Resistance training as an acute stressor in healthy young men: associations with heart rate variability, alpha-amylase, and cortisol levels.

Resistance training as an acute stressor in healthy young men: associations with heart rate variability, alpha-amylase, and cortisol levels. Stress. 2020 Aug 03;:1-13 Authors: Becker L, Semmlinger L, Rohleder N Abstract Regular resistance training has been shown to have many physiological and psychological health benefits. However, the underlying physiological processes are not yet fully understood. One explanation is that resistance training acts like an acute stressor and modulates physiological pathways that are associated with the stress response such as the sympathetic nervous system (SNS), the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. This was systematically investigated in our study. Participants were 45 healthy men who had been doing resistance training regularly for at least nine months. Salivary α-amylase and heart rate that were used as markers for SNS activity increased during the training and decreased afterwards. PNS activity that was assessed by means of heart rate variability parameters decreased during the training and increased after it. Salivary cortisol that was used as marker for HPA axis activity decreased throughout the session. Furthermore, an improvement of positive affect was found after the training. However, additional analyses indicated that the physiological response patterns were found for participants who chose upper-body exercises (in contrast to lower-b...
Source: Stress - Category: Research Tags: Stress Source Type: research