A few weeks into the New Year and it’s likely that the post-resolution fitness fervor has started to wane. You are secretly relieved that the month’s free gym membership has expired. You decide the cross-trainer in the living room is much more useful as a coat rack. You realize that you simply don’t own enough Lycra to run to work every day.
As it gets more difficult to fit exercise into our busy schedules, the opportunity to up our day-to-day energy expenditure would be a welcome one. By looking at how what we do in the gym affects our behavior outside it, a recent study, published on December 22, 2015 in SpringerPlus, investigates.
Working at the University of South Carolina, authors Clemens Drenowatz, George Grieve and Madison DeMello measured the energy expenditure of participants during two 16-week training programs of aerobic and resistance exercise. They found that during the resistance program the participants were significantly more active on rest days compared with the aerobic program.
The team ascribed part of this to fatigue, as the participants expended more energy during the actual aerobic exercises. However, the team still backed the long-term benefits of resistance exercise, citing its positive effect on the resting metabolic rate. [1]
Read the full article here: Change in energy expenditure and physical activity in response to aerobic and resistance exercise programs.
