When Matched for Relative Leg Strength at Baseline, Male and Female Older Adults Respond Similarly to Concurrent Aerobic and Resistance Exercise Training.

Abstract

Abstract Timmons, JF, Hone, M, Duffy, O, and Egan, B. When matched for relative leg strength at baseline, male and female older adults respond similarly to concurrent aerobic and resistance exercise training. J Strength Cond Res 36(10): 2927–2933, 2022—Comparisons between sexes of adaptive responses with concurrent aerobic and resistance exercise training are largely unexplored. A supervised 12-week intervention of concurrent exercise training was used to investigate sex-specific differences, if any, in the response to concurrent exercise training in older adults. Community-dwelling men (n = 14; 68.0 ± 1.8 years; 27.8 ± 3.8 kg·m−2) and women (n = 14; 68.9 ± 3.8 years; 25.1 ± 3.8 kg·m−2) were pair-matched for relative leg strength expressed as leg press 1 repetition maximum per kg of leg lean body mass (LBM; assessed by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry). Subjects undertook 24 minutes of concurrent aerobic (12 minutes) and resistance (12 minutes) exercise training 3 times per week i.e., 72 minutes of active exercise time per week. Muscle strength, physical function, and body composition were assessed before (PRE) and after 12 weeks (POST) of exercise training. The increase in absolute leg press strength was larger in men (mean difference ± SE, 25.3 ± 11.8 kg; p = 0.041, = 0.156), but when expressed as leg press strength relative to leg LBM, training-induced increases were not different between the sexes (mean difference ± SE, 0.30 ± 0.46 kg·kg−1; p = 0.526, = 0.016). No other measure of muscle strength (hand-grip and chest press), physical function (gait speed, timed-up-and-go, sit-to-stand, and Chester step test), or body composition (LBM and fat mass) differed in response to exercise training for between-sex comparisons. When male and female older adults are pair matched for relative leg strength at baseline before commencing exercise training, sex-specific adaptive responses to concurrent aerobic and resistance exercise training are largely similar for muscle strength, physical function, and body composition.