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Exercise intensity influences body composition in healthy older adults (2025)
- myst 4mo agoI’m genuinely confused. Was there any doubt before this study that sport makes people healthier?
- nayroclade 4mo agoThat wasn't what this study was investigating.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- atwrk 4mo agoWell I guess reading the article could ease your confusion. Unsurprisingly it is a bit less generalized than your take.
- dgacmu 4mo agoNo, but past recommendations for older adults (note that the average age in the study was 72 years old) were towards "gentle" or moderate exercise. We're seeing a shift now towards recommending real weight lifting and higher intensity as we age. ("Real" -> closer to powerlifting in terms of goals and methods)
- faangguyindia 4mo agowhy is it powerlifting? general prescription these days for Hypertrophy is 10 sets per muscle group per week 0-3 RIR.
- rokob 4mo agoBecause hypertrophy is generally pointless compared to strength. The hyperthrophy that naturally accompanies strength work is sufficient but the strength that accompanies hypertrophy work is far less beneficial.
- faangguyindia 4mo agoone of the best proxy we've for Hypertrophy is getting progressively stronger in medium rep range. (8-12) The title says they are focused on improving body composition which is boosting lean mass, lowering of fat mass which kinda seems achieved best by focusing on Hypertrophy and fat loss?
- ehnto 4mo agoHypertrophy and strength aren't as strongly linked as we thought. Generally for wellness, injury prevention, you want strength and flexibility.
- bluecheese452 4mo agoWhat? They are incredibly linked.
- ehnto 4mo agoThey are linked, but what I meant was its not a 1:1 relationship. You can get stronger without as much hypertrophy, or you can get bigger without as much strength gain. The only reason I mention it is because I often see people, especially men, assume getting bigger is the main focus of getting stronger and healthier. But a more holistic approach including stretching, functional strength excercises, cardio and balance training is perhaps more important
- 10xDev 4mo agoYour strength comes both from your nervous system and physiology. Training your nervous system without also building a proper physical foundation to handle tension is a fast track to injury.
- dgacmu 4mo agoMostly because functional strength is useful and keeps you alive. major goals as you age are avoiding falls and being able to continue doing things for yourself. Strength fits that bill pretty well (and it also improves fat free mass). And on a slightly more technical note, recovering from higher volume becomes harder as you age, so focusing on a smaller number (5ish) of reps at higher weight gives you adaptation without quite as much stress. But I should be clear, when I said real lifting, I don't mean to exclude any form of well calibrated progressive overload, whether that's strength focused or hypertrophy focused. I do mean to exclude the "go to the gym and lift a 10 lb weight the same number of reps each time" BS
- fedeb95 4mo agoread the study more carefully if you think it encourages powerlifting for the elders.
- dgacmu 4mo agoRead my comment more carefully if you think I'm describing the study instead of providing more general context for why people might find this particular study interesting.
- fedeb95 4mo agothis study is not related to powerlifting or heavy activity in that sense, so it's not pertinent as a context, if anything it is pertinent to understand misinterpretations of the study.
- dev_tty01 4mo agoIt says nothing about weightlifting. The high intensity training is on a treadmill. Also, "changes were small and not clinically meaningful compared with exercise of lower intensity and considering measurement error." The study is really not noteworthy and certainly not a basis for changing any population wide recommendations.
- dgacmu 4mo agoI'm giving context for why a study of higher intensity cardio -in older people- might be interesting to people, and why it's not just "exercise good"
- mDyJzDPmBdG 4mo agoThere was plenty of obvious, common sense assumptions that didn't hold at all when methodically tested, like sugar rush in children. And this specific type of studies tries to find a sweet spot between benefits and effort taken. Some results were unexpected, If I recall correctly on found that having to take three flights of stairs daily outperformed many exercise regimes designed for elderly.
- ehnto 4mo agoI have met people who figured, because they don't excercise they don't wear their body out, so their joints etc. will last longer. Same for injury, no sport no injury, that must be good!
- lukan 4mo agoIn a way this is right with high intense/extreme sport. (I did Thai Boxing in my youth, but stopped at some point) But it is very wrong otherwise, joints for example will suffer if not moved. Blood will only flow into all the areas of the joints if they are moved. And if you don't move, your muscles will be gone and without muscles to hold your joints, loss of stability, great risk of injury, etc.
- arnejenssen 4mo agoCharlie Munger thought of exercise as adding mileage to the car.
