Game, Set, Muscle

The more sets the better isn't a rule for weight training, a healthy lifestyle can boost cognitive reserves and your weekly recommendations.

The Rundown

Game, Set, Muscle. A new weight training study from researchers at the University of Sao Paulo and other Brazilian institutions, along with scientists from the University of Alabama says longer workouts build more muscle and shorter ones build more strength.

For the study, 85 volunteers over the age of 60 (who were not doing any weight training) were assigned to perform different lifting routines with each leg. The program was two workouts per week for ten weeks, with sets of 8-15 reps of single-leg knee extensions. The weight was chosen to reach failure in each set. Each person completed one set per workout with one leg, and four sets per workout with the other leg. Muscle size was measured by MRI.

In a not too surprising result, the team found that doing more sets lead to greater muscle gain, even for the volunteers who didn’t seem to gain muscle at first. But the same wasn’t true for strength as measured by one rep max. Four sets did not produce bigger strength gains than one set.

An interesting point to note from the study is individual variations. Among people who responded to one set, 51 percent had significantly bigger muscle-size results from four sets. But 15 percent did worse on four sets.

The takeaway? If your priority is to get stronger, you can probably get away with somewhat minimal one-set training. If you’re more interested in gaining or maintaining muscle mass, you’ll most likely benefit from more sets.

Here’s the catch though (as demonstrated by the individual variations of the study): If what you’re doing isn’t working, even if it matches the latest research, the best advice is to try something different.

Healthy Lifestyle, Better Brain. Over the years, Fit Cult has highlighted quite a few studies that report on a positive relationship between fitness and cognitive health. Recent research published in JAMA Neurology adds to that growing body of work by suggesting that a healthy lifestyle could protect older adults against cognitive decline and boost their “cognitive reserve,” even those whose brains show signs of dementia.

Looking at 586 people, the scientists used information from the Rush Memory and Aging Project, which is a long-term study that looked at patients’ lifestyles and health and analyzed autopsy data from 1997 to 2022.

For all patients, higher healthy lifestyle scores in five areas: diet, late-life cognitive activity, physical activity, smoking cessation and low alcohol intake were linked to better cognitive function before they died. The association remained even when the autopsies showed brain changes consistent with dementia.

In general, even a one-point increase in lifestyle score was associated with improved cognition.

While most of the patients in the sample were White and lifestyle information was self-reported, researchers note that the analysis is a “crucial step forward” in tackling questions about the connections between lifestyle, brain changes and cognition.

Extra Point

Watch

The Fab Five. Just in time for March Madness, Netflix is airing this 30 for 30 documentary that profiles the University of Michigan’s “Fab Five,” a group that shifted the climate of college basketball.

Listen

Best Friend Therapy. Elizabeth Day, a broadcaster and author, and her best friend Emma Reed-Turrell, a psychotherapist, host this podcast “that holds your hand through the tough times and offers reassurance on the days you might need it.” Recent conversations cover burnout, responsibility and toxic positivity.

Read

Kingdom on Fire; The Real Hoosiers. Sticking to the March Madness theme, two new books on basketball set the mood. Kingdom on Fire looks at the complexities behind John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty and The Real Hoosiers tells the remarkable story of Oscar Robertson’s high school team.