No, 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)
It 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.
Mostly 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
Because 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.
one 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?
Your 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.
They 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
Read 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.
this 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.
There 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.
Sports 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...
I 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!
In 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.
I got codex to count my total heartbeats from my Garmin data. For four random days the counts were 72.252, 73.823, 68.922, 70.991.
According to google: "typical range for total heartbeats is 86,400 to 115,200 beats per day"
I run every day which would add a lot of beats, but my resting HR is 36 (pushed down by exercise i presume) with a daily average of 50 BPM. So in total a trained person may spend less of their heart beats.
Most 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.
People who exercise regularly have a lower resting heart rate. You can likely remove 10,000 heartbeats per day just by doing 20 minutes of exerciser per day.
I don't believe the limited heartbeats theory, but it does support the idea of exercise.