The Effect of Normobaric Hypoxia on Resistance Training Adaptations in Older Adults

Abstract

Allsopp, GL, Hoffmann, SM, Feros, SA, Pasco, JA, Russell, AP, and Wright, CR. The effect of normobaric hypoxia on resistance training adaptations in older adults. J Strength Cond Res 36(8): 2306–2312, 2022—The effect of normobaric hypoxia on strength, body composition, and cardiovascular fitness was investigated after a resistance training intervention in older adults. A single-blinded, randomized control trial recruited 20 healthy adults aged 60–75 years for an 8-week resistance training intervention in normoxia (n = 10) or normobaric hypoxia (14.4% O2; n = 10). Subjects performed 2 sessions per week of upper-body and lower-body exercises at 70% of 1 repetition maximum (1RM). Pretraining and post-training, maximal oxygen uptake (V̇O2max), muscular endurance (30 maximal knee flexions/extensions), and 5RM were assessed, with 5RM used to calculate 1RM. Subjects underwent whole-body dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) at pretraining and post-training for fat and lean mass quantification. Significance was set at p < 0.05. Subjects in both groups substantially improved their calculated 1RM strength for leg extension, pectoral fly, row, and squat (normoxia; 30, 38, 27, and 29%, hypoxia; 43, 50, 28, and 64%, respectively); however, hypoxia did not augment this response. Hypoxia did not enhance V̇O2max or muscular endurance responses after the training intervention, with no improvements seen in either group. Fat mass and lean mass remained unchanged in both groups after the intervention. In summary, 8 weeks of resistance training in hypoxia was well tolerated in healthy older adults and increased upper-body and lower-body strength. However, the magnitude of strength and lean muscle improvements in hypoxia was no greater than normoxia; therefore, there is currently no evidence to support the use of hypoxic resistance training in older adults.

An Update to a Comprehensive Assessment of the Methods and Effectiveness of Resistance Training in Normobaric Hypoxia for the Development of Strength and Muscular Hypertrophy

“…Additionally, 527 participants were included, ranging between 12 and 59 participants per study. Of the total participants, 92 (17.45%) were involved in studies investigating the effectiveness of resistance training under hypoxic conditions on muscle strength, 101 (19.16%) were part of protocols identifying the effect on muscle hypertrophy and a total of 327 (62.04%) on both strength and hypertrophy parameters [6,10,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25].…”

“…The papers included healthy participants (n = 188, 35.67%) [15,16,19,21,25,28], trained or athletes (n = 183, 34.72%) [6,22,24,27,[29][30][31] and a sedentary or untrained population (n = 156, 29.60%) [17,18,20,23,26,32]. The studies analysed the effect of resistance exercise in hypoxia with a frequency of two to four times per week during 4 to 12 weeks, with a total of ten to 36 sessions.…”

“…Six documents (31.57%) based their prescribed load on 1RM percentages less than 50% [16][17][18]25,27,32]. On the other hand, two articles (10.59%) used loads higher than 80% of the 1RM [21,24], one (5.26%) [26] used maximal power as the reference value, and the remaining ten studies (52.63%) used a training load between 50 and 80% of 1RM [6,15,19,20,22,23,[28][29][30][31].…”

“…Ten documents (52.63%) used lower limb exercises exclusively [16][17][18]22,[26][27][28][30][31][32], two papers (10.52%) focused on the upper limb [19,23], and seven articles (36.84%) combined lower and upper limb exercises [6,15,20,21,24,25,29].…”

Molecular Regulation of Skeletal Muscle Growth and Organelle Biosynthesis: Practical Recommendations for Exercise Training

“…However, in older adults, hypoxic resistance training does not induce greater magnitude in gains of lean mass and muscle strength than normoxic resistance training [ 292 ]. Moreover, hypoxic training promotes similar changes in oxidative metabolism and insulin sensitivity than exercise in normoxia in older individuals [ 293 ].…”