WillBrink
08-25-13, 10:43
This is a very interesting area of research. We all know people who do the same exercise as we do, yet either don't seem to benefit much, or benefit far more than we do. Having trained hundreds at this point and or communicated with many thousands more, I have seen that first hand.
Studies for decades have found most people being studied respond in a similar manner to various forms of exercise, yet there's always been outliers who didn't respond well or at all or respond well beyond average or expected.
But why that was the case was never clear. Well, that's been looked at more closely, and what's been found, is there's a small % of people who are indeed "non responders" to exercise and a small % of people who are "super responders" to exercise, with most (approx 80-90%) being "normal" type responders.
Of particular importance to the issue is modern genetic testing has actually narrowed down small group of genes "non responders" carry.
Seems pretty common sense really, but up until recently, why some respond very little to the exact same protocol others will respond well to (as measured by improvements in VO2max, strength, and other metrics) has not been well understood and put down to flaws in the study, to voodoo. :cool:
But, the effect was simply too consistent to be explained by any reasons given and something of a mystery. We now have those answers.
One study worth looking at is the The HERITAGE Family Study, specifically, as it relates to this topic, the Genetics, Response to Exercise, Risk Factors (http://www.pbrc.edu/heritage/index.html) segment of this huge data set.
An interesting write up for non science types was in the NY Times Health Science section called The Workout Enigma (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/phys-ed-the-workout-enigma/?_r=0).
Finally, a recent vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORpUunYc5w) I made on the topic of genetics and the topics outlined above may be of interest.
There's more Qs than answers to all this to be sure, but, a clear picture is emerging as to the essential role of genetics in how people respond to exercise that will yield very useful info in the future.
Studies for decades have found most people being studied respond in a similar manner to various forms of exercise, yet there's always been outliers who didn't respond well or at all or respond well beyond average or expected.
But why that was the case was never clear. Well, that's been looked at more closely, and what's been found, is there's a small % of people who are indeed "non responders" to exercise and a small % of people who are "super responders" to exercise, with most (approx 80-90%) being "normal" type responders.
Of particular importance to the issue is modern genetic testing has actually narrowed down small group of genes "non responders" carry.
Seems pretty common sense really, but up until recently, why some respond very little to the exact same protocol others will respond well to (as measured by improvements in VO2max, strength, and other metrics) has not been well understood and put down to flaws in the study, to voodoo. :cool:
But, the effect was simply too consistent to be explained by any reasons given and something of a mystery. We now have those answers.
One study worth looking at is the The HERITAGE Family Study, specifically, as it relates to this topic, the Genetics, Response to Exercise, Risk Factors (http://www.pbrc.edu/heritage/index.html) segment of this huge data set.
An interesting write up for non science types was in the NY Times Health Science section called The Workout Enigma (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/17/phys-ed-the-workout-enigma/?_r=0).
Finally, a recent vid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lORpUunYc5w) I made on the topic of genetics and the topics outlined above may be of interest.
There's more Qs than answers to all this to be sure, but, a clear picture is emerging as to the essential role of genetics in how people respond to exercise that will yield very useful info in the future.