Some of you are feeling very hopeful from that headline. Might be pointless to go jogging or lift weights? Finally escape from physical effort. Finnish researchers found that some people do not increase muscle mass or aerobic capacity or insulin sensitivity thru exercise.
Recently, researchers in Finland made the discovery that some people’s bodies do not respond as expected to weight training, others don’t respond to endurance exercise and, in some lamentable cases, some don’t respond to either. In other words, there are those who just do not become fitter or stronger, no matter what exercise they undertake.
Some people do not build up muscles when they exercise. Some do not improve their vascular capacity. One could go thru exercise programs and measure this about yourself. This is about the only way to find out until genetic testing becomes cheap enough to enable the discovery of all the genetic variants that control body response to exercise.
You've heard about nutrigenomics, right? That's where genetic testing will some day (sooner please) tell us individually what our best diet would be. Well, not sure how to make this into a single word but the same is going to happen for exercise. Exercisogenomics? Any suggestions? Or does some word already exist for this purpose?
Of course, your genetic results might bring unwanted news: Little benefit from exercise plus high risks of heart disease, stroke, and type II insulin-insensitive diabetes. We need gene therapies and cell therapies that'll make our bodies not need exercise and have much lower risk of a large assortment of diseases.
| Share | | Randall Parker, 2010 November 18 08:49 PM Aging Exercise Studies |
If one fails to build muscle via exercise, it simply means that the exercise is insufficiently challenging to the body.
Strange. It's almost as if there's some kind of human biodiversity underlying diversity of human outcomes.
Perhaps they will discover a mild drug that makes our bodies more sensitive to exercise.
(I personally develop endurance and aerobic capacity, but not so much bulk. Of course there is a feedback loop as this leads me to more mountain-biking, where I feel good, strong.)
I'm surprised at the existence of large populations that gain *no* benefit. That there would be variation in the degree of response is kind of a no-brainer. Personally, I've always had an easy time adding muscle and a hell of a time improving my cardio endurance.
Kinetogenomics? Exercise comes from Latin, Genomics from Greek (genus). Kinetics is of Greek origin, so would be the more proper term to combine.
This doesn't surprise me at ALL, because I am one of those people. If I work out or not, my BMI, muscle to fat ratio, etc. changes very little. I DO get somewhat stronger, but it's not a big effect. I have been working out with weights for ~ 45 minutes every other day for a year and have put on ~ 5 lbs of muscle in that time period. This is in addition to at least one day a week of other physical activity (sports, heavy yard duties, etc.) The study that is in the article had weight training for only 21 wks, and only twice a week. I can tell you for a certain fact that I had not gained any body weight or muscle mass within only the first 21 wks of my regimine and I am doing more exercise than they did in the study.
The silver lining in all this at least for me is that I am starting at a low BMI, low fat, low cholestoral, etc. "setpoint"
Some other things they fail to address or point out in the article:
Somebody who is already reasonably fit will not see any gains from a mild program of weights or running twice a week.
There IS a lot of individual difference. My wife uses the same workout equipment and regimin that I do, but she lifts weights once or twice a week when it's not to hard for her to squeeze it into her schedule. Sometimes she skips a few weeks here or there. She has to scale back her weights purposely as if she puts her all into it she gains muscle very rapidly - ex. a pound a week of muscle.
My wife uses the same workout equipment and regimin that I do, but she lifts weights once or twice a week when it's not to hard for her to squeeze it into her schedule. Sometimes she skips a few weeks here or there. She has to scale back her weights purposely as if she puts her all into it she gains muscle very rapidly - ex. a pound a week of muscle.
"That ain't no woman! It's a man, man!"
Without controlling for diet, this study is worse than useless (in that it may actually lead people to exercise less). I would be interested to find out how much variation would occur if all of the test subjects ate a controlled diet.
Took a 20,000 mile bicycle trip and averaged about 100 miles per ride day. Went through mountains in US, Mexico, Central America, and rode some in the Andes. In Australia I carried 60-85 pounds of parts and supplies. Where it was the hottest and most remote, NW Australia, I carried the most (mainly water) and managed my best one and two day rides, 187 and 322 miles, both days reaching 119 degrees.
I ate pretty well. In the end, I had gained 1/4 inch on my calves. But I had great cardio and blood profiles.
I would tend to agree with the study.
@Avenist:
Believe it or not, your body gets better at cardio when... you do cardio! As for all those heavy things you were carrying, that is something called endurance training. In fact your case does not fit the conclusion of the researchers at all.
To everyone else: Please don't think that lifting weights will make you strong when you neglect the essential questions of "what type of food am I consuming and how often?". If you're American or Canadian it's not your fault for having a lack of understanding of how muscle gain works. Americans are so bombarded with ways to lose weight that the word diet itself has almost become synonymous with some form of starvation
"This doesn't surprise me at ALL, because I am one of those people. If I work out or not, my BMI, muscle to fat ratio, etc. changes very little. I DO get somewhat stronger, but it's not a big effect. I have been working out with weights for ~ 45 minutes every other day for a year and have put on ~ 5 lbs of muscle in that time period."
Eat more. Seriously if you are gaining muscle right you will put on fat as well. Then you cut the fat off. And if you have trained before 5lbs muscle/year is perfectly normal for a adult over 25. It is about the most you can normally expect without chemical enhancement. Sometimes you can get "beginners gains" of 15-20lbs your first year if you are young and skinny but for a adult already in decent shape 5lbs lean mass/year is normal.
This is a bit speculative... but I suspect it is true that a lot of it depends on the health status of the individual. I think in the west, America in particular peoples' adrenal glands tend to be overworked, meaning that they produce too much cortisol. Too much cortisol/stress inhibits the production of healing, youthful hormones such as dhea/testosterone.
Basically, what I expect to be the case is that many people are too stressed out to heal effectively from exercise. They just add stress to stress by exercising. And then there is the possibility of over training..
This result doesn't surprise me nor do I find it enlightening.
A good description of the hormonal mechanisms of stress: http://www.youtube.com/user/undergroundwellness#p/search/5/xPWlV81VFUw. Most relevant parts start 2:53 and 7:20.
I wouldn't count on diet to "fix" this study.
Don't people who exercise get an appetite for the right foods? I seem to remember other studies confirming that.
@ john
You're totally right! After beginning their flawless weight lifting routine, a person (hereby known as an automaton) will automatically develop culinary skills and know that the ideal diet for muscle growth is 5-6 meals a day that add up to a caloric excess and % protein based on their weight. Forget about the years of bodybuilding research and thousands of journals and papers written on the subject, people are robots after all with an innate blueprint of what's best for them. Beep boop.
I'll one up you, John. Sleep also shouldn't be controlled factor in this study. See, as automatons we know that only with adequate rest to recuperate and recover that our muscles can grow and therefore once we begin exercising, beep boop, we also change our sleeping habits. All of these things happen automatically with no conscious effort or education on the subject. This is why everyone at the gym is fit and healthy.
Keep at it with those studies John, I'm sure the day you hit the gym for the first time in your life you'll put everyone there to shame with your vast academic knowledge on the subject.