Effects of different exercise training programs on body composition: A randomized control trial

Abstract

We aimed to investigate the effects of different exercise training programs on body composition parameters in sedentary middle‐aged adults. A total of 89 middle‐aged adults (53.5 ± 4.9 years old; ~53% women) participated in the FIT‐AGEING study. A 12‐week randomized controlled trial was performed with a parallel group design. The participants were randomly assigned to (a) a concurrent training based on physical activity recommendation from the World Health Organization group (PAR group), (b) a high‐intensity interval training group (HIIT group), and (c) a high‐intensity interval training group adding whole‐body electromyostimulation group (WB‐EMS group). A significant decrease of fat body mass, fat body mass index, and visceral adipose tissue was observed in all training modalities compared to the control group (all P ≤ 0.001). There was a significant increase in lean body mass in the HIIT group as well as in the WB‐EMS group compared to the control group and the PAR group (all P ≤ 0.044), whereas an increment of lean body mass index was only observed in the WB‐EMS group compared to the control group and the PAR group (all P ≤ 0.042). A significant increase of bone mineral content was observed in the WB‐EMS group compared to the control group (P = 0.015), while no changes were found in the PAR group and in the HIIT group compared to the control group (all P ≥ 0.2). Our findings suggest that PAR, HIIT, and WB‐EMS can be used as a strategy to improve body composition parameters, obtaining slightly better results with the application of WB‐EMS.

Exercise Training as a Treatment for Cardiometabolic Risk in Sedentary Adults: Are Physical Activity Guidelines the Best Way to Improve Cardiometabolic Health? The FIT-AGEING Randomized Controlled Trial

“…The additional cardiometabolic improvements obtained by the HIIT+EMS group might be the consequence of the larger number of muscular contractions leading to a greater increase in lean mass [20]. Previous studies have proposed the physiological mechanisms via which an enhanced muscular mass might reduce the incidence of chronic cardiometabolic disease [13,44,45].…”

“…Explanations of the statistical power requirements for the present work are available elsewhere [19][20][21]28]. Briefly, it was assumed that 25% of subjects would drop-out over the 12-week study period.…”

“…All sessions started with a dynamic, standardized warm-up (10 min), and finished with a cooling-down protocol (active global stretching). Detailed information regarding the dose and intensity of each training intervention is available elsewhere [19,20,28]. All sessions were performed in small groups (2-6 subjects), strictly monitoring subject safety and their adherence to the required training intensity and volume.…”

“…Whole-body electromyostimulation (WB-EMS), which simultaneously stimulates up to 16 muscle groups (with different intensities per group) has recently arisen as an exercise training modality with the promise of being able to significantly improve the cardiometabolic health of elderly men [18]. We recently reported that an HIIT program plus WB-EMS enhanced the physical fitness and body composition of sedentary, middle-aged adults [19,20]. However, it remains unknown whether an HIIT program combined with WB-EMS can improve the cardiometabolic profile in previously sedentary, middle-aged adults, and whether any hypothetical improvements would be greater than those obtained by HIIT alone, or those obtained by concurrent training based on international physical activity guidelines for health promotion [11,12].…”

Body composition impact on sleep in young adults: The mediating role of sedentariness, physical activity, and diet

“…Body composition was measured by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (Discovery Wi; Hologic, Inc., Marlborough, Massachusetts) strictly following the manufacturer instructions and obtaining lean mass, fat mass and visceral adipose tissue mass [38]. Lean mass index and fat mass index were calculated as lean mass (kilograms) / fat mass (kilograms), respectively, divided by height squared (meters 2 ).…”