Physical Education and Sports in China. It was published in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport in 2026. The authors say they have no competing interests [1].

How was the study done?

Type 2 diabetes is a disease where blood sugar runs too high, because the body does not use the hormone insulin well. Resistance bands are stretchy rubber bands that people pull against to work their muscles, a cheap kind of strength training [1].

The team signed up 30 older adults with type 2 diabetes, and 23 finished all three workouts. Each person did every workout, in an order picked by chance. That design is called a crossover trial, which means each person is compared with themselves. The comparison was the average of four days before any training [1].

Everyone wore a continuous glucose monitor for 14 days. That is a small sensor stuck on the skin. It reads the sugar in the fluid just under the skin, day and night [1].

One of the measures was time in range. That is the share of the day a person's sugar stays inside a target band, which experts agreed on in 2019 [4]. Another was a risk score for sugar that runs too high or too low [1].

What did the study find?

Only the mixed workout went with lower average blood sugar over the next 24 hours, compared with the days without exercise. That result passed a stricter test the team used to guard against chance, since they made many comparisons [1].

There are two catches. First, the 24 hour check was an extra look, not the trial's main question. Second, no other main comparison held up under that stricter test [1]. The public summary also does not say how big the drop in sugar was in everyday units, so no figure is given here.

The workouts also differed in smaller ways. Cardio gave the steepest drop right after the workout. The mixed workout kept sugar in the target band longer than cardio did. Bands alone had a lower risk score than cardio. After the mixed workout, sugar reached its lowest point about three hours later, the latest of the three [1]. The authors put it this way:

Elastic-band resistance training may be a practical, low-cost strategy warranting further study.

Gai and colleagues, Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 2026 [1]

In plain words, bands are cheap and easy to use, and they look worth testing in bigger and longer studies. The authors do not say they are proven [1].

How does this fit with earlier trials?

Longer trials point the same way, though they measured something different. An earlier trial, called DARE, put 251 adults with type 2 diabetes on cardio, weights, both, or no exercise for 22 weeks. Both together lowered HbA1c the most. HbA1c is a blood test of average sugar over about three months [2].

Another trial, called HART-D, followed 262 adults in Louisiana for nine months. Only the mixed program lowered HbA1c compared with no exercise. Cardio alone and weights alone did not, by that test [3]. By contrast, the new study measured a single day, not months.

The new paper's public summary lists no funder and no trial registry number, so neither can be checked here [1]. It also tested only older adults with diabetes, and only 23 of them.

This study does not show what happens over weeks or months of band training. It does not show that the same holds for people without diabetes. What it does show is that, in one small trial, a single workout mixing cardio and bands went with lower blood sugar for the next day [1][2][3].