Half & Half

It doesn't have to be all aerobic, all the time for cardiovascular benefits, dopamine is the key to an exercise brain boost and your weekly recommendations.

The Rundown

Half & Half. A robust amount of research shows that aerobic exercise can reduce risks of cardiovascular disease but not many studies have looked at how resistance training or workout routines that are half resistance and half aerobic training compare. Researchers at Iowa State University conducted one of the longest and biggest supervised trials to find out.

For the study, 406 participants between the ages of 35 and 70, who all met the threshold for being overweight and had elevated blood pressure, were randomly assigned to four groups: no exercise, aerobic only, resistance only, or aerobic plus resistance. Those who were in the exercise groups did supervised one-hour workouts three times a week for a year.

Researchers collected physical activity data inside and outside the lab, as well as information about the participants’ diet. At the beginning of the trial, six months into it and at the end, the team measured the volunteers’ systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, fasting glucose and body fat percentage.

The study’s main finding indicated that splitting workouts between aerobic and resistance exercise reduced cardiovascular disease risks as much as aerobic-only regimens.

The takeaway: If you’re looking to improve your cardiovascular health, it doesn’t have to be all aerobics, all the time. You can replace half of your aerobic workout with strength training and still get the same cardiovascular benefits as an aerobic-only routine.

Exercise High. Why does cognitive performance improve in response to exercise? New research out of the University of Portsmouth found that dopamine plays a key role. The neurotransmitter and hormone linked to pleasure, satisfaction and motivation is known to increase when you work out but according to this latest study, it’s also tied to faster reaction time during exercise.

The team conducted three experiments using 52 male participants. In the first, the men had to take cognitive tests while at rest and while cycling in a PET scanner. The PET scanner allowed the researchers to monitor the movement of dopamine in the participants’ brains.

In the second experiment, electrical muscle stimulation was used to test whether forced muscle movement would improve cognitive performance. The final experiment combined voluntary and involuntary exercise.

Cognitive performance improved in the voluntary exercise tests but not in the forced electrical stimulation tests. When a participant cycled lying down in the PET machine, their brain increased the amount of dopamine it released and this process was linked to improved reaction time.

According to a study author, this suggests exercise has to be from the central signals of the brain and not just the muscle itself, “When we tell our central command to move our body during a workout, that’s the process which helps the dopamine release in the brain.”

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