Exercise and insulin sensitivity: both hard AND easy training.......

We've had material up here before on the way in which exercise can promote insulin sensitivity - even brief intense exercise.

I spotted this new study that highlights that both endurance and resistance training can have an impact, but on different elements of that sensitivity:

Insulin Sensitivity After Maximal and Endurance Resistance Training

Maximum Resistance Training (MRT) led to a greater increase in glucose uptake capacity (in muscles), whereas Endurance Resistance Training (ERT) led to greater insulin sensitivity, supporting the recommendation of both MRT and ERT as primary intervention approaches for individuals at a risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

It is something that I point to in Hillfit - intense exercise to failure that can tap into all the muscle fibres - slow, intermediate and fast twitch - lets you drain them of glucose in a way in which endurance exercise does not allow....and endurance exercise does have some benefits.

Actually it is pretty much similar to what Mark Sisson has been saying for a while:

• Lift Heavy things
• Move around alot at a slow pace

Or indeed, Clarence Bass "barbell" strategy - 

 I do a combination of high-intensity intervals and low-intensity walking—and very little of the moderate-intensity aerobics that most people do. I call this my barbell aerobics strategy because, like a barbell, it uses both ends of the intensity spectrum—with almost nothing in between. 

which is also of course Nassim Taleb's approach