Strength training, along with optimal sleep and a high-protein diet, could be considered a preventative treatment as well as a medical therapy. Benefits of resistance training include:




Reversing muscle loss (sarcopenia or cachexia)



Restoring a healthy metabolism



Reducing body fat



Improving physical function, strength, coordination, and mobility



Improving insulin sensitivity and reversing type II diabetes



Enhancing cardiovascular health by reducing blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglycerides while improving vascular tone



Increasing bone density



Enhancing mental health



Reducing inflammation




That’s quite a list of health benefits. If a drug did all that, it would be a bigger seller than a COVID-19 vaccine.



Strength training does a lot more than make you look and perform better. It unleashes a plethora of health-inducing hormones, neurotransmitters, and compounds called myokines. Myokines play a pivotal role in maintaining healthy inflammation levels, among many other things.



A recent paper summarized these compounds, which highlighted the powerful effects of hypertrophy (muscle-building) training.



I’ll do my best to simplify what these compounds do. At the same time, I don’t want to lose sight of the fascinating way our bodies work in response to the right type of exercise.





Cytokines, Myokines, and Contracting Muscles



Cytokines are chemical messengers secreted by various cells throughout your body. 



You might be familiar with the term “cytokine” from all of the attention on COVID-19 these past couple of years. We’ve heard how a COVID-19 infection or the vaccine itself can trigger a “cytokine storm,” a state of rapid and uncontrolled inflammation and pain.



While the cytokines involved in this scary situation are bad news, that doesn’t mean all cytokines are bad. Many of them are anti-inflammatory. And even pro-inflammatory cytokines are essential for metabolic function, even though they can become problematic when things go awry.



Muscle cells produce a certain category of cytokines called myokines when they contract with sufficient intensity. Myokines may affect the cells themselves (an autocrine effect), nearby cells (a paracrine effect), or affect cells far away from them (an endocrine effect).



Myokines lead to many of the health and fitness benefits of resistance training.



Myokines and Resistance Training



For more than 20 years, researchers have understood numerous metabolic effects of strength training, resulting from myokine secretion.



A 2007 research paper stated:




Our research was originally driven by a curiosity as to whether exercise-induced cytokines would provide a mechanistic explanation to exercise-induced immune changes. However, the identification of skeletal muscle as a cytokine-producing organ soon led to the discovery that not only could muscle-derived cytokines account for exercise-associated immune changes but also that these muscle-derived cytokines played a role in mediating the exercise-associated metabolic changes, as well as the metabolic changes following training adaptation.
Pederson BK, et al.



For a muscle cell to secrete its strength, health, and fitness-enhancing effects, it you must stress it with at least one of the following:




mechanical tension - a force that exceeds what it’s accustomed to, generated through an intense contraction or an excessive stretch



muscle damage - microscopic muscle tears



metabolic stress - a state that takes your muscle cells out of their normal cellular environment, such as a significant drop in pH (an increase in acidity)




Muscle cells secrete different myokines depending on whether you’re training with high loads and low repetitions (hypertrophy training) or low load, high repetitions (strength endurance training).



In the current block of VIGOR Strength Athlete, I’ve included both ends of the spectrum.



To a certain extent, the phrase, “No pain, no gain,