Inheritance of Human Skeletal Muscle and Anaerobic Capacity Adaptation to High-Intensity Intermittent Training*

Abstract

The role of heredity in the response of maximal anaerobic capacities and skeletal muscle histochemical and biochemical characteristics to a 15-week cycle ergometer training program involving both continuous and interval work patterns was investigated in 14 pairs of monozygotic twins. The training program consisted mainly of series of ergocycle supramaximal exercises lasting from 15 s to 90 s and performed 4 and 5 times a week. The subjects were submitted to 10 s and 90 s all-out ergocycle tests to estimate maximal anaerobic alactacid (AAC) and lactacid (ALC) capacities, respectively. Muscle fiber types and creatine kinase (CK), hexokinase (HK), phosphofructokinase (PFK), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), malate dehydrogenase (MDH), 3-hydroxyacyl CoA dehydrogenase (HADH), and oxoglutarate dehydrogenase (OGDH) activities were determined in a biopsy from the vastus lateralis. Training increased AAC, ALC, fiber type I proportion, MDH, HADH, and OGDH (P less than 0.05) and decreased fiber type IIb proportion and the PFK/OGDH ratio. No significant change was observed for CK, HK, PFK, and LDH. Large interindividual differences in the response to training were observed for all variables. However, intraclass correlations indicated that the extent of the response of ALC and CK, HK, LDH, MDH, and OGDH activities and of the PFK/OGDH activity ratio to training were significantly similar within pairs of twins. Although the role of heredity appeared absent for the changes in fiber type proportions and in anaerobic alactacid capacity, the present results suggest that the response of anaerobic lactacid capacity and most enzyme activities to high-intensity intermittent training is significantly determined by the genotype.

Exercise Genomics

“…The same trends were observed for training induced changes in fasting insulin, insulin sensitivity, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), exercise blood pressure and heart rate, exercise stroke volume and cardiac output, indicators of adiposity, and other phenotypes [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. There is evidence from other studies that similar patterns of human variation and familial aggregation are found for the trainability of muscular strength and power as well as short-term predominantly anaerobic performance [21,22,23].…”

Anaerobic performance in masters athletes

“…Similarly, other factors that may affect anaerobic performance including muscular strength and power [28,50], peak blood lactate [82], and the anaerobic enzymes PFK and LDH [22] appear to have considerable genetic significance. Later work using different methodologies has suggested that many of the above factors that contribute to anaerobic performance are highly heritable including aerobic capacity (47%) [20], 10-and 90-s maximal work outputs (44-92%) [19,135], 30-s work capacity (86%) [83], muscular strength and mass [74], sprint running performance lasting less than 20 s [21], as well as the trainability of the anaerobic energy systems [19]. There is limited research examining the heritability of muscle strength and power in older populations [7,150].…”

Methodological Review and Evaluation of Research in Expert Performance in Sport

“…Hodges et al (2004) compared male and female athletes across different events and sports that emphasize either endurance and aerobic fitness (for longer distance events) or anaerobic capacities (for short-distance, sprint events). Significant evidence exists that there are genetic limits with respect to anaerobic activities, but less consistent evidence for limits in aerobic capacities (e.g., Bouchard et al, 1990;Simoneau et al, 1986). Analyses of swimmers and triathletes showed that for the longer events, practice was significantly related to performance times, but that gender did not make a significant contribution to the regression model.…”