- bluGill 4mo agoMost people who talk about adding milage to a car have never tried to keep an old car running. Those who do have long learned that milage is a tiny issue, age is a much larger factor. They have also learned that low milage is a bad sign - what is wrong that you only drove it that much: often the answer is city driving which puts a lot more wear on the car than highway driving.
- 4mo ago
- ButlerianJihad 4mo agoSports and exercise are definitely beneficial, but any sort of activity presents a risk of injury. If people work out, or play sports, without knowing proper form, without using protection or precautions, they'll get injured and then worse off than before. Realistically, manual laborers should be in real good shape, but often their jobs are so low-wage, and they're so interchangeable, that safety precautions are ignored and must be regulated/enforced. I took up roller skating and was rewarded with a broken leg. I took up gym exercise and was repaid with a hernia. Both required surgery. No regrets! Only wished I could've better understood how to exercise safely! I once encountered a FB group that was for people to discuss "sports injuries sustained while we were in bed" and I could totally relate, having done weird stuff to my shoulder overnight, rather than pitching a baseball game...
- xtiansimon 4mo ago> “High-intensity training reduced fat and maintained lean mass […] though changes were small and not clinically meaningful compared with exercise of lower intensity…” High intensity does border on leading to injury — just making the wrong move — and you’re back to zero intensity?
- baxtr 4mo agoReally depends on how you define high-intensity. To build muscle, you need to push yourself to a limit. You can reduce the weight and increase the repetitions. This approach is just as effective and lowers the risk of injury.
- kakacik 4mo agoThis is what I do. When I was beginning with weight training, I followed other's recommendations back then and pushed hard. Had quite often minor issues or injuries in the joints which set me back for weeks or even months, my tendons seem to be my weak spot and it does get worse with age, both limits and recovery. Lowered the load, increased repetitions and basically nothing for a decade. I can still go almost to the failure, I don't even want to reach it since I don't care about that extra bit. Squats or deadlifts are hard even when not at limits, one feels used body parts for a day or two. I still add cardio on top of that, its just basic logic of moving around a lot is very good for the body, even if effects are not immediately obvious.
- lowdude 4mo agoSo, how many reps did you start with and how many do you do nowadays?
- kakacik 4mo agoStarting is a bit hazy, it was 15 years ago. I gradually got to cca 100kg deadlifts (maybe 5-6 reps each set) and maybe 70kg squats of similar reps/sets. These days its more about 15 reps, still 3 sets (plus one just 20kg barbel warmup). When I feel like I could do more, i add 3 or 5 reps, and/or do things slower, especially the lowering part. Weight wise its cca 60kg deadlifts, 50kg squats. I feel like I could do more, but with worse form and thats not a good idea. There are similar numbers for bench presses, dumbbell curls and few other exercises I sometimes add to mix. I was never bodybuilder and never looked accordingly but I didn't care, any strong-enough body is attractive to females, good confidence is present and connection to one's body is very good. It was always just training for actual stuff - long hikes, climbing, ski touring etc. Now with kids and after quite brutal paragliding accident that left me wheelchair-bound for few weeks, walked after 6 months and have some permanent changes in calcaneus, I am happy with anything and above is good enough for me, just need to sustain it.
- polarbearballs 4mo ago[dead]
- sghiassy 4mo ago“though changes were small and not clinically meaningful compared with exercise of lower intensity and considering measurement error”
- m3kw9 4mo agoSo the the research is inconclusive?
- ryan_n 4mo agoJust read the study... It was not inconclusive, they found that HIIT was the most effective level of exercise intensity to improve body composition in the ages of people that were studied. It just wasn't a meaningful improvement over medium intensity. That is a conclusion.
- bluGill 4mo agoThey measured body composition. Is that your goal? Remember this is for 70 year olds (and a small sample size), even if you got to the ideal 70 year old body, you won't look that good naked - which is all body composition is directly good for. My guess is you care more about health (you should break this down into more details of what health means) and long life. Body composition is a factor in health and long life. However there are many confounding factors if that is your goal and so you cannot draw any conclusions unless the sample size is very large, and the study runs over a very long time. Thus we get a lot of small studies that study something easy and hope that this is a good proxy for what we really care about. Sometimes science eventually figures the proxy is good, sometimes not, but often we still don't know. (meta studies have been really helpful here) Large sample sizes are very expensive to study, a grad student without large grants can study 50-100[1] people alone, which makes the study cheap enough that they can do it. This was a 6 month study, again making it something a grad student could do leaving plenty of time to then write the paper and get it published. (Each subject was studied for 6 months, I'm not clear if they were all studied at once, or if different subjects had different start/end dates). All respect for the grad students who do this - despite all the problems I've pointed out[2], they still did a lot of work. [1] I've never been a grad student, much less one in a field where you would study this. The 50-100 number feels right in my uneducated opinion, but if someone with more knowledge says something I accept their correction in advance. [2] I wonder what other problems someone in this field could point out.
- hasudon7171 4mo agoI think this results vary depending on whether or not a person exercises regularly. After just six months of training, older adults who do not exercise regularly may see significant changes, but those who exercise regularly are likely to see only minor changes.
- Systemerror7A69 4mo agoI 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 from what I understood the biggest difference was that the HIIT group lost less muscle while fat loss was roughly the same.
- bitexploder 4mo agoThis 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 present for both groups.
- ralferoo 4mo ago> 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 exercise, and only resort to glucogenesis burning fat if you don't fuel enough afterwards. There's a significantly higher risk of over-consumption after doing anerobic exercise and aerobic exercise because your body wants to replace the glycogen that got used up.
- tryagainian 4mo agoCan 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.
- javier_e06 4mo agoSome move all their lives and keep adapting their movements as their age. Others did not move much through the lives and when they hit 60s and they start loosing the mobility, doctors suggest for them to move more, if anything. If you never hiked and you start hiking in your 60s for health reasons. Pick up short flat trails.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- fiveg 4mo agoOne 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. Another notable thing is that they are doing 45 minute sessions regardless of intensity, in the real world it’s common for lower intensity sessions to be longer, and for those sessions to be a foundation on which higher intensity sessions are carefully added.
- bluGill 4mo agoThis study followed everyone for 6 months so they probably got past that factor.
- pigeonwarz 4mo agoI doubt it. In my experience (at least when it comes to lifting), newbie gains last at least a year. Good chance that if they've been untrained all their life (or the majority of it) that phase is gonna last a real long time.
- bluGill 4mo agoI stand corrected then.
- globular-toast 4mo agoA year of continuous gains for a 72 year old? I highly doubt it. For a skinnyfat 20 year old, sure.
- monkpit 4mo ago> I highly doubt it. Not a very convincing discussion point without some support.
- 4mo ago
- lol8675309 4mo ago'were small and not meaningful' why is this on the front page of HN?
- tryagainian 4mo agoThe perennial question. Well, at least it’s spurred intellectually curious discussion.
- shermantanktop 4mo agoIs it? What I mostly see is people describing their anecdotal experience and opinions about exercise in general. I assume that only a few of them are actually in the age group of 65-85, so relevance of personal experience is dubious. To be fair there are some questioning the study methodology and conclusions.
- tryagainian 4mo agoI mean, here we are so.. QED
- maerF0x0 4mo ago> average age 72.0 years, body mass index 25.8 Careful before you assume you'll have the same outcomes. That's a group of people who are already fairly light compared to the American populace, and likely are suffering from sarcopenia of sorts and have low potential to gain much more muscle. (Protein absorption, hormone profile) > Dietary intake was assessed using a 3-day food diary at baseline and analysed for total energy intake (kcal) and macronutrient intake (kcal) by a dietician dietary analysis software (Foodworks, Xyris®, AUS). So this is both recall + ad libitum. The change could be due to hormone profile, the exercise itself, inadvertent changes in consumption, inadvertent changes in NEAT.
- tryagainian 4mo ago> NEAT non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis? I’m a bit of a fitness enthusiast, but not enthusiastic enough to have come across all the acronyms.
- froobius 4mo agoErm that's higher than the healthy BMI range, so not "fairly light". >25 is considered overweight.
- jerlam 4mo agoIt's still lighter than the average American BMI, which is around 29. On average, Americans are classified as overweight.
- maerF0x0 4mo agoYes thats what i was referring to, you're both correct on your respective angles.
- tryagainian 4mo agoMy BMI is 28.7 at 181cm and 94kg at 45.25 years old. Am I overweight, not far off obesity? You probably wouldn’t say so if you saw me. BMI is mostly only a useful metric when it is.
- huijzer 4mo agoIn other news, water is wet
- fedeb95 4mo agoThe study is conducted on 123 people.
- proee 4mo agoSo 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 tested with my watch and it said I was in AFIB. I was able to get back to normal sinus rhythm via getting zapped at the ER, but ever since then if I push too hard (usually on longer runs, going all out) I end up back in AFIB. Though it will reset the next morning. This could be pure coincidence, but I would recommend doing proper warm-up and cool-down before going all out with HIIT. FYI I'm in my 40's.
- Bogdanp 4mo agoRegardless 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.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo agoYou 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.
- deeth_starr_v 4mo agoVery interesting. I can also get Afib after many years of high intensity exercise
- all2 4mo agoThis happens to me occasionally, but it's typically stimulant and blood sugar related. There are some indications that it might be related to ion availability in your body, so copper, zinc, and calcium specifically. You may also consider that HF RF found in phones, wifi, and Bluetooth can do not great things to the calcium channels in cell walls (it essentially locks the channels open in some cases). There are a lot of factors to this, but these are things I've picked up in my reading for my own issues.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- lowbloodsugar 4mo agoThis was all treadmill. I would expect that medium intensity treadmill, combined with weight training, would have same positive results as the “HIT” treadmill group but without feeling like you’re dying or triggering AFib.
- yawnxyz 4mo ago> Healthy older adults (n = 123, average age 72.0 years, body mass index 25.8 kg/m2) completed three 45-min supervised exercise sessions per week for 6 months. Participants were randomised to treadmill-based moderate-intensity training (n = 45), or high-intensity interval training (n = 41) or a low-intensity active control condition (n = 37), with individualised heart-rate prescription. Dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry was used to quantify body composition at baseline, and at 3 and 6 months. ok they didn't even include light/moderate weight lifting as another control, so this is a fairly poorly executed study basically it comapres hiit with treadmill walking in which case yes, it's slightly more useful, but hiit also causes a lot of damage in a lot of ways
- fsloth 4mo ago"hiit also causes a lot of damage in a lot of ways" Oh! I didn't know about this. Are there any references you could quote?
- tacon 4mo agoJust ask the orthopedists down the street from any CrossFit box. Or their journal articles.
- fsloth 4mo agoHiit training can use any type of exercise that allows quick change of pace. The routine in Tabata’s original HIIT work was just cycling. Crossfit afaik is a more complex affair than just cycling. So is the risk of injury due to specific movement or the interval quality of the movement?
- anigbrowl 4mo agoI don't think this is helpful. Crossfit appears to prioritize speed and # of reps above all else, and is notorious for people doing difficult exercises with terrible form to try to hit those targets. HIIT certainly emphasises intensity of effort and prefers relatively short rest periods between sets, but not at the expense of proper form. eg when I think of cross-fit weight training or callisthenics I think of lots of snatching and jerking, with HIIT I think of moving slowly with form and trying to hold tension at the apex of the movement.
- HSO 4mo agothis gets reheated over and over… look at the study period. hiit is not sustainable beyond a brief period. by definition you can only do a limited amount of high intensity before you get cooked. what you really want is periodization and looking over long periods and aggregate volumes
- personalityson 4mo agoInsulin -- the fat storing hormone. The opposite hormones -- cortisol and adrenaline mobilize fat tissue for burning. Chronic cortisol leads to fat gain because cortisol receptors become desensitized. Spiking cortisol in short bursts is better than long bouts of elevated cortisol.
- gcanyon 4mo agoEveryone talking about strength training: that’s nice, but it’s not what this study was about. That doesn’t make it a bad study, it just means you’re looking for a different study.
- DivingForGold 4mo ago... though changes were small and not clinically meaningful compared with exercise of lower intensity and considering measurement error. Why even share this research ?
- leephillips 4mo agoExactly. I pointed this out in another comment before seeing yours. They admit they found nothing.
- leephillips 4mo agoFrom the Conclusion: “High-intensity training reduced fat and maintained lean mass in apparently healthy older adults, though changes were small and not clinically meaningful compared with exercise of lower intensity and considering measurement error.” I didn’t read the whole paper (didn’t see any reason to after seeing this). But the title seems to be contradicted by this conclusion.
- tsoukase 4mo agoAnaerobic exercise, which typically is done with weightlifting, converts muscles to a huge anabolic gland. Do squats/deadlifts with good technique and reap lifetime benefits. Add aerobic as habit, like use feet/bicycle and stairs at every occasion and you will be fine. First order effects are better shape and stamina, that lead to second order like better cognition, mood and even less cancer.