Which Exercise Actually Reduces Migraine Frequency? What the Trials Show

"Exercise helps migraine" is common advice, but it treats exercise as one thing. A 2022 network meta-analysis pooling 21 clinical trials and 1,195 patients compared exercise types against each other and against no exercise, and found real differences in effect size.

What came out on top

Ranked by how much they reduced migraine burden compared to no exercise: strength training performed best (about 3.55 times more effective than no exercise), followed by high-intensity aerobic exercise (about 3.13 times), then moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (about 2.18 times). All three beat doing nothing by a wide margin — the ranking is about degree, not about whether lower-intensity movement is worthless.

Yoga, tested separately