Friday, June 15, 2012

resistance training and / or aerobic exercise...what do they do to middle age muscle?

Phillips lab at  McMaster university churns these studies out!

Concurrent resistance and aerobic exercise stimulates both myofibrillar and mitochondrial protein synthesis in sedentary middle-aged men

Here they look at the impact of :
  • resistance training alone;
  • aerobic exercise alone; and
  • resistance exercise and aerobic exercise together;
in sedentary middle-aged men.  (I'm 44.  Am I middle aged yet?)

The way that I read it is that doing both together is equivalent in effect  - in most measures they were looking at, protein synthesis in the muscles mainly) to doing either resistance exercise or aerobic exercise.

Questions for discussion....

  • Why was the resistance exercise 8 sets of 8 reps?  Why not something simpler?
  • What is more time efficient?
  • Why do they always pick leg extensions?

6 comments:

JamesSteeleII said...

Questions/Answers

Q. Why was the resistance exercise 8 sets of 8 reps? Why not something simpler?

A. Stuart Phillips has published a paper with Richard Winett arguing that simple uncomplicated routines shuld be examined first i.e. single set HIT, before beginning to change the variables. My assumption is that a more simple method wasn't used due to Phillips not being heavily invovled in the actual work (hence second to last name on the paper), though could be wrong.

Q What is more time efficient?

A. Hehe, we all know the answer to that.

Q. Why do they always pick leg extensions?

A. Usually as its the most easily controllable exercise requiring a very small amount of skill development from any trainees and because the most common dynamometers used for muscular testing that are commercially available and in most labs are leg extensions. Also biopsy samples are to my knowledge most easily attainable from the quadriceps (and likely the most common place that volunteers are happy to agree to having a huge needle stuck into them).

Anonymous said...

Maybe 8 sets, so they would still have 4 sets when the cut it in half for the consecutive trial.

My reading is that the did 8x8, or 40 minutes of cycling, or 4x8 + 20 minutes of cycling.

Interesting is that RE+AE seemed to activate more resistance related synthesis, than RE alone.

That sort of blows the common theory that AE, interferes with Resistance training.

Aileen said...

I wonder also if using leg extensions and cycling produced different results because they both use legs. What happens if you do bench press and cycling? And on an untrained leg the leg extensions would be using more fast twitch and the cycling slow twitch? So many variables. And of course my eternal gripe is why so few trials on women! Especially non diabetic non-decrepit women :-)

Chris said...

@James - Cheers

My biases were coming out there ;-)

by the way, just saw this similar study:

https://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/abstract/sportsmed/doi/10.1055/s-0031-1295475

manhattan dental implants said...

Actually every exercise is better for health and this exercise are making one strong working system in human body.

Bill said...

I hate to tell you this, but yes, you've been middle aged for a few years now. I denied it until around 40. At 40 you've arrived. Don't worry, you'll outgrow it.