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Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

maturitas.org

101–110 of 194 posts

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that’s for building muscle, but what about if you wanted to lose a few kilos and increase endurance for long distance running? What would be the way to go to optimise your time?

If you want to increase endurance for running I think the general suggestion is to hit the track and do running? Get your mile time down or similar. In my personal experience I've found strength training better for losing weight than just cardio but any activity will help a bit. You'll really need to adjust your diet in some way for it though, or at least start counting and keep your calories steady as you do more ac…

Strength training has more of a positive effect on body composition.

The problem with doing a lot of cardio is that you need muscle to burn calories (especially so without injury and as you get older), and too much medium intensity cardio will start to chew up lean mass.

No harm in doing a bit of both though, especially if your goal is fitness/maintenance rather than maximum strength or a particular look.

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#102
post #93

So warning about super-high intensity workouts. For a good while I would sprint hard as possible up 8 flights of stairs everyday instead of taking the elevator. I would do this multiple times per day (3,4 sometimes 5) with no warm-up/cool-down . Each time I would try to push for a PR, figuring might as well go for it! One day, after about a year of doing this, I noticed my heart rate at the top felt a little off. I t…

Regardless of the sport you practice, you probably need to be doing some form of periodization. You can’t go for PRs every session because at some point your body stops being able to recover => you get hurt.

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#103

I think it's important to note that this study, at least to my understanding, compared cardio training - not weightlifting or resistance training. Participants did 3 weekly sessions of either low intensity, moderate treadmill excercise or HIIT ( 4-min @ 85–95%, 3min 60-70% ). I get the feeling some commenters here are misunderstanding this as a lot of the discussions seems to center about weightlifting. Additionally…

Also worth noting that not all muscle mass is the same. Too many people read these things and lacking context, they get swindled one way and then another.

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#104
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm that's higher than the healthy BMI range, so not "fairly light". >25 is considered overweight.

It's still lighter than the average American BMI, which is around 29. On average, Americans are classified as overweight.

Yes thats what i was referring to, you're both correct on your respective angles.

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#105
post #93

So warning about super-high intensity workouts. For a good while I would sprint hard as possible up 8 flights of stairs everyday instead of taking the elevator. I would do this multiple times per day (3,4 sometimes 5) with no warm-up/cool-down . Each time I would try to push for a PR, figuring might as well go for it! One day, after about a year of doing this, I noticed my heart rate at the top felt a little off. I t…

You may want to talk to your doctor about potential exercise-induced cardiac remodeling. Not an expert on this at all. But it’s an injury mode that’s been recently characterized due to sudden deaths among young, seemingly-healthy sprinters.

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#106
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIIT is a borderline strength training. Consider Tabata protocol. It is supermaximal effort protocol, participants are required to exert maximum effort repeatedly. The duration of active phase of Tabata is 20 seconds, half of approximately 40 seconds after which maximum performance (power output) drops significantly, because body switches to a different energy system. In my experience, Tabata squats are done in range…

So that’s for building muscle, but what about if you wanted to lose a few kilos and increase endurance for long distance running? What would be the way to go to optimise your time?

Longer slower running burns more fat because your body isn’t forced to use as much glycogen as faster paced running.

I guess the answer for optimizing time is to get a home treadmill if removing the commute to a trail/track will make the timing work.

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#107
post #93

So warning about super-high intensity workouts. For a good while I would sprint hard as possible up 8 flights of stairs everyday instead of taking the elevator. I would do this multiple times per day (3,4 sometimes 5) with no warm-up/cool-down . Each time I would try to push for a PR, figuring might as well go for it! One day, after about a year of doing this, I noticed my heart rate at the top felt a little off. I t…

[deleted]

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#108
post #75

One thing that I think gets looked past in studies like this is the “noob gains” effect. These participants are healthy adults but not highly trained. It’s pretty well known, in cycling at least, that hard interval training is super effective for untrained people or people coming back from a break, but the gains plateau relatively quickly, and the stress of doing this kind of work is hard to sustain for long periods.…

I've read a looot of physiology studies about running, and the same dynamics hold true there. This is a flaw (IMO) of of the whole "Norwegian 4x4 protocol" you hear parroted around by biohacker/longevity influencer online, of course with 0 nuance or context of the underlying study and its limitations

Re: Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study is completely unsurprising to me having read a lot of fitness studies over the years. Work muscles harder, muscles get stronger. That is how hormesis goes. The fat loss is simple energy expenditure. You are still producing roughly the same work as someone doing more steady state work. Only effect that might come up is post exercise metabolism elevation but that effect is relatively small and probably prese…

> The fat loss is simple energy expenditure. But it's not, unless there is a calorie deficit. If you do aerobic exercise, almost all the energy comes from burning fat. Because your body will have used very little glucose, you're unlikely to feel particularly hungry after that exercise. If you do anaerobic exercise, almost all the energy comes from glycogen stores. Your body will crave carbohydrates immediately after…

Can you clarify your last paragraph, looks like there’s a typo or grammatical error that states the same outcome for both arguments put forward in the preceding paragraphs.
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