Why bother exercising after chemotherapy?

So, you have been diagnosed with cancer, gone through treatment, and you might be wondering what else is left for you to do? Well, according to most recent research done by the Canadian Cancer Society in the CHALLENGE clinical trial, you should be exercising. For years, doctors have told their patients about the importance of exercise for our physical and mental well-being. And in the battle against cancer, it was more of the same reasoning. However, thanks to the latest research, not only is exercise good for our overall health and well-being, but it has also been shown to “result in significantly longer disease-free survival and findings are consistent with longer overall survival,” (Courneya et al., 2025).

The CHALLENGE trial conducted a study from 2009 through 2024, in which 889 patients with resected colon cancer post-adjuvant chemotherapy treatment were recruited. This group of patients underwent randomization into two groups, a health education control group or a 3-year exercise intervention. And after a median follow-up of 7.9 years, the results showed that patients in the exercise group had an overall 37% reduction in mortality compared to those in the health education control group. The overall survival was 90.3% in the exercise group versus 83.2% in the group that received educational materials alone (Poitras, 2025). 

The goal of the implemented exercise-program was to increase recreational aerobic exercise from baseline. Specifically, to increase aerobic exercise by at least 10 METs, metabolic equivalent tasks, per week for the first 6 months, and then further maintain or increase this amount for another 2.5 years. A MET is the energy cost of physical activities compared to rest. As an example, brisk walking for an hour has the value of 4 METs. However, patients could choose the type of the activity they completed, as long as it brought them to 10+ METs over baseline. In this trial, patients reported participating in an average of 11.5 MET-hours per week of moderate-vigorous physical activity. 

The second part of the exercise-program was an intervention referred to as behavioral-support sessions, designed to help promote adherence to the exercise program long term and ensure proper completion with supervised activity every 6 months. This intervention was guided by the Theory of Planned Behavior and consisted of 17 evidence-based techniques for behavioral change. 

So, I have showed you the new CHALLENGE clinical trial and the data and results it produced in its findings. But what should you do with it? Well, what this CHALLENGE trial has showed us is that it is not just the medical therapies that help, but the exercise too. And now it’s not just recommended, but proven to be of benefit. However, beyond just exercise alone, it's the quantifiable increase over baseline, in addition to the behavioral modification to make this lifestyle change stick long term. So, the recommendations we can draw from the trial are these:

- Do some research of your own. Find enjoyable and attainable ways for you to achieve 10+ METs beyond baseline per week. This will look different for everybody.

- Find a way to stay accountable. Get a gym partner, a walking buddy, start attending a regular exercise class, or maybe it’s just writing in a daily workout journal that helps you stay motivated and adherent to achieving your goals. 

- Make it enjoyable. 

- Most importantly, find your why. Reading this article and more information about this article may motivate you, or it may come from deeper within. But finding your reason to get your body moving, may just help you live a longer, disease-free life.

Sources:

Courneya, K. S., & Vardy, J. L. (2025, July 3). Structured exercise after adjuvant chemotherapy for colon cancer | New England Journal of Medicine. The New England Journal of Medicine. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2502760 

Poitras, C. (2025, July 8). How exercise increases cancer survival. Yale School of Public Health. https://ysph.yale.edu/news-article/how-exercise-increases-cancer-survival/