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Resistance Exercise-induced Anabolism in Youths and Adults

Exercise | Dietary Supplementation

Resistance exercise training (RET) in children and adolescents has become a popular area of research, with a growing body of evidence supporting its use. Position and consensus statements about RET for children indicate that it is safe and effective at increasing muscular strength, improving sport performance, and mitigating injury risk. Neural and muscular mechanisms can improve muscle strength following RET. Neural factors include improved recruitment and firing of an individual's motor units, and muscular factors primarily include an increase in the size of the muscle (hypertrophy).

In children, little is known about how these mechanisms relate to muscle strength. There is very little evidence of morphological changes following RET in children. Therefore, conventional wisdom is that children rely only on neural factors to improve strength following RET. Nevertheless, some studies have suggested RET-induced muscle hypertrophy in children and adolescents, indicating that with certain training protocols, children may achieve muscle growth.

Hypertrophy of muscle fibres occurs when the rate of muscle protein synthesis (MPS) is greater than the rate of protein breakdown, and is enhanced with the ingestion of dietary amino acids. Due to ethical concerns with obtaining muscle samples (i.e., from muscle biopsies) in pediatric populations, MPS rates have not been previously assessed following RET in children. Recent advancements in stable-isotope methodology (specifically, leucine) allow for the estimation of MPS in a non-invasive breath test.

The objective of the proposed research is to examine the effects of an acute bout of RET on leucine retention (a proxy for MPS) in children, adolescents, and adults using a non-invasive breath test.

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Participation Requirements

  • Sex:

    ALL

  • Eligible Ages:

    7 to 35

Participation Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

* healthy
* free of injury that would prevent resistance exercise

Exclusion Criteria:

* consumed any medications in the past year which may affect muscle function
* had an injury in the past 6 months that would limit the movements required for the protocols
* been told that has diabetes
* been told that had a heart problem
* been told that have a breathing problem (e.g., asthma)
* been told that sometimes experience seizures
* had joint instability or ongoing join chronic pain
* been told that had kidney problems
* had stomach problems such as ulcers
* experience prolonged bleeding after a cut

Study Location

Brock University
Brock University
St. Catharines, Ontario
Canada

Contact Study Team

Primary Contact

Bareket Falk, PhD

Study Sponsored By
Brock University
Participants Required
More Information
Study ID: NCT06256744