Influence of Resistance Training Exercise Order on Muscle Strength, Hypertrophy, and Anabolic Hormones in Older Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Abstract

Tomeleri, CM, Ribeiro, AS, Nunes, JP, Schoenfeld, BJ, Souza, MF, Schiavoni, D, Junior, PS, Cavaglieri, CR, Cunha, PM, Venturini, D, Barbosa, DS, and Cyrino, ES. Influence of resistance training exercise order on muscle strength, hypertrophy, and anabolic hormones in older women: a randomized controlled trial. J Strength Cond Res 34(11): 3103–3109, 2020—The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of resistance training (RT) exercise order on muscle strength, hypertrophy, and anabolic hormones in older women. Forty-four older women were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups: a nonexercise control group (CON, n = 15) and two RT groups that performed a 12-week RT program in a multijoint to single-joint order (MJ-SJ, n = 14), or in a single-joint to multijoint order (SJ-MJ, n = 15). The RT protocol (3×/week) encompassed 8 exercises, with 3 sets of 10–15 repetitions performed per exercise. One repetition maximum tests were used to evaluate muscle strength; dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry was used to estimate lean soft tissue. Both training groups showed significant and similar increases in muscle strength (MJ-SJ = 16.4%; SJ-MJ = 12.7%) and mass (MJ-SJ = 7.5%; SJ-MJ = 6.1%), whereas there were no significant changes in testosterone and insulin-like growth factor 1. The results suggest that both approaches are similarly effective in eliciting morphofunctional improvements in older women.

Effects of Three Resistance Exercise Orders on Muscular Function and Body Composition in Older Women

“…Our results corroborate recent findings on EO in either untrained older [10] and young women [29]. However, they disagree with those reported in male subjects [11], suggesting that the EO effect may be sex-dependent.…”

“…Regarding muscular strength results, they did not follow the suggested principle of specificity [10,11,32] since we observed no significant difference between groups. There were expected higher increases in 1RM performance in the MJ exercise for the MJ-SJ group, while the SJ-MJ would have improved more in SJ exercises.…”

“…Considering that the use of higher loads ultimately seems to transfer to more significant adaptations and that we observed no difference for training load between groups (▶ Fig. 2), it can be speculated that the chronic influence of EO on muscle morphofunctionality is influenced by the impact of EO on volume-intensity training parameters [9][10][11].…”

“…Regarding the exercise order (EO), current guidelines recommend initiating an RT session with multiple-joint (MJ) followed by single-joint (SJ) exercises [4]. Better adaptations are proposed to be achieved with this approach, since it may allow the use of higher intensities of load and overall volume-load compared to opposite orders [4,[8][9][10]. However, this recommendation has been in discussion over the last decade, and some progress has been made [9,11].…”

“…Concerning the elders, Tomeleri et al [10] recently analyzed the effects of two RT EOs (a group performed exercises in an MJ-to-SJ order and another group performed in an SJ-to-MJ order) on muscular strength and mass in untrained older women. Results indicated no statistical differences between the EOs, despite slight positive effects favoring the MJ-SJ group, which were attributed to the larger volume-load accumulated over the 12-week RT program.…”