Let Me Repeat That for You
One of the problems with science is that studies are not always easy to reproduce. This is especially true in the field of exercise science where funding is limited, techniques may vary from lab to lab and the subjects used are often quite different. Because of the lack of validation studies, we don’t really know how a given exercise intervention will alter the physiological traits associated with training. In other words, how much variation is there from person to person, and from intervention to intervention within the same person.
Recently, a group of scientists used an extremely simple but novel experimental design to get at the question of repeatable adaptions to the as assessed by brachial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD). While we know a lot about the adaptation to exercise with groups of people, we don’t know whether the same person has the same response to the same stimulus delivered a second time when starting at the same level of fitness. You would think that the same training would result in the same improvement in VO2 max, the same increase in mitochondrial content in skeletal muscle and the same improvement in time to exhaustion. Seems like that must be true, but that is why we do the science.
