Playing the long game for health

Endurance training trumps yoga, weights and high-interval workouts.

Stamina and endurance training can boost long-term health.

Have you been working out in the wrong way?

Pumping iron and performing exhausting short, sharp gym sessions may help with fat loss and gaining strength. But focusing too heavily on these workouts at the expense of lengthier endurance exercise — such as walking and running — could mean missing out on the disease prevention and anti-ageing benefits.

Similarly, if you have neglected longer, slower exercise in favour of too-gentle yoga or Pilates, ultra-brief high-intensity interval workouts lasting only a few minutes or weight training, then your stamina probably has slumped.

Stamina describes our levels of endurance or our aerobic fitness — it is our ability to keep going without flagging. When the heart and lungs are primed to work efficiently through endurance activity, stamina levels are good. Poor stamina means we get less done — at the gym, at work and at home — and, according to a new study, it has a marked effect on our long-term health.

For a paper published in the journal JAMA Network Open, a group of exercise physiologists from Finland analysed fitness data from 580 young Finnish men recruited for military training. As part of their initial coaching the men completed exercise tests on indoor bikes and with weights as measures of their aerobic capacity and muscular strength.

They provided blood samples and completed questionnaires about diet and fitness habits. From this information the scientists ranked the men, first according to aerobic fitness and second according to strength.

On a molecular level

There is an emerging field of research called metabolomics in which scientists attempt to determine if an accumulation of certain metabolites — diverse molecules involved in any chemical reaction — is implicated in a range of diseases and conditions. For example, studies have shown high levels of some metabolites in the bloodstream are associated with raised cholesterol levels and the risk of heart disease, and that one’s metabolome can be influenced by diet and exercise.

The Finnish scientists researched whether one type of activity was more beneficial to the men’s metabolic profile than another, and whether running, swimming and cycling trumped weight training in terms of disease prevention. They discovered there were distinct differences in levels of desirable metabolites.

While the men with the highest stamina, who topped the aerobic fitness table, had elevated levels of metabolites known to be beneficial to heart health, those wallowing at the bottom of that ranking displayed a less favourable metabolite profile.

When it came to the strength rankings, there was little to distinguish those who weight trained regularly from the physically weakest in the table, suggesting it had significantly less impact on metabolic health. “Our study found many associations of high aerobic fitness with metabolome measures indicating reduced cardiometabolic risk in relatively healthy young men,” says University of Jyvaskyla professor of medicine and sports science Urho Kujala, who led the research, “while maximal muscular strength had fewer such associations.”

Fountain of youth

Gareth Wallis, a senior lecturer in exercise metabolism at the University of Birmingham, says there’s no question that the better your aerobic fitness, the lower your risk of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

“What the study showed is a link between high levels of aerobic fitness and a favourable blood metabolite profile for cardiometabolic disease,” he says. “In the wider clinical arena, measuring the metabolites in blood might eventually become a more accurate way of predicting disease than existing risk factors.”

Increasing your aerobic capacity helps to boost the flow of oxygenated blood to muscle tissues, which can improve the health and function of the body’s cells. It also seems to have an impact on telomeres, the caps at the end of our DNA that have been found to be a key to ageing.

When researchers from Leipzig University in Germany compared the effects of running and interval training — both excellent stamina-boosting activities — with weight training on markers of ageing for a study in the European Heart Journal in January, they found the endurance activities produced a greater increase in telomere length and activity. It’s significant, say study author Ulrich Lauds, because telomeres “are important for cellular ageing, regenerative capacity and thus healthy ageing” and “resistance training did not exert these effects”.

The report follows a paper in the JAMA Network Open last year that found of 122,007 patients who had undergone exercise tests on treadmills between 1991 and 2014, those with the best endurance fitness had the lowest risks of death from any cause. There was a strong association in patients aged 70 and older, suggesting it is wise to keep up running and walking.

HIIT the treadmill

The good news, Wallis says, is that you can improve your aerobic fitness in a range of ways. “One option is to include some moderate-intensity sessions of running or cycling that last anything upwards of 30 minutes, but another is to make some of these workouts shorter but more vigorous, by moving at a faster pace or by adding bursts of vigorous effort in an interval-training format.”

Cutting duration too severely by performing the kind of HIIT sessions that require you to sprint hard once or twice for 60 seconds is not the best route to better stamina. “There’s less evidence for this very short, sharp approach,” Wallis says. “Although that’s not to say it won’t have some effect.”

Your best approach, he says, is to mix it up; get plenty of activity that leaves you puffing or means you are on the go for a prolonged time. Not that strength training is off the fitness agenda. “There’s an established association between muscular strength and bone health as a lower risk of many diseases,” Wallis says. “It remains important to do, just not at the cost of all aerobic activity.”

As your stamina improves, everything will seem easier, including workouts. “The physical benefits of improved stamina are clear,” Wallis says. “Emerging evidence confirms it helps with everything from heart disease to mental health. It pays to work at it.”

Metabolic mapping

The University of Canberra’s Naroa Etxebarria, assistant professor in Applied Sports Physiology, says we’ve long known endurance training — walking and running — is good for your heart, and overall heath.

“Now we are understanding the how and why that might be,” Etxebarria says. “One of the things with the science of metabolites that is so interesting is that it will be fairly easy to individualise exercise eventually — a blood sample will give you a precise metabolic makeup so you can personalise the best way to exercise for the individual. It’s early days, but we’re heading down that road.”

Etxebarria stresses “stamina does come from both — aerobic training triggers aerobic and cardiovascular benefits, the resistance program improves skeletal health. They’re both important for different reasons … you need to combine both to maximise the benefits in the long run.”

The Times

Additional reporting: Staff Writers

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New science

■ Metabolites are diverse molecules involved in any chemical reaction

■ In an emerging field of research called metabolomics, scientists are testing if levels of certain metabolites are implicated in a range of diseases and conditions

■ Finnish scientists tested a link between stamina and metabolites, and asked if running, swimming and cycling trumped weight training in terms of disease prevention

■ Men with the highest stamina, who topped the aerobic fitness table, had elevated levels of metabolites known to be beneficial to heart health

■ Measuring the metabolites in blood may eventually become a more accurate way of predicting disease than existing risk factors