Resistance Training improves Cardio Fitness....Get Strong to get fit!

So we have been saying this for a while.... One of the key themes of my book Hillfit is that getting stronger will make you more fit for "cardio" activities such as hillwalking or hiking.  The theme is how to get stronger.  Indeed I had one client ask for a refund because I didn't tell her how to improve her cardiovascular fitness!  I need to send her this new paper:

Resistance Training to Momentary Muscular Failure Improves Cardiovascular Fitness in Humans: A Review of Acute Physiological Responses and Chronic Physiological Adaptations

A detailed, peer reviewed academic survey of the literature and previous studies which demonstrates that proper resistance training...to failure...improves all the standard measures of cardiovascular fitness.

This is a proper scientific paper, long and in depth.  The writers have been through all the relevant previous work on this and have demonstrated that getting stronger gets you fitter!

The full paper is available on line and  I have put the abstract below.

Training to Momentary Muscular Failure Improves Cardiovascular Fitness in Humans: A Review of Acute Physiological Responses and Chronic Physiological Adaptations. JEPonline 2012;15(3):53- 80. Research demonstrates resistance training produces significant improvement in cardiovascular fitness (VO2 max, economy of movement). To date no review article has considered the underlying physiological mechanisms that might support such improvements. This article is a comprehensive, systematic narrative review of the literature surrounding the area of resistance training, cardiovascular fitness and the acute responses and chronic adaptations it produces. The primary concern with existing research is the lack of clarity and inappropriate quantification of resistance training intensity. Thus, an important consideration of this review is the effect of intensity. The acute metabolic and molecular responses to resistance training to momentary muscular failure do not differ from that of traditional endurance training. Myocardial function appears to be maintained, perhaps enhanced, in acute response to high intensity resistance training, and contraction intensity appears to mediate the acute vascular response to resistance training. The results of chronic physiological adaptations demonstrate that resistance training to momentary muscular failure produces a number of physiological adaptations, which may facilitate the observed improvements in cardiovascular fitness. The adaptations may include an increase in mitochondrial enzymes, mitochondrial proliferation, phenotypic conversion from type IIx towards type IIa muscle fibers, and vascular remodeling (including capillarization). Resistance training to momentary muscular failure causes sufficient acute stimuli to produce chronic physiological adaptations that enhance cardiovascular fitness. This review appears to be the first to present this conclusion and, therefore, it may help stimulate a changing paradigm addressing the misnomer of ‘cardiovascular’ exercise as being determined by modality.
Key Words: Aerobic, Metabolic, Molecular, Myocardial

Go and read it....it will challenge you but will also explain a lot of where I am coming from in this blog and in Hillfit.   James Steele, the lead author, writes about the paper on his excellent blog - No such thing as cardio

More on the dangers of marathons

I spotted this in a couple of places today:

"Marathon runners can be a lot less fit than they think," Dr. Eric Larose today told the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2010, co-hosted by the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cardiovascular Society.

Lack of real aerobic fitness may directly impact the ways the heart organizes itself to survive the stress of marathon running, says Dr. Larose.

His research found that the magnitude of abnormal heart segments was more widespread and significant in a group of less fit runners. During the marathon, they had signs the heart might be at greater risk of damage than that of runners who had better training or at least had better exercise capacity.

"Without proper training, marathon running can damage your heart. Fortunately the exercise-induced injury is reversible over time," said Dr. Larose. "But it could take up to three months to completely recover."

Read more at Future pundit

Long Distance Running - bad for the heart

Just a quick heads up on a couple of articles I saw over the weekend indicating that long distance running is bad for the cardiovascular system, despite apparently positive impacts on the normal metrics for cariovascular health.

Kurt notes and points to one on Medpage

Open Water Chicago points to a separate report on the same research in abcNews

Researchers at the Minneapolis Heart Institute and Foundation found that these runners faced a greater risk of accumulating plaque in their coronary arteries – despite having less body fat, lower LDL cholesterol levels, and lower heart rates.

An abcnews comment amuses me:

No one is sure exactly what the plaque findings mean.

Well, we can guess.

Marathons make your muscles old

This is - or should be somewhat disturbing.

Shorter telomere length is proposed as a marker for biological aging. They are also associated with more cancers.

Again a danger to chronic cardio


Skeletal muscle telomere length in healthy, experienced, endurance runners

Abstract

Measuring the DNA telomere length of skeletal muscle in experienced endurance runners may contribute to our understanding of the effects of chronic exposure to endurance exercise on skeletal muscle. This study compared the minimum terminal restriction fragment (TRF) length in the vastus lateralis muscle of 18 experienced endurance runners (mean age: 42 ± 7 years) to those of 19 sedentary individuals (mean age: 39 ± 10 years). The runners had covered almost 50,000 km in training and racing over 15 years. Minimum TRF lengths measured in the muscle of both groups were similar (P = 0.805) and within the normal range. Minimum TRF length in the runners, however, was inversely related to their years spent running (r = −0.63, P = 0.007) and hours spent training (r = −0.52, P = 0.035). Therefore, since exposure to endurance running may influence minimum TRF length, and by implication, the proliferative potential of the satellite cells, chronic endurance running may be seen as a stressor to skeletal muscle